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Freighter Fails in Great Lakes Highlight Line 5 Risks
After the devastating collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Michiganders are not ruling out a similar tragedy in the Great Lakes. After obtaining a public records request from the U.S. Coast Guard, a new report in the Detroit News discovered that Great Lakes freighters lost control or power more than 200 times between 2012 and May 2022, and crashed with stationary objects more than 60 times over the same decade. While the News notes that a freighter crash similar to the Key Bridge tragedy is unlikely with the Mackinac Bridge, there is a profound risk of damaging Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac.
Michigan needs a strong statewide sanitary code
Each year, 9.4 billion gallons of raw sewage flow into our lakes and rivers from leaking septic systems, but Michigan is the only state in the U.S. without a uniform sanitary code requiring periodic inspections of septic systems. For years, we have been working to address this problem, by strengthening septic inspection requirements at the county level, and pushing for a statewide sanitary code requiring regular inspections of all septic systems in Michigan.
Right now, there is a package of bills that have been introduced in the State House that would create a statewide sanitary code including