U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

58–236 PDF 2010

ENBRIDGE PIPELINE OIL SPILL IN 

MARSHALL, MICHIGAN 

(111–134) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

September 15, 2010 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

( 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, Vice 

Chair 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

LAURA A. RICHARDSON, California 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas 

PHIL HARE, Illinois 

JOHN A. BOCCIERI, Ohio 

MARK H. SCHAUER, Michigan 

BETSY MARKEY, Colorado 

MICHAEL E. MCMAHON, New York 

THOMAS S. P. PERRIELLO, Virginia 

DINA TITUS, Nevada 

HARRY TEAGUE, New Mexico 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky 

ANH ‘‘JOSEPH’’ CAO, Louisiana 

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois 

PETE OLSON, Texas 

TOM GRAVES, Georgia 

(II) 

(III) 

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... v 

TESTIMONY 

BarlondSmith, Michelle, Resident, Battle Creek, Michigan ................................ 22 

Buchsbaum, Andy, Director, National Wildlife Federation Great Lakes Regional Center, accompanied by Beth Wallace, Great Lakes Oil Spill Response Coordinator ............................................................................................... 22 

Connolly, Susan, Resident, Marshall, Michigan ................................................... 22 

Daniel, Patrick D., President and Chief Executive Officer, Enbridge, Inc. ........ 74 

Hersman, Hon. Deborah, Chairman, National Transportation Safety Board .... 45 

Jackson, Hon. Lisa P., Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 

accompanied by Susan Hedman, Administrator for EPA’s Region 5 ............... 45 

Lee, James Alan, Resident, Marshall, Michigan ................................................... 22 

Masten, Scott, Senior Scientist, National Toxicology Program, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health .......... 45 

Miller, Debra, Small Business Owner and Resident, Ceresco, Michigan ........... 22 

Porcari, Hon. John D., Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Transportation . 45 

Scott, Kelli D., Administrator and Controller, Calhoun County, Michigan ........ 53 

Thorpe, Darla and Denise Green, Residents, Ceresco, Michigan ........................ 22 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Brown, Hon. Corrine, of Florida ............................................................................. 90 

Cohen, Hon. Steve, of Tennessee ............................................................................ 94 

Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., of Maryland ............................................................... 95 

Garamendi, Hon. John, of California ..................................................................... 110 

Johnson, Hon. Eddie Bernice, of Texas .................................................................. 111 

Mitchell, Hon. Harry E., of Arizona ....................................................................... 115 

Pelosi, Hon. Nancy, of California ........................................................................... 116 

Richardson, Hon. Laura, of California ................................................................... 117 

Shauer, Hon. Mark H., of Michigan ....................................................................... 120 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

BarlondSmith, Michelle ........................................................................................... 126 

Buchsbaum, Andy .................................................................................................... 132 

Connolly, Susan ....................................................................................................... 146 

Daniel, Patrick D. .................................................................................................... 194 

Hersman, Hon. Deborah .......................................................................................... 201 

Jackson, Hon. Lisa P. .............................................................................................. 206 

Lee, James Alan ....................................................................................................... 212 

Masten, Scott ........................................................................................................... 223 

Miller, Debra ............................................................................................................ 227 

Porcari, Hon. John D. .............................................................................................. 247 

Scott, Kelli D. ........................................................................................................... 254 

Thorpe, Darla and Denise Green ............................................................................ 260 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Maryland, CNN transcript .............................................................................. 102 

Garamendi, Hon. John, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, letter to Chairman Oberstar and Ranking Member Mica .................... 17 

Page

IV 

Shauer, Hon. Mark H., a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan: 

Letter from Hon. Glen Thompson to Hon. Cynthia L. Quarterman, 

Administrator, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation ................................................ 65 

Letter from Hon. Judy Biggert to Hon. Ray LaHood, Secretary, U.S. 

Department of Transportation ................................................................. 67 

ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD 

City of Battle Creek, Michigan, Susan Baldwin, Mayor, and Kenneth 

Tsuchiyama, City Manager, written testimony ................................................. 264 

Sierra Club, Rita Chapman, Clean Water Program Director, Sierra Club 

Michigan Chapter, and Elizabeth Irvin, Sierra Club National Office, written 

testimony .............................................................................................................. 271 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of the Interior, written testimony 276 

v 


Insert offset folio 1 here 58236.001
vi 


Insert offset folio 2 here 58236.002
vii 


Insert offset folio 3 here 58236.003
viii 


Insert offset folio 4 here 58236.004
ix 


Insert offset folio 5 here 58236.005
x 


Insert offset folio 6 here 58236.006
xi 


Insert offset folio 7 here 58236.007
xii 


Insert offset folio 8 here 58236.008
xiii 


Insert offset folio 9 here 58236.009
xiv 


Insert offset folio 10 here 58236.010
xv 


Insert offset folio 11 here 58236.011
xvi 


Insert offset folio 12 here 58236.012
xvii 


Insert offset folio 13 here 58236.013
xviii 


Insert offset folio 14 here 58236.014
xix 


Insert offset folio 15 here 58236.015
xx 


Insert offset folio 16 here 58236.016
xxi 


Insert offset folio 17 here 58236.017
xxii 


Insert offset folio 18 here 58236.018
xxiii 


Insert offset folio 19 here 58236.019
xxiv 


Insert offset folio 20 here 58236.020
(1) 

ENBRIDGE PIPELINE OIL SPILL IN 

MARSHALL, MICHIGAN 

Wednesday, September 15, 2010 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

WASHINGTON, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:15 a.m., in room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. James Oberstar [Chairman of the Committee] presiding. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure will come to order. 

The Chair will advise Members and witnesses they are allowed 

to wear sunglasses. This newly reconditioned lighting system here, 

it is—I was watching it being installed during the recess, and it’s 

energy efficient lighting. I didn’t know it was going to be blinding. 

Mr. Miller, our Committee manager, what did you do with this 

lighting? Did you goose up the electricity on it? 

Yes, it is. I know that. I thought they repainted the room it was 

so bright. 

A little obiter dicta aside, the Committee meets in very serious, 

even somber session this morning. We have had a long record of 

concern over the safety of the Nation’s pipeline system. When I 

Chaired the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee several 

years ago, one of our first actions was to inquire into a serious 

pipeline break in Minnesota on the northern fringe of the Twin Cities. I recall very vividly as we prepared for reauthorization of the 

pipeline safety program just prior to the Highway Subcommittee 

consideration of that legislation there was the massive rupture on 

the Williams’ pipeline in Mounds View, Minnesota, northern fringe 

of the Twin Cities. 

Our Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight inquiry into 

that failure, with the very detailed report of the National Transportation Safety Board, showed that corrosion was the culprit, that cathodic protection had failed on that pipeline. Not only had the cathodic protection failed, but there were no shutoff valves in the vicinity of the pipeline rupture. 

The pipeline had been laid some time before intensive population 

growth had spread to Mounds View. Notwithstanding, the pipeline 

company continued to treat that segment as a rural pipeline with 

widely spaced shutoff valves and no technology to detect a drop in 

pipeline pressure. And what happened was that there was a 7–1/ 

2 foot long crack in the pipeline. 

Liquid gasoline leaked into the soil and spread throughout an entire city block. Vapors from the liquid gasoline worked their way 

2 

up through the soil. At 2:00 a.m., a car driving along that street 

with a loose tail pipe, the tail pipe struck the pavement, sparked, 

and the gasoline exploded into a block-long fireball that melted and 

buckled the pavement, melted mailboxes along the street and one 

of the homes. A mother and her daughter came out the front door 

to see what was going on; and the fireball roared up the front lawn 

and engulfed the mother and daughter, severely burned, died a 

couple of days later. 

In the aftermath, we found that, notwithstanding the explosion 

and the fire, the gas leak continued to flow for an hour and a half 

until the manually operated gate was shut off. I have talked about 

that incident in every hearing we have had over the ensuing years 

on pipeline safety. 

All of us know where we were and what we were doing at a certain moment our life when some major tragedy occurred. When 

Franklin Roosevelt died I can tell you exactly where I was, whose 

living room, what time of day. We all know where we were on September 11th. Congressman Schauer, I am sure, will never forget 

where he was when he learned of the Enbridge spill in Marshall, 

Michigan. Nor will our colleague, Congressman Rick Larsen, ever 

blot out the memory of the Bellingham River gas line spill that 

claimed the lives of two young lads who had just graduated from 

high school, were celebrating their graduation by going on a fishing 

trip on this river and this wall of gasoline on fire roared down the 

river and consumed them. 

