Remembering the Kalamazoo

On July 25, 2010, over 1 million gallons of tar sands – the dirtiest substance on Earth - poured out of a ruptured Enbridge pipeline and into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, hurting the health, economy, and environment of the local communities. Five years and over a billion dollars later, the spill’s impacts are still noticeable in the lives of the people near the spill zone.

This spill – which was the largest tar sands spill in history until the spill in Alberta last week - poured over 1 million gallons of tar sands oil into Talmadge Creek, a tributary of the Kalamazoo River. Despite the literal sounding alarms in Enbridge’s Edmonton headquarters, they continued to pump tar sands for over 17 hours, worsening the spill.

Enbridge received 22 probable violations relating to the spill, yet they issued this statement in a July 2010 press release:  "Safety is a top priority and the Partnership will do our utmost to minimize the impact on the environment, neighboring landowners and communities."  But still today, community members feel the lasting impacts of the spill, having suffered from water contamination, damage to the local tourist-based economy, and fear of another spill.

However, this story does not end with tragedy and fear. Indeed, it has also become a story of solidarity and resilience. This Saturday, July 25, marks the five year anniversary of this spill, and community members have been organizing an event to “build communities, not pipelines” called Remember the Kalamazoo.

Chris Wahmhoff, a Kalamazoo community member and part of the Remember the Kalamazoo organizing team, shares his vision for this event: “For me, this event is standing in a virtually silenced community and breaking their silence, breaking legal silence and emotional silence, and helping the community see that we are not alone and not forgotten.” He hopes that the event will give attendees an understanding of how the spill impacted the community and how endangered our communities are, and how, “most importantly, they can protect their communities in all the ways we didn’t know.”

The need to protect our communities that Wahmhoff highlights is increasingly vital. While communities in Michigan are still healing, tar sands pipelines are being constructed and expanded, and even larger spills are occurring. The Budget (Joint Finance) Committee worked with Enbridge to ease the expansion of tar sands  through the heart of Wisconsin.   The new proposed pipeline, existing Line 61, and Line 67 (also known as Alberta Clipper), run frighteningly close to Lake Superior.  Furthermore,  a Nexen pipeline that had “failsafe protection” spilled 1.3 million gallons of tar sands oil in Alberta just last week.

When will we learn? How many millions of gallons of oil must be spilled? How many lives and ecosystems must be devastated? For the sake of our communities, our waterways, our local economies, and our global climate, it’s time that we stop this constant flow of tar sands oil at the source.

If we can’t run our pipelines safely now, we certainly shouldn’t be adding new pipelines or increasing the pressure and flow of tar sands in our existing pipelines.  Click here to contact Senator Baldwin and ask her to demand a full review of the Alberta Clipper expansion.