Worst Case Scenario: Archaeological Implications of a Pipeline Rupture on the Enbridge Line 5 through the Straits of Mackinac in Lakes Michigan and Huron

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Exploring the Recent Past" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 2017, Michigan's Pipeline Safety Advisory Board asked Michigan Technological University to lead a multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary research team in a risk analysis and assessment of potential damages caused by a worst-case oil spill on Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline. Each day, Line 5 moves about 23 million gallons of light crude and natural gas liquids (NGL) through two pipelines. Those pipelines cross from Michigan's Upper Peninsula to the lower "mitten" at the Straits of Mackinac, where the lines were anchored to the lake bottom in 1953. In this paper, I report on the worst-case scenarios developed from simulated oil spills and assess the effect of those spills on maritime and terrestrial archaeological sites in the Great Lakes. I will also explain the broader conflicts between this bit of legacy industrial infrastructure, the industrial archaeology of the Anthropocene, and the heritage of vulnerable communities in the Great Lakes region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2019   •
• Exploring the Recent Past

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 451