Two months ago, the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and 

Hazmat had a hearing on the integrity management of hazardous 

pipelines. During the hearing, I questioned Mr. Richard Adams, the 

Enbridge vice president of U.S. operations for liquid pipelines, 

about the importance of identifying and responding immediately to 

pipeline rupture. 

His comment, ‘‘Our response time from our control center can be 

almost instantaneous, and our large leaks are typically detected by 

our control center personnel. They have enough experience and 

training that with usually a leak of any size they can view that 

there is a change in the operating system, and there are provisions 

that if there is uncertainty they have to shut down within a period 

of time.’’ 

This is after 20 plus years of experience of pipeline failures. We 

did not know at the time of their testimony that Enbridge had requested a 2–1/2 year extension from DOT’s Pipeline and Hazmat 

Office to—an extension of time to repair the 329 defects on that 

line that they had known about for 2 years. 

Ten days later, the pipeline burst. Ten days later after the hearing in this Committee. It does not appear at this point that any of 

those 329 defects were present at milepost 608 where the rupture 

occurred. Records show that prior inspections in 2005, 2007, 2009 

identified at that location a defect, but the defect in their judgment 

had not yet reached the repair criteria that PHMSA, the hazardous 

materials agency, had established in Federal regulation. 

That is not good enough. The Federal regulations are a minimum 

standard that you must meet. 

In aviation, the opening paragraph of the FAA act of 1958 says, 

safety in aviation shall be maintained at the highest possible level. 

3 

The purpose of that language was to encourage a culture of safety 

in the corporate boardrooms, and that is what is required here and 

that that level of safety should go beyond those minimum standards. 

We will hear later in the testimony from the National Transportation Safety Board. We don’t yet know the exact cause of the incident. We do know that the spill likely occurred sometime before 

Enbridge reported to the National Response Center. We know that, 

contrary to Enbridge’s claims at our hearing, the control center 

didn’t even realize that a massive rupture had occurred on the 

pipeline until a utility worker from an unrelated company called 

Enbridge to report oil was spilling into a creek. 

We know that Enbridge personnel at the control center experienced an abrupt pressure drop on the line and they had multiple 

volume balance alarms over the course of several hours before 

sending a technician to the pump station three-quarters of a mile 

from the rupture. We know that Enbridge reported that the technician did not see any problems or smell any odors at the pump station. 

We also know that numerous residents in the immediate vicinity 

of the pump station and others who were living some 9 miles away 

reported that they smelled strong odors the day before. 

We also know that Enbridge knew about hundreds of defects in 

the line. We know that PHMSA was made aware of them, and we 

know that PHMSA failed to do anything to address Enbridge’s inaction. 

That is not a culture of safety. That is not a culture of safety in 

the head office of PHMSA, nor at Enbridge. 

This corporation has been urging residents in the aftermath of 

this tragedy, under duress, to sign liability releases for reimbursement of hotel and food expenses resulting from their evacuation, 

signing liability releases for air purifiers that are being distributed 

which, according to information our investigative staff have gathered, do not address the health impacts of inhaling benzene or 

volatile organic compounds. 

This corporation is not practicing a corporate culture of safety. 

Nor does this company properly assume responsibility when its 

personnel lead injured persons to believe they must sign away their 

lifelong medical records to Enbridge if they want medical care. 

Enbridge should not have the right—or have the power or the force 

to intimidate people into signing a document that the company can 

then use against them in later legal proceedings; and, at the same 

time, they claim that this is a Federal requirement under the 

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPAA, when 

they are not covered by HIPAA. 

This sounds very much like Transocean on the mobile drilling 

unit in the Gulf coming back to their employees and asking and demanding that they sign a document saying they didn’t see the accident, hear the accident, they weren’t part of it, and they did not 

suffer severe injury in order to be covered—signing away their 

rights. 

We went through this months ago in this Committee room with 

BP and Transocean and the mobile drilling unit. I am not going to 

tolerate this. 

4 

And Enbridge is also resisting our request for view of those documents. So we will deal with that separately. 

You would think Enbridge would have learned a lesson from BP. 

You would think they would have learned from the history of pipeline failures in this country. When they occur, they are either a disaster to the environment or to residents near the pipeline. Neither 

is acceptable and that conduct by corporations is not acceptable, 

nor is it acceptable of PHMSA. 

With that, I will yield now to our distinguished Ranking Member, Mr. Shuster. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and I thank all the witnesses for coming out today. I look forward to hearing from everybody. 

Of course, the ruptured pipeline which occurred in July—late 

July in Marshall, Michigan, is certainly a tragedy; and, as the 

Chairman stated, this Committee takes it very seriously. We hope 

to get a better understanding of what happened, and I don’t think 

we are going to get a full understanding until the NTSB has done 

its full investigation of the situation. 

So today we are pleased that we are going to hear from the residents about the spill and the problems that they experienced from 

the EPA administrator and the environmental damage caused by 

this bill, the Department of Transportation, of course, the NTSB 

talking about the events leading up to the rupture and what can 

be done to prevent these types of things from occurring in the future. But, again, we still have to wait until their final report, which 

I don’t know when to anticipate that will be out so we can get the 

facts and really determine what really happened on that day and 

why it failed. 

And our final witness of the day is going to be Pat Daniel, who 

is the President and CEO of Enbridge, the owners and operators 

of the pipeline; and he is going to talk about what they have done 

in the cleanup, which I understand is moving forward well, it is 

going well, as well as can be expected and what they are doing to 

help the residents cope with the spill. 

It is my understanding that Enbridge has done some things that 

aren’t required of them, offering to buy people’s homes because 

they don’t want to see the values go down. So they are trying to 

do those things. My understanding is they have bought four or five 

homes now and may be buying several more. But they are doing 

some things that are positive and not at this point required by law. 

So it is a serious matter for this Committee. It is a serious matter for the agencies of the government. They are looking into it, 

and I get the sense that Enbridge takes this very serious and are 

going to step up and do what they need to do. 

Again, we really need to wait to find out the facts from the NTSB 

and their final analysis of this. 

It has been a rough month for pipeline safety. First, we had this 

spill, and then there was another that occurred in Illinois. Six 

thousand barrels spilled, got onto the roadway and a retention 

pond in Illinois. And then on Thursday the massive explosion in 

California, in San Bruno, California, which killed several people 

and destroyed many, many homes and a lot of property out there. 

5 

A lot of us take for granted how oil and gas are transported 

around the country and how natural gas makes it into our homes. 

But pipelines are an essential part of our transportation system; 

and they are still, even in spite of these tragedies that have occurred, still the safest and most efficient way that we deliver these 

products to consumers. But we need to make sure that we are 

doing everything we can to make it even safer. 

These recent events have captured the public’s attention and 

brought pipeline safety to the forefront, as it should have. I only 

wish that the government, PHMSA, the administration, DOT, 

would have looked at these things and had a sense of urgency before these events occurred. 

The administrator, Cynthia Quarterman, has been before this 

Committee four times in the last 5 months; and each time she has 

appeared I have asked her when she expects the administration to 

transmit a pipeline safety reauthorization proposal and each time 

she has been unable to provide that answer to me. Then today, 15 

days before the program expires—it expires on September 30th— 

we have a proposal. I would like to tell you it is a good proposal, 

but I cannot because literally we got an e-mail to us at 10:00. It 

is still warm coming off the press. So we haven’t had an opportunity to look at this. And, again, it is 15 days before the program 

expires. 

Congress is expected to recess on October 7th, and rumor has it 

maybe even October 1st. So I don’t see there is any way we can 

go through a proposal and pass a proposal that is going to make 

sense, that is going to be thoughtful, that is going to look at the 

facts, especially when you have the situation here at the NTSB, no 

final report. So it boggles my mind. 

It is stunning to me that the White House, the administration, 

was unable to come up with a proposal until, again, 15 days, 30 

days after a tragedy occurs. Again, the President, when we had the 

highway reauthorization bill was ready to expire, it was 9 months 

into the President’s term; and everybody said it is only 9 months. 

Well, now it is 20 months into the separation, and they are still 

playing catch-up. The honeymoon is over. If the administration expects to be taken seriously on transportation issues across the 

board, they need to start stepping up to the plate. I am very disappointed in that. 

Again, Mr. Chairman, thanks for holding this hearing; and I 

yield back. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Shuster. 

I join in your frustration, but mine is tripled because we had the 

same experience trying to get a pipeline safety bill recommendation 

from the Reagan administration in the late 1980’s and in 2006 we 

had similar problem getting one from the Bush administration. 

There is something endemic in this agency that it does not—it 

is not responsive, and it is bipartisan nonresponsive, and we will 

not tolerate one or the other party delay. It has nothing to do with 

party. It has everything to do with lives, safety, protection of the 

environment and the confidence that the public should have that 

pipelines running particularly through urban areas are well managed, well maintained. 

6 

I have not yet had the opportunity to review the administration’s 

proposal. I shall. But I do think that there is urgency, and I think 

we should begin the fashioning of a bill in Committee so that we 

can deal with this matter in due course. And we will consult closely, of course, and participate in partnership with the Republican 

Members of the Committee. Because safety knows no party. 

I will now ask Mr. Schauer to make whatever opening comments 

he may have. Thank you for your vigilance over this issue and also 

Mrs. Miller, also from Michigan. Both Members are deeply affected 

and directly affected and have been extraordinarily responsive to 

the concerns of the people of Michigan, to their constituents; and 

I thank you both for your contributions and for your vigilance. 

Mr. Schauer. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member 

Shuster. Representative Miller and I have many things in common, 

one of which is this pipeline runs through our district. 

On Monday, July 26, at approximately 1:30 p.m., I was boarding 

a flight from Detroit to Washington for votes here in the House of 

Representatives that evening. It was almost that exact time that 

a company few in Calhoun County, Michigan, had ever heard of, 

Enbridge Energy Partners, reported an oil spill to the National Response Center into Talmadge Creek just south of the city of Marshall. 

Starting about 9:30 the night before, on Sunday, July 25th, residents in the Talmadge Creek area began calling 911 complaining 

of a gas odor. As we will learn here today, this was just after a 

shift change in the Enbridge control room in Edmonton, Alberta, in 

Canada, the same control room that experienced 13 hours of 

alarms telling them that something was going wrong on Line 6B 

in Enbridge’s Lakehead pipeline. 

On Tuesday, after a brief meeting with the President in which 

he committed all necessary resources to deal with this largest oil 

spill ever in the Midwest, I flew home to see for myself. Jill Slaght 

of my staff, who is here today, a Marshall resident, was on the 

ground; and my team and I have been working with our sleeves 

rolled up with affected people ever since. 

I saw the unimaginable there at home that day. I live in Battle 

Creek. I got off the highway, drove through Marshall, stopped, 

smelled, saw. My community lost its innocence that night and in 

subsequent days. One million gallons of heavy crude oil poured into 

the Talmadge Creek and then into the Kalamazoo River, a tributary to Lake Michigan. 

I never would have imagined that just after holding hearings on 

the BP Deep Water Explosion spill to strengthen the Oil Pollution 

Act, my community would be dealing with the same images, images 

of oil-coated geese in a river literally flowing black with oil. 

The ironies are too many to cite. Just 10 days before, as Chairman Oberstar stated, an executive of Enbridge testified before this 

very Committee on its integrity management system and stated its 

control room could detect the smallest of leaks. As we learned, it 

failed. 

Also on that day, July 15, 2010, Enbridge requested, as the 

Chairman noted, to the Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety 

Administration, or PHMSA, that it be allowed to continue to operVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:18 Mar 25, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58236.TXT JEAN
7 

ate Line 6B at reduced pressure for another 2–1/2 years while it 

considered repairs to identify defects in its pipeline. This is on top 

of the year—one year—that Enbridge had already been operating 

at reduced pressures while it considered what to do about known 

defects in its pipeline. 

As a result of inline inspections since 2007, Enbridge knew of 

390 defects but only saw fit to repair 61 of them, leaving 329 

unrepaired defects in Line 6B. 

The section of pipeline that ruptured south of Marshall wasn’t 

even one of these. I learned from documentation provided by 

Enbridge to PHMSA about 2 weeks ago that the section of pipeline 

that tore—it literally tore—had a defect, but the defect didn’t rise 

to PHMSA’s threshold requiring repair. But isn’t it Enbridge’s responsibility to make sure that its pipeline is safe and that people 

won’t be injured and the environment wouldn’t be impacted? 

Enbridge has a lot of experience in this area, with 163 pipeline 

spills since 2002, 83 of them on the Lakehead system. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing today. It is important to the people of Michigan where 283 miles of this pipeline 

lies. This hearing is ultimately about people, people whose lives 

have been changed, for some permanently and irrevocably. 

We hold this hearing for Mitchell Price who couldn’t be here 

today but wrote to me about his property, his 30 acres of property 

along the Kalamazoo River that has been spoiled. And it’s for 

Bobby and Berita Lewis who feel violated and whose lives have 

been turned upside down. 

This is also a hearing about safety, as you noted, Mr. Chairman. 

Our current laws and regulations are not working as we have seen 

from this spill and others. The Enbridge pipeline spill is just one 

example of the need for further corporate responsibility and public 

oversight. There were three other incidents just in the past week, 

two from Enbridge lines. Public health was compromised by 

Enbridge’s spill, with over 60 homes being evacuated. Area medical 

centers have reported over 120 visits related to illnesses from the 

oil spill. Over 1,000 oiled wildlife have been collected thus far; and 

the spill area is still today under advisories for drinking water, 

recreation, and fish consumption. 

We do not yet know what the long-term impacts of the spill will 

be on the health, safety, environment, and economy, economy of 

these communities in my district. According to the National Institute of Health, there has never been a study of what effects are of 

the high exposure levels of benzene and related odors like the levels we saw in this spill to children and infants. The testing has 

only been done in adults. 

Additionally, I am very concerned before this pipeline is restarted that it can operate safely, given the recent releases in Illinois and New York and the over 80 release incidents, spills reported by Enbridge since 2002 in the Lakehead system. I do not 

think it can. 

Mr. Chairman, every inch of this pipeline must be inspected and 

every defect fixed before 8 million gallons per day of heavy crude 

oil is allowed to flow through it again. 

From the very beginning, there have been questions surrounding 

when this rupture and oil spill occurred. Again, Enbridge stated in 

8 

testimony before this very Committee on July 15th about their response time and ability to detect the smallest of leaks. I am concerned about Enbridge’s statement to the Committee about their 

equipment and personnel being able to detect leaks almost instantaneously, especially after this spill. Enbridge’s control room in Alberta started experiencing alarms before the spill was reported to 

Federal officials at 5:58 p.m. On July 25th on this 6B line. 

Additionally, reports of odors started coming in, as we know, that 

evening about 9:30 in Marshal; and it wasn’t until 11:18 a.m., Mr. 

Chairman, on Monday, July 26th, that an employee of another utility company, Consumers Energy, called Enbridge, telling them that 

was oil spilling into the Talmadge Creek. The leak was confirmed 

by Enbridge personnel at 11:45 a.m.; and they reported the spill to 

the National Response Center at 1:33 p.m., nearly 2 hours after 

they confirmed discovery. 

Over 13 hours of alarms in their control center in Alberta and 

they still were unable to discover and report the leak near Talmadge Creek in my district. Current regulation requires pipeline 

operators to report incidents immediately upon discovery of a release. 

In 2002, PHMSA determined that ‘‘immediately’’ to be defined as 

between 1 and 2 hours of discovery, or the earliest practicable moment. Enbridge documentation indicates that reporting must be 

provided within 2 hours of discovery. 

I introduced a Corporate Liability and Emergency Accident Notification Act, the CLEAN Act, to clarify the term immediately and 

the reporting requirements of a spill incident to the National Response Center to be no more than 1 hour after the discovery of an 

incident. My bill will also increase the current fines if a spill is not 

reported immediately after a release has been confirmed. In an accident like this, with real people and the environment at risk, 

every second counts. 

Mr. Chairman, under current regulation—you noted this yourself, and I will come to a conclusion momentarily—under current 

regulation, railroad employees can lose their license to operate a 

train for exceeding the speed limit by 10 miles per hour, failing to 

make a break test, or occupying a main track without permission. 

