Michiganders view the Great Lakes as central to our livelihoods, our leisure,\u00a0and our way of life, as the \u201cGreat Lakes State\u201d imbues residents with a special\u00a0sense of civic pride and public trust. So when Canadian energy transportation\u00a0company Enbridge spilled over 800,000 gallons of Albertan tar sands oil into the\u00a0Kalamazoo River in 2010, Michiganders, vowing not to repeat the mistakes of the\u00a0past, asked whether it could happen again. Reviewing the state\u2019s pipelines\u00a0infrastructure in the wake of the spill, environmentalists made a startling\u00a0discovery\u2014an oil pipeline, Line 5, operated by the same company ran through\u00a0the Straits of Mackinac at the very heart of the Great Lakes. Overnight, the\u00a0sixty-four-year-old pipeline became a political lightening-rod in the tourismbased\u00a0economy of Northern Michigan and a grassroots campaign began to \u201cShut\u00a0Down Line 5.\u201d But how? This Note examines whether pipeline safety laws offer a\u00a0means of shutting down the aging pipeline. It argues that the safety laws\u00a0themselves fail to offer an effective means for preventing a spill in the Great\u00a0Lakes. The Note then examines two problems created by the pipeline safety laws:\u00a0first, an asymmetrical information problem resulting from the lack of transparency\u00a0of the pipeline safety regime; and second, an agency problem that grows out\u00a0of the lack of accountability resulting from asymmetrical information. Finally,\u00a0this Note argues in favor of the use of sunshine tactics as a remedy for both the\u00a0information and accountability deficiencies of the pipeline safety laws and\u00a0reviews timely bipartisan legislation that would compel greater transparency.\u00a0Transparency would then either result in enhanced operational safety or compel\u00a0the pipeline operator to shut the pipeline down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michiganders view the Great Lakes as central to our livelihoods, our leisure,\u00a0and our way of life, as the \u201cGreat Lakes State\u201d imbues residents with a special\u00a0sense of civic pride and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"parent":62,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-40","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1762,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40\/revisions\/1762"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/environmental-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}