Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer abandoned a lawsuit Tuesday aimed at shutting down an oil pipeline that runs through part of the Great Lakes but said the state would continue pursuing a separate case with the same goal. Whitmer's legal maneuver followed a federal judge's decision earlier this month to retain jurisdiction over a suit brought by Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. after the state revoked an easement allowing Line 5 to cross the Straits of Mackinac.
Environmentalists and activists claimed victory recently after a company cancelled plans to build an oil pipeline through southwest Tennessee and north Mississippi, and over an aquifer that provides drinking water to one million people. Byhalia Connection said it will no longer pursue plans to build a 79-kilometre underground artery that would have linked two major U.S. oil pipelines while running through wetlands and under poor, predominantly Black neighbourhoods in south Memphis.
Michigan’s demand that Enbridge close its 68-year-old oil pipeline (Line 5) across the Straits of Mackinac joining lakes Michigan and Huron did not come out of nowhere. It is essentially the fifth “wave” of opposition to Canadian oil pipelines that suddenly erupted in 2010. The first four cases, of course, were TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, then Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline, followed by TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline and Kinder Morgan’s TransMountain Expansion pipeline.