Truck drivers can lose their commercial drivers license for speeding, making an erratic lane change, following another vehicle too 

closely, or even bottoming out the undercarriage of a highway vehicle grade crossing. 

These are serious offenses. Don’t get me wrong. But a company 

that has the longest petroleum pipeline in the world can spill 1 

million gallons of heavy crude oil, devastating a local community 

and sensitive environmental areas and they don’t have to fix all of 

the defects in their pipeline? That concerns me to no end. 

My concerns do not only extend to Enbridge’s pipeline safety 

practices but also the company’s practices with the spill claims 

process and labor practices at the oil spill cleanup site. I have 

heard from citizens, and you will hear from some today, Mr. Chairman, who have been asked to sign waivers releasing Enbridge from 

any other liability in exchange for something as small as an air purifier that, by the way, offers no protection from benzene. Enbridge 

9 

also has citizens sign waivers releasing all of their medical history 

to the company in return for medical treatment. 

This is outrageous and a clear HIPAA violation. People should 

not have to sign away their rights to receive medical treatment or 

be reimbursed for a legitimate claim. 

I have also heard numerous concerns from community members 

whose businesses have been negatively impacted by the spill. Some 

citizens reported banks redlining people from buying their homes 

because it is in the vicinity of the oil spill, and numerous citizens 

are still concerned with the short and long-term health impacts 

from the spill. 

Additionally, there have been news reports of labor and worker 

safety issues with one of Enbridge’s contractors, Hallmark Industrial, LLC. One newspaper article, Mr. Chairman, reported Hallmark Industrial using illegal undocumented workers to help work 

on the spill cleanup site. This same article reports there were unsafe working conditions and workers who were not qualified with 

the proper certifications working on the oil spill cleanup. Now, this 

goes beyond media reports. 

Illegal workers—and I am wrapping up. Thank you for your leniency. But illegal workers bussed by an Enbridge subcontractor 

from Texas were actually arrested upon return to Texas. This is 

wrong and illegal. There are many qualified workers in my district 

who would love to have the opportunity to clean up this oil. 

Mr. Chairman, today we will hear from citizens—and I am concluding—in my district on how the spill has impacted their daily 

lives and how, up until they were on this list to testify here today, 

Enbridge denied some or all of their claims for compensation. 

Enbridge has offered most of the witnesses here settlements over 

the last 72 hours. 

So, Mr. Chairman, perhaps we should hold three more additional 

hearings so that other citizens from my district impacted by this 

spill that have had their claims denied will too be able to get the 

damage reimbursement they deserve from Enbridge. The citizens 

in my district deserve to be treated fairly by this company and to 

be reimbursed for all damages that have already occurred and will 

continue to be occurred in the future. They deserve to have 

Enbridge held accountable for this oil spill and the safety of this 

pipeline. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing 

and allowing the citizens of my district to be able to voice their concerns. I would like to thank all of the people from my district for 

taking the time out of their busy schedules to come and testify before our Committee. 

Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 

Michigan, Mrs. Miller. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Thank you, very much, Mr. Chairman. 

If I could ask the staff while I am making my opening comments—I see Jimmy Miller there putting up the slide that I asked 

for. Nope. Wrong slide. I am looking for the slide on the St. Clair 

River. 

10 

As they put that up, I will tell you why I want to have the slide. 

Because a picture is worth 1,000 words certainly. 

Mr. Chairman and the Ranking Member as well, I am so appreciative of having this hearing, of you holding this hearing. As you 

know, one of my principal advocacies is protecting our magnificent 

Great Lakes. I know you share that passion as well and certainly 

my colleague from Michigan. 

And I welcome all of the Michiganians who are here today as 

well. It is not often that we have a Committee hearing when we 

have so many Michiganians testifying. And I just welcome you 

here, because I know you all share the same passion. 

We are from the Great Lakes State. We love our Great Lakes, 

as all the States do in the basin. 

OK, we have a slide up here. 

Now, what we are doing today is what Congress needs to be 

doing and that is exercising our responsibilities from an oversight 

standpoint. And my colleague from Marshall has articulated very 

well the situation that has occurred in his congressional district 

with a portion of this pipeline owned and operated by Enbridge 

company, which is a Canadian company, looking through—but, you 

know, it has, for instance, a former Democratic governor from 

Michigan. Jim Blanchard is on their board of directors. It is an 

international company. 

But, you know, as I watched with horror, as everybody else did 

in Michigan, I think around the Nation, what was happening in 

Battle Creek and Marshall, Michigan, there, just wondering if this 

oil, God forbid, were to get into the Great Lakes’ system, what that 

would actually mean. And, of course, any oil spill is terrible. However, if an oil spill occurs over land, there are dynamics there. If 

an oil spill were to occur in the freshwater drinking supply for literally millions and millions of people, you would have another situation beyond catastrophic. And as we all talk about with the Great 

Lakes, which is fully one-fifth of the freshwater drinking supply of 

the entire plant, 20 percent of the freshwater drinking supply of 

the entire world, that is why we have this passion about water 

quality and clean water. 

And I have watched this bill, as I say, in Marshall; and now 

since in the interim we have seen another Enbridge spill, unfortunately, in Illinois. Then we just read about one just outside of Buffalo in New York. And I have been trying to really track looking 

at the wiring schematics and the wiring diagram of where the pipeline emanates and where it is going to and how it impacts my district, how it impacts my State, et cetera. And as we exercise our 

oversight being made sure that we are asking the right questions 

of not only the company but the regulators certainly. 

I think the entire Nation has been sensitized, obviously, to spills 

and what they mean in the short term and the long term when we 

all watched—the entire world watched what happened with the 

Deepwater explosion, which I know sometimes I tell my staff I feel 

like I am watching a person bleed to death and I don’t know how 

to stop it, and I think many people had that kind of a reaction as 

we watched this terrible thing happen. 

I just mention that because I am not suggesting that happened 

in this case, but we certainly have found that there was some cozy 

11 

relationship between the regulators and the companies, and Congress needs to make sure that that never, never, never happens. 

Now, this portion of this Enbridge pipeline which emanates in 

Sarnia, Canada—and, Mr. Chairman, I always laugh. As a Member 

from Michigan, we always have the map of our State on the end 

of our arms. So I am always holding up—but this is my district 

here, from about this knuckle to the tip of the thumb. So this is 

the St. Clair river. You are seeing a small portion of the St. Clair 

River, Sarnia, on the Canadian side, our wonderful Canadian 

neighbors. But this pipeline is coming from Sarnia. It is going 

across the St. Clair River here. 

The St. Clair River, obviously, is part of the Great Lakes system. 

That water is running—it is a very—it is probably the fastest, 

maybe outside of the St. Mary’s River—but it is probably the fastest current in the Great Lakes basin. It is running about 6 or 7 

knots, and it runs much faster along the U.S. side there. 

So you can imagine if you just spilled a cup of water—excuse 

me—a cup of oil and how quickly that sheen would move when you 

have that kind of current. Think about an oil break there. 

I am not trying to be an alarmist. On the other hand, I am trying 

to do what I was elected to do, which is oversight for a company 

that may have a problem here. So as we look at the list of anomalies, as they call them in the industry, the anomalies, we found 

that there was a dent, which is indicated on these overheads here. 

There is a dent about 300 feet off the U.S. side that Enbridge apparently found in 2009, and the regulators are aware of this as 

well. 

I just mention this if you can—again, I am not trying to be an 

alarmist. But anyone can understand, God forbid, what would happen if we had any kind of an incident then. So we have to have 

absolutely zero tolerance. 

I did—this dent actually—and I have met—I would also say that 

myself and my staff met just last week. We had a long meeting 

with Enbridge in my district office in Michigan. We talked about 

this. I don’t want to go too long in my opening statement here. I 

will ask some other questions when I get an opportunity to ask 

questions. 

They indicated to me that they use very sophisticated testing 

equipment through their entire system to understand where the 

anomalies are and prioritize what they all are. But they found this 

dent in 2009, August of 2009. It is about 40 years after the pipeline 

was installed. Although they told me that they think that this dent 

may have been there since 1969. That is when the pipeline was installed. So if they had this dent since 1969 but they only discovered 

it in 2009, it leads to a question about the sophistication of the 

technology that they are utilizing to inspect their entire pipeline. 

