Tom's Corner: Michigan's oil spill

(NEWSCHANNEL 3) – For the last 101 days, oil spills have dominated headlines. Since Monday, it's certainly been the story in West Michigan.

As we've reported more than a million gallons of oil may have spilled into the Kalamazoo River.

In this edition of Tom's Corner, Tom Van Howe makes the case that the disasters in West Michigan and the Gulf of Mexico are a wake up call.

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I don't know about you, but I'm weary of my addiction and dependence on oil, and I'm tired of feeling as though we're all pawns in a giant world-wide chess game being played by the masters of big oil.

These days I turn a deaf ear to the experts who say that drilling for more oil is safe, that's it's okay to drill in the Gulf, or in the Pacific, or in the Alaskan Refuge, it may be irrational, but I don't believe them.

I can buy the argument that it's 'mostly' safe, but it's not safe enough is it? Mistakes and accidents happen, don't they?

First, the colossal, awful spill in the Gulf, and now the worst oil spill ever in the mid-west. As the crude flows down the Kalamazoo River we are assured that it will never reach Lake Michigan, and we hope those who make such assurances are right.

It may be irrational, but I don't trust them either.

BP didn't do its industry any favors when for a month it insisted that the outflow from its broken well was about 5,000 barrels a day. Now we know that it was more like 60,000 barrels a day.

Good grief! Think of it, BP really didn't know that it was twelve times worse than what it said it was? Who are they trying to kid? Us.

Now we are dealing with another international company that own a vast network of pipelines that criss-cross America and Canada, Enbridge Energy with headquarters in Houston and Calgary.

The section of the pipeline that runs through Marshall, sending oil from Indiana to Sarnia, Canada, is about 40 years old. That line carries about eight million gallons of crude oil daily.

Law enforcement officials in the Marshall area were notified Sunday night of a strong odor of oil near the leak. That would be, you'd think, a pretty clear indication that something was amiss, but the leak was not isolated and closed by Enbridge until the next morning, some twelve hours later.

By the time the leak was stopped the company says 850,000 gallons had spilled. The EPA now says it was a million gallons.

The morning coffee crowd thinks it was much more than that. Who knows?

This is not the first spill involving the Enbridge network. There was a spill in North Dakota earlier in 2010, one in Alberta in 2009, and one in Minnesota in 2007. Not exactly what you'd call a good record.

We still don't know what caused this spill, but Enbridge is planning to reopen the pipeline in just a few days.

So what can we do? Put the right amount of air in our tires, drive less, use less air conditioning, turn lights off, accelerate research into alternative energy. That's about it.

Meanwhile, our addiction to oil must be fed. The chess masters continue their game, and we pretty much stand where we're told.

In this corner, I'm Tom Van Howe.