Federal regulators proposed a $3.7 million civil penalty Monday against the Canadian owner of a pipeline that ruptured in 2010, dumping more than 800 million gallons of oil into a southwestern Michigan river.
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| Michigan Pipeline Spill-2010 |
The U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said the penalty against Enbridge Inc. would be the largest it has imposed. In a letter to the company, the agency listed 24 violations of hazardous liquid pipeline regulations, including failure to fix corrosion problems in the damaged pipe joint discovered as far back as 2004.
It took more than 17 hours to realize that the pipe line had
ruptured…and during that time an additional 678000 gallons were dumped into the
Kalamazoo River… finally detecting the breach after trying to restart the
pipeline twice creating surges that made the disaster worse, even though there
were numerous alarms and indications that there was a serious leak in progress.
It is this type of leak that has caused the Federal
Government to delay the decision process on current pipeline requests.
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