I would raise that. 

Also, this dent in the pipeline meets the Federal regulatory requirements which would require a repair within 60 days. I just lay 

that out there. I will be pursuing this a bit more. 

But they were supposed to fix this dent within 60 days. Keep in 

mind, they found it in August of 2009. I mention that. 

I would just say this, Mr. Chairman, because I appreciated your 

comments about the agency. Some of the problems that the agency 

12 

does not respond, it is endemic, and it has been that way, and certainly Representative Schauer mentioned the same thing. I had 

sent a letter on August the 3rd to Cynthia Quarterman, who is the 

administrator of the Pipelines and Hazardous Material Safety Administration, PHMSA, as we call it. I have asked a lot of questions 

because I didn’t want to come to this hearing and blind-side anybody, either the regulators or the company. I have been asking 

these questions very openly, putting them in written form. So I am 

not just blind-siding them at a congressional hearing. So they have 

plenty of time to give us the answer. 

And I was looking forward to questioning her today, although I 

know she sent her deputy and not herself. And I am not making 

any allegations here. I am just reading from a CBS News report 

that says the official who runs the Federal agency that oversees 

pipeline safety recused herself from a Federal investigation into the 

cause of a massive Michigan oil spill because she once represented 

the company in question when she was an attorney at a Washington, D.C., law firm. 

The Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration and 

the Department of Transportation is led by Cynthia Quarterman. 

She represented Enbridge Energy Partners, the U.S. Subsidiary of 

the Canadian Energy giant responsible for the 800,000 gallon spill. 

Now, I don’t know. I am not suggesting there is a conflict of interest, but, unfortunately, she could not come. The administrator—the 

regulator could not come to talk to us because she represented the 

company in charge. So I will pursue that a bit more. 

And I will just close with this, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your 

leniency with my time as well. 

One of the other problems that I think has been articulated very 

well by Representative Schauer—and I have the same concern—is 

the coordination and communication between the company and the 

first responders in the area. And I have found that in my own area, 

this district is St. Clair County. I have talked to the emergency 

management director there. I talked to the fire chief, the police 

chief of Marysville. That is the city that this pipeline comes into. 

And we just don’t think that there is much—there is certainly—the 

largest room is the room for improvement. We think there is lots 

of room to improve communication between the company and the 

first responders in preparing their emergency response—again, God 

forbid that there is ever any kind of an incident again anywhere 

and whether it is in my district or anywhere in Michigan or anywhere in this pipeline. 

So we are actually going to be having an informational hearing 

with our first responders in about 3 weeks, and we are also inviting all of our Canadian counterparts. Because you know one thing 

about the water in that river. The water doesn’t know if it is in 

Michigan or Canada. It does not know. And people are drinking the 

water. So we include everybody on that. 

But I look forward to hearing from the witnesses; and, again, I 

appreciate your leniency and giving me the time on this very, very 

important issue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Certainly, those of our colleagues on the Committee who are directly affected should be able to expand on their 

13 

views on an issue of this kind; and I welcome the full statements 

by both Mrs. Miller and Mr. Schauer. 

Point of clarification on Ms. Quarterman, the administrator of 

PHMSA. There is a requirement in the Obama administration for 

all executive level personnel to recuse themselves for a period of 2 

years from any investigation or any action or rulemaking affecting 

an organization with which they had an affiliation prior to their 

appointment. So for 2 years she must recuse herself, and that is 

why we have not her deputy but the deputy secretary of the Department of Transportation testifying this morning. 

Other Members wish to be—Ms. Brown, Chair of our Railroad 

Subcommittee and PHMSA and who has held numerous hearings 

on the subject of hazmat. 

Ms. BROWN OF FLORIDA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not 

going to take my full time because I want to hear from the witnesses, but I want to thank you very much for your timely, timely 

hearing. 

Sadly, much like BP and the spill in the Gulf, both Enbridge and 

Pacific Gas and Electric have a history of safety violations and 

planning resource following the accident is totally unacceptable. It 

also appears that BP and Enbridge have pressured local residents 

to waive their rights to seek damages caused by this accident. 

In my opinion, these incidents have made it clear that self-regulation is not working in the pipeline industry. Our Railroad and 

Pipeline Subcommittee has held a series of hearings concerning 

pipeline safety and have found significant problems with reporting 

and inspection, as well as an unhealthy relationship between the 

pipeline industry and the agencies that regulate them. 

Moreover, much like the sewer and water infrastructure in this 

country, much of the pipeline infrastructure is reaching the end of 

this useful life. Let me repeat that. The industry—the pipeline infrastructure is reaching the end of its useful life. There was a report this morning on CNN that I want to recommend to us take 

a look at that talked about how the infrastructure of the life that 

our forefathers had put in place is ending and we need to come up 

with resources as to how we are going to replace the infrastructure. 

And this is just one example. We have had several all over the 

country. We have got to come up with how we are going to have 

the resources that we need to change this infrastructure; and with 

the high unemployment and the need for jobs, this is an adequate 

time to have training and put American people back to work in rebuilding our infrastructure. And we do know—I have to put a plug 

in—for every billion dollars that we invest in transportation, it generates 44,000 permanent jobs. 

I am looking forward to the testimony, Mr. Chairman; and thank 

you again for your leadership in this area and also for the Members. Because as soon as it happened they contacted us and wanted 

us to—we got involved in making sure that they had the resources 

that they need to keep us informed. 

Thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for your vigilance and your passion. 

Now, Mr. Ehlers, another Member of our Committee from the 

State of Michigan and our resident scientist. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank, Mr. Chairman. 

14 

And I would just say I have been there long enough to be called 

a Michigander instead of a Michiganian. It is a fine distinction 

which we argue about a lot in Michigan. 

I do want to just—I will try not to repeat any comments made 

by my colleagues from Michigan that are more directly involved in 

this because of their geographical location. However, I have a 50- 

year record of being concerned about the environment; and this is 

just a stab in the heart to see that this happened in our beautiful 

State of Michigan. 

But, Mr. Chairman, I would like to broaden this a bit as the 

Chair of the Subcommittee. Just the basic factor here with many 

of the problems we are dealing with is that we are facing an infrastructure crisis in this country; and I know you agree with that, 

Mr. Chairman, because we have had private discussions on this. 

But you have personally experienced it when the bridge collapsed 

in Minneapolis in your State, and this is happening again and 

again. 

And it doesn’t matter whether it is a bridge or a pipeline or it 

is a drilling anything from the Gulf of Mexico. We are not taking 

care of our infrastructure. We are getting sloppy, and we are taking things for granted. 

And I hate to take the route of fining these companies an immense amount of money. If that is the only way to get their attention, that may have to be the thing we do, or have them face bankruptcy by lawsuits filed by citizens. Now, that is not a very productive way to address it. 

I think that this Committee has to lead the way in this Congress 

in bringing the attention of the country to the infrastructure problems we face. And it is not just pipeline. It is sewers. It is sewerage 

treatment plants. We are so dependent on all these things in our 

everyday life. They tend to have been built in the middle of—after 

the middle of the previous century. And so they were all relatively 

new, built about the same time; and we just assumed they would 

keep on going forever, no matter whether it is sewerage or oil. And 

that is simply not true. You have to have maintenance. 

And as—I forget the name of the famous longshoreman from San 

Francisco. He used to write books. But he commented once, you can 

judge the quality of the Nation by the attention it pays to its infrastructure. Because if you are paying attention to your infrastructure, you are worried about what your kids are going to inherit, 

you are worried about the citizens of the country having all the 

amenities they need and not having to worry about all of the side 

effects, whether environmental or fire or whatever. 

So I think we have to start waving the flag here, Mr. Chairman, 

and take the lead in this Committee on making the Congress and 

the country aware of the importance of infrastructure and maintenance of infrastructure and then we will stop having to have hearings like this or like the Gulf of Mexico hearings. We can very comfortably enjoy the amenities of modern life in the United States 

with the confidence that they are well built and they are well 

maintained and we simply won’t have these kinds of crises. 

So thank you very much for the leadership you have shown since 

you became Chairman, and I urge you to continue that. 

15 

As you know, I am fading off into the sunset January 3. But I 

know I can depend on you, and I see Andy Buchsbaum, a long-time 

friend of mine from Michigan, a fellow environmentalist, between 

the environmental community and this Committee, we should be 

able to get this Nation squared away on its infrastructure. 

Thank you very much. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for those wonderfully 

thoughtful comments. We shall miss your presence on this Committee and your contribution and your deeply felt and well-researched insights. 

Eric Hoffer is the philosopher longshoreman from San Francisco 

who you quoted quite well. The second part of his quote is, show 

me failing sewer, failing streets, failing water systems, and I will 

show you a government that is failing. 

Mr. EHLERS. Absolutely. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And we are indeed failing. 

Mr. EHLERS. I knew I could depend on your infallible memory to 

remember the name of the author. But it is also not just infrastructure, but he also included in that social networks, for example, Social Security, et cetera. 

Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. 

Our newly successful representative of the District of Columbia, 

congratulations on your crowning yesterday, overwhelming vote, 

the Chair of our Subcommittee on Economic Development and 

other matters. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for your congratulations and especially for this hearing. 

I simply want to say a word about an issue that you have 

stressed ever since I have been on this Committee, and that is essentially that infrastructure does not have eternal life, but, because 

you cannot see it, it may appear that way. So we appear to get serious about the infrastructure that you cannot see only in the wake 

of catastrophe. 

We get more serious about roads because we bumble across 

them. But it is very scary to believe that it takes a major disaster 

to make us look beneath the streets, beneath the water where the 

infrastructure can—as we have learned recently—destroy the environment or destroy us. 

Mr. Chairman, I am particularly concerned about the natural gas 

explosion in San Bruno. What bothers me about that is not simply 

that there was an explosion, but it appears that people were building these lines below the homes where people live. Now, I don’t 

know if developments sprang up after the natural gas lines were 

laid, but the notion of being in your house and having it blown up 

because you are sitting on top of a natural gas line or some other 

line is truly frightening. Bad enough to have something explode in 

front of your house. So I hope that in discussion and as our materials indicate we are looking at Enbridge as emblematic of an aging 

infrastructure and what it can mean if we don’t pay attention. And 

I must say that San Bruno rears its head as an unusually dangerous example, and that is why I am particularly appreciative of 

the opportunity to hear these witnesses and to question them. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

16 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I don’t think other Members of the Committee— 

Mr. Garamendi. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, thank you for this hearing; and 

for Representative Schauer and the people in your district, the 

tragedy that occurred there is of great significance. 

Our representative from Washington, D.C., spoke about the San 

Bruno situation. At least four people died, perhaps more; 50 homes 

destroyed. 

A very serious problem in my own district to the east of the San 

Francisco Bay. What was considered to be the riskiest pipeline in 

California travels through Livermore. It turned out it was not the 

riskiest. It turned out to be the second riskiest pipeline, the first 

in San Bruno. 

Mr. Chairman, I have a letter to you and to the Ranking Member 

requesting a field hearing which I hope we can take in the near 

future to California to discuss the situation there. 

[The information follows:] 

17 


Insert offset folio 21 here 58236.021
18 


Insert offset folio 22 here 58236.022
19 


Insert offset folio 23 here 58236.023
20 


Insert offset folio 24 here 58236.024
21 

I look forward to the full discussion about the recommendations 

that Secretary LaHood has brought to us on legislation. Perhaps it 

will solve some of the problems. But, specifically, we need to sort 

out the relationship, the role of the Federal Government in this— 

the relationship with the State governments and the utilities and 

urbanization over and around existing pipelines. These things need 

to be sorted out. We need have the appropriate regulations in 

place. 

I look forward to working with you and the Committee to achieve 

a greater degree of safety and, ultimately, the responsibility of the 

owners of the pipelines and how they are held accountable, which 

I understand is to be addressed by the recommendations made by 

the Secretary. 

Thank you for the hearing. I look forward to the witnesses. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Garamendi. 

Ms. Johnson, welcome back from your neck surgery. We all hold 

you deep in our prayers, and it looks like you’re overcoming this 

thing. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just will 

not give up. 

I am going to ask unanimous consent to put my statement in the 

record so that we can get to the witnesses. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Without objection, so ordered. 

Ms. JOHNSON OF TEXAS. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. At the same time, we will include by unanimous 

consent the statement of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on the 

pipeline spill that is the subject of this hearing and also to comment on the Pacific gas and electric explosion in San Bruno. 

Without objection, so ordered. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I just observed that the Enbridge pipeline extends well over 1,000 miles through northwestern Minnesota 

through into my district in northeastern Minnesota and connecting 

into northwestern Wisconsin. We are holding Enbridge accountable 

and watching very closely how they respond to this tragedy. 

Mr. Shuster observed there are some bright spots in the pipeline 

sector. The Koch pipeline in 2006 that failed in Little Falls and had 

a rupture spewed oil 75 feet into the air right alongside U.S. Highway 10. A motorist driving along realized that there are no oil 

fields in Minnesota and called the county sheriff. 

The sheriff called the pipeline company, but they had already 

taken action from their headquarters to shut off the flow and had 

people on scene that evening. Now, that’s an appropriate response, 

and they did everything that was required and more. 

There are some bright spots where there is a corporate culture 

of safety, but where there is a failure it is our responsibility to intercede. 

We also had a benzene tank car derailment in Duluth several 

years ago. Unfortunately, local first responders didn’t know what 

the content of that car was except that there was this noxious 

cloud spreading over Duluth and Superior, Wisconsin. Thirty thousand people were evacuated from their homes. Only later in the 

day did the railroad company identify the material as benzene so 

that the first responders would know what type of equipment to 

wear and what type of action to take to contain the spill. 

22 

These are very serious matters that have human as well as environmental consequences. So that’s the context in which this hearing takes place. 

Now we will ask the first panel of witnesses to rise, and in the 

spirit and the tradition of our hearings on oversight all be sworn 

in. 

Do you solemnly swear the testimony you will provide to the 

Committee today and all subsequent communications on this hearing that you will tell the truth and nothing but the truth, so help 

you God? 

Thank you. 

We will now begin with Ms. Debra Miller, a small business 

owner and resident from Ceresco, Michigan. 

TESTIMONY OF DEBRA MILLER, SMALL BUSINESS OWNER 

AND RESIDENT, CERESCO, MICHIGAN; SUSAN CONNOLLY, 

RESIDENT, MARSHALL, MICHIGAN; MICHELLE 

BARLONDSMITH, RESIDENT, BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN; 

JAMES ALAN LEE, RESIDENT, MARSHALL, MICHIGAN; DARLA 

THORPE AND DENISE GREEN, RESIDENTS, CERESCO, MICHIGAN; AND ANDY BUCHSBAUM, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION GREAT LAKES REGIONAL CENTER, ACCOMPANIED BY BETH WALLACE, GREAT LAKES OIL SPILL 

RESPONSE COORDINATOR 

Ms. MILLER. Thank you and good morning. 

I would first like to thank the Committee on Transportation and 

Infrastructure, its support staff, Mr. Chairman, and especially 

Mark Schauer and his staff for the opportunity to share our true 

stories on the impact from the Enbridge pipeline oil spill. 

My husband Ken and I have two properties in the small, quaint 

village of Ceresco, Michigan. Our home is located 300 feet below 

the Ceresco dam, with approximately 680 feet of river frontage. 

And our property, the other property, is our business, a carpet 

store located immediately at the top of the dam, with approximately 200 feet of river frontage. 

For 31 years, we have raised our daughters living on the Kalamazoo River, something that my husband had done. He lived in our 

same house as a teenager for 21 years. We have had the pleasure 

of being able to walk out on our back deck and look out over the 

Kalamazoo River at the dam and watch the fish swim just under 

the surface of the river. This is at work. We are blessed. 

Up there is a picture of the Ceresco dam. On the left, is a picture 

that was taken from my home property looking towards the dam. 

If you look in the far left corner up there, that is where my business is. You can see what it looked like on Monday or—excuse 

me—Tuesday—Monday, July 26th. The river was black. On Monday, July 26th, approximately 100 million gallons—excuse me—1 

million gallons of heavy crude oil spilled into our beloved Kalamazoo River, changing our lives forever. 

Over the next few days, the Ceresco dam would become one of 

the key cleanup spots for the spill, referred to by some as Ground 

Zero 2—and I say that respectfully—resulting in helicopters flying 

overhead as many times as 50 passes a day, the beep-beep of large 

trucks backing up, the influx of 100 plus workers to our neighborVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:18 Mar 25, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58236.TXT JEAN
23 

hood, workers who Pat Daniel Enbridge CEO admitted were 

brought in without any background checks and placed on our properties for cleanup. 

Contractors, agencies, and their workers’ vehicles parked where 

they could find an open space; and the roar of fan boats on our 

river with 427 Chevy block engines with open headers is what we 

listened to for weeks. We still do. 

We have been living with all of this in addition to the 

undescribable smell of the heavy raw crude oil. It has permeated 

our homes, our business, and even our vehicles. Those of us living 

within 200 feet of the river remain under a water ban, having to 

use bottled water for cooking and drinking. 

We have been assured by our local health department that while 

the smell is intense it is only a nuisance and not a health concern. 

This nuisance has caused burning eyes, throats, and resulting in 

headaches almost every day. I have had a cough since week one, 

and the headaches continue as well. As a cancer patient currently 

taking oral chemo, how can the health department assure me that 

breathing that benzene will not cause my cancer to return? I would 

argue it can’t. 

Our property has been utilized at will by Enbridge and its contractors for parking and staging, and by sheer logistics we have not 

had easy access to our home property. Many discussions with our 

local sheriff’s department, they were the ones who would not grant 

us access to our home, and we ended up having Enbridge speak to 

them, and it was quite the ordeal. 

Our business property was impacted when Enbridge moved in a 

vacuum truck a few days after the spill and then a day later moved 

in supply trucks and assembly line workers emptied the trucks and 

effectively blocked our customers from accessing our store, effectively closing our business. 

I had several conversations with many Enbridge representatives, 

including Terri Larson, to help facilitateThe first two Ceresco community meetings. I am a block captain for our Neighborhood 

Watch. So Enbridge had my contact information and chose not to 

call me in relationship to access to either of my properties. 

After 3 weeks of business interruption, I decided that I needed 

to go to our community center to get someone to talk to us about 

our closed business. Arriving at the community center, I was told 

after an hour that Enbridge was not discussing anything with businesses. Their priority was residential. Oh, and by the way, my 

house did qualify for the Home Buy-Out Program. I was shocked, 

to say the least. They had blocked my business for 3 weeks, small 

businesses in Michigan are hurting. They closed me at this point 

for 3 weeks, and they were not prepared to talk to me, and I was 

not a priority. 

We would meet twice more with Enbridge. And I will be honest 

to say the last meeting was held on Friday, August 22nd, and my 

husband and I walked out of that meeting. Contrary to Enbridge’s 

promise from the CEO, we did need to retain a lawyer. We had 

only wanted some information like when we might be able to get 

back into our business, and had they given me anything but that 

our business wasn’t a priority I might have not been so frustrated. 

24 

I will tell you that on the following morning—no, excuse me, 

that’s not true. Two hours after I got home from the meeting, I did 

get a call from Steve Wuori, and he asked me—he is vice president—asked me if I would be willing to come back in and talk to 

him. And I told him that I needed a breather. I was going to take 

a day and do volunteer work with the American Cancer Society. I 

needed that break. 

On Monday morning, I did call a lawyer; and our lawyer has 

been able to have Enbridge hear us. We currently have an agreement on the table. As of my flight yesterday, I do not have a signed 

agreement from Enbridge, but the agreement is for limited access 

and limited business interruption. And they have agreed to purchase my property for a time frame if I decide to sell to them. 

It does not guarantee a fair price if I ask them to sell it. Nor does 

it compensate me for any inconvenience, pain, or suffering. And we 

have nothing pending on the house property. 

Again, I would like to thank the Committee for the opportunity 

to share how this spill has impacted us. I only hope that others 

truly impacted by this bill will not have to attain a lawyer to be 

heard. I hope this hearing will be the lightning rod that allows 

Enbridge to realize some of the methods, strategies, and programs 

they used in this bill were made in haste and were often ineffective 

and unsettling. I hope when Enbridge returns from this hearing 

and meets with other individuals with legitimate claims they will 

be forthright, compassionate, and fair. 

I know that may not be good for the stockholders or their bottom 

line, but as one who is greatly impacted my bottom line is this: I 

was an innocent bystander. I was not responsible for the spill. I did 

not choose to breath that foul air. I did not choose to lose a summer 

to the home of vacuum trucks, fan boats, and helicopters and 

strangers on my river bank, not to be able to utilize our pool in our 

backyard for lack of privacy. I did not choose to close my business, 

and I certainly did not choose to watch the geese struggle while 

covered in oil. Enbridge made that decision for me. 

May your community service efforts and gifts benefit those who 

were impacted or at least the greater communities impacted rather 

than the individuals who made you feel good. I sincerely hope this 

spill will ensure that you will be more responsible with the maintenance of all of your pipelines, even if it means replacing them all. 

I pray they will remain closed until that can be determined how 

safely to restart them. 

Whether or not Enbridge Energy was negligent in its actions on 

Sunday, July 25th, is not for me to say. I look to those in the know 

to help us with that. How Enbridge Energy responded to the victims of this crisis was determined by Enbridge Energy. I pray that 

the legacy you leave behind in Michigan when you go back to Alberta is one of good will. 

Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for your very heartfelt statement and 

your very personal experiences and those of your family. 

I sympathize very much with you on chemotherapy. I lost my 

wife to breast cancer for eight and a half years, and I know the 

struggles that you go through and the challenges of chemotherapy. 

Breathing benzene is not one of the recommended treatments. 

25 

Ms. Connolly. 

Ms. CONNOLLY. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members, for this opportunity. I 

come to you today as a concerned parent and on behalf of the children of a day care center that’s located just 6/10ths of a mile from 

Talmadge Creek in the Kalamazoo River. 

On July 26th, at 7:30 a.m., my husband and I dropped off our 

children at day care. Our home is about 2, 2–1/2 miles north of Talmadge Creek. Going just two blocks south from our home I could 

smell a strong odor in the air. When we arrived at the center, the 

odor was even stronger. It was hard to breath, and that’s why I’m 

before you today. 

I would like to start with health symptoms, my own personal experiences. The first night of this spill that evening my son vomited. 

And the week following my daughter had a rash, which pretty 

much all the children at the day care center that have had rashes 

their explanation is that it’s just eczema, that they don’t relate it 

to the spill. My husband and I as we’ve gone to the day care we’ve 

experienced migraines, eye irritation, sore throat, nausea, and 

cough. At our home on Saturday, July 31st, we had our dog out in 

the yard. When he came in that evening, he had continuous vomiting and diarrhea. There are also nights at our home that we cannot run our air or open our windows due to the smell. So you can 

just imagine the strength of the odor at a day care that’s even closer to where our home is located. 

The first week of the spill an oil-covered goose landed on the 

property at the center. Of other children at the center there have 

been reported cases of vomiting, upset stomach, shortness of 

breath, lethargy, headaches, rash, irritation with the eyes, sore 

throat, and cough. 

Shortly after this spill, we had a parent meeting with the EPA 

and other representatives. There were some statements that were 

made was no benzene or VOCs have been detected at the center. 

Toxicologists stated that there was positive benzene readings at the 

school. We were told, oh, that’s just a misread, that apparently the 

machines or one of the machines was not calibrated before coming 

to the center and all it was doing was reading the data from the 

last location where it took the reading. They also stated that certain VOCs identified were just cleaning chemicals used to sanitize 

the machines or were chemicals used by the center. 

I had a personal conversation with a toxicologist from CTEH. A 

few of those comments were where VOCs or benzene have been detected you would have to be exposed to those for high levels for almost a year. There was no comment or statement in reference to 

short-term exposure related to children. 

I was also told that the center would just have to get its own toxicologist to do tests because they were just to the point where they 

just don’t want to deal with it anymore. I explained that the center 

could not afford its own toxicologist. That person chuckled and 

said, oh, I know; I know how much Enbridge is paying me every 

day. 

I was told that if I or anyone from the center would be coming 

to D.C. To testify, this toxicologist said to me, well, what do you 

have to say? You’re not a toxicologist. You have no experience or 

26 

expertise in this. There is nothing you can validate. Why would 

they even bother having you come? 

Well, my response is, I know I’m not a toxicologist, but I’m a parent, and I see the children and the staff of this center who have 

been affected by this spill. 

I’ve heard from someone else who has also indicated that the 

Calhoun County Health Department, one person in that health department stated, there’s no reason for anyone to come and testify 

from the day care because their claims are not legitimate. 

As of today, four parents have withdrawn six children due to 

their concern of their short-term health effects of their children, 

concern of the smell, air quality, and potential long-term effects. An 

employee who has been with the center since it opened, helped 

them build it from the ground up, she’s left the center because she 

has been sick since the day of the spill. 

EPA and CTEH stated that tests were taken as of July 28th, 

when in fact the first test at the center was not performed until 

August 1, one week after the spill. 

And on that time, I’ll just add a quick note. The benzene came 

up at 4.5, one week after. I know the cut-off is six, and they make 

a big deal about how the numbers are cut off. But one week later, 

4.5, children have been smelling this. 

EPA, CTEH and the Department of Health had stated to us that 

no benzene or VOC detections were noted. Again, I’m not a toxicologist, but I’ve been going through the paperwork. There have 

been detections of both. While they’ve been at lower levels, I don’t 

understand how you can refer to accepted levels for an adult as 

that for a child or an infant who is unquestionably at a greater risk 

of harm from exposure to contaminants in the air. 

Just before coming here, we had received a letter from the Department of Community Health, and a few of the comments within 

that letter stated that chemicals monitored could come from other 

sources than the spill. The response would be then why were the 

children and staff sick just after the spill? They had none of these 

problems before. 

They then implicated that the staff who were stating symptoms, 

they stated that they were influenced by their own discussions, 

overstated reporting, publicity, and potential legal issues. To me, 

that is absurd, and it’s just insulting. 

When the people were there questioning the staff they made no 

calls to any parent to speak to them about what their children 

were going through. They only spoke to staff, and that was it. It 

ended. They also indicate that they cannot determine the days following the spill how the air has affected short-term effects. 

So, in conclusion, it’s been almost 7 weeks since the spill; and the 

following questions remain: Should the day care center have had 

more attention brought to it and should it have been closed or evacuated during at least the first few weeks? I question what are the 

known short- and long-term risks of infants and children exposed 

to low levels of these chemicals? Who will be held accountable if 

our children develop leukemia or other permanent health problems? 

27 

The argument made by Enbridge is they say you cannot prove 

that the spill may be the cause. Well, my response as a parent is 

you can’t prove that it’s not. 

The Department of Transportation has been aware of Enbridge’s 

violations for at least 8 years. Shouldn’t this tragedy also be directed to the Department of Transportation for them allowing them 

to continue their operation of the pipeline? I also hope that there 

will be long-term health studies to those affected by the spill. 

I would like to thank you for your time, and on behalf of my family and everyone at the child care center I hope our questions can 

be answered. 

Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for that also very heartfelt 

testimony. 

On the issue of levels of benzene, you make a very good point, 

that there are significant differences between a standard for adults 

and a standard for children whose systems are not fully developed 

and have not evolved the capability to cope with those particulates 

and volatiles in the air that an adult system can. Nonetheless, the 

EPA has established a level of 15 parts per billion of benzene in 

the atmosphere as the level that was present in various places in 

the region of the spill. Their standard is 6 parts per billion. But 

that’s a standard that, as I understand, is set for adults. There is 

a very significant difference between what adults can tolerate and 

what children can tolerate. And if your dog was sick, dogs have the 

ability to—their sense of smell is 400 times that of humans, so that 

dog was the precursor to human exposure. 

Ms. BarlondSmith. 

Ms. BARLONDSMITH. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, 

thank you for the opportunity to speak to you regarding the 

Enbridge oil spill and its devastating effects on me and my neighbors. 

My name is Michelle BarlondSmith. I reside at Baker Mobile 

Home Estates in Battle Creek, Michigan. It’s a community of about 

70 homes, mobile homes. We are approximately six miles down 

river or 13.5 by canoe. 

The park we live in is a former campground turned into a mobile 

home park. The park is surrounded on three sides by the river. I’ve 

lived there for 3 years and am 200 feet from the river. 

I first noticed the smell of the oil Sunday evening when my husband and I returned home. The smell was so strong I thought we 

had a gas leak and walked around my home and two other homes 

looking for a leak. We determined it was not natural gas and could 

not figure out where it was coming from. 

On Monday, I took my 83-year-old mother to the dentist. When 

we returned home, I was informed by a neighbor of the spill. It was 

late. 

In the evening, 2 hours later, we see ambulances, fire trucks, and 

police outside our park. They say two men have fallen into the 

river, and one is missing. Several of our neighbors and us grab 

flashlights, stand on the bridge and shine them into the water. We 

are looking for the missing person. 

28 

At 1:00 a.m., it was discovered that the missing man had made 

his way out of the river and made it to a neighbor’s home. My husband and I returned home with headaches. 

The next day I went down to the river to take my first photos 

of the devastation. It shocked me. And I then went to Bridge Park. 

Bridge Park is where my husband and I take our two dogs to walk 

a couple of times a week and we do quite a bit of photography 

there. We were escorted out of the park by the police very politely, 

and they told us we could take photos from the bridge above. 

On the way home, my husband said to me, we’re in trouble. We 

need to get evacuated out of the park. We take more photos. I 

upload to iReport on CNN. He’s a news junkie. So I did. 

I received a call from one of their reporters asking, what oil spill? 

I said, we have a million gallon oil spill in our river running past 

our home. 

Well, we’re not aware of it, why? 

And I told them straight out, do you believe an oil company 

wants you to know that they’ve spilled a million gallons into a 

river? They just started testing the air in the park, everything is 

normal, we should be fine, but I see my neighbors and I getting 

more ill day by day. 

Today, my husband and I stayed home. We went out in the afternoon to pick up some groceries. On the way back, I stop at the mill 

pond down river. Yep, there’s booms and guys working. 

When we return home, I watch the neighbors return. And after 

going to the bridge to take my evening photo, I run into the guy 

who had surgery 2 days ago. I ask how he is. He said he’s more 

worried about his wife. She’s been transferred to Bronson Hospital 

from Battle Creek. Then two of the neighbors come up and tell me 

that their children, a 3-and 8-year old, have been to Battle Creek 

Hospital and have been diagnosed with hydrocarbon poisoning. 

The health department comes in. We start going to meetings put 

on by several of the different organizations. August 5th, Enbridge 

employees had finally started coming to the park to talk about residents. I meet with one gentleman, Daryl. He apologizes and asks 

what we want. 

We told him we want a hotel in another city that will allow us 

to take our dogs, a gas card for coming back and checking on our 

home. 

No problem. You book the hotel. I’ll put it on a corporate credit 

card. 

He asked what we wanted long-term. We told him we want out 

of the park because we don’t want to be there for 3 years of cleanup. 

We call him with the hotel confirmation number and info. He 

calls back and tells us, sorry, the credit card is not working. I’ll 

bring you a check. 

He comes back at 3:30, gives us a check, but says, sorry, it’s not 

going to be able to be cashed today. You can do it tomorrow. 

The next day, we wait until 12 noon to try and cash it. Nope, it 

doesn’t clear. Go back in 2 hours, it doesn’t clear. I asked the clerk 

if she’s had similar problems. Yes. 

I then tell one of the ladies who has been trying to help us get 

residents out of the hotel. She calls me and tells me Enbridge will 

29 

be in the park later. Sure enough, in pulls Enbridge and the police 

across the area. My husband starts taking photos. They tell me to 

go downtown and cash the check. 

I go in. I attempt to cash the check. A gentleman appears and 

asks me to step into the hallway. He apologizes and says, sorry, we 

can’t cash it. Can we wait another day? 

I glance at the clock. The hotel is holding the reservation until 

6:00 p.m. It’s 5:45. He tells me it will be inputted into the system, 

and we should be able to cash it after 10:00 a.m. We leave. The 

man we spoke to was the vice president of finance for Enbridge, 

Mike Maki. 

I call the hotel. We’re on a first-name basis. They rebook me for 

the hotel tomorrow. I tell her, what’s another day of fumes, headaches, nausea, et cetera? I’m too exhausted to drive anyways. 

We end up being put into a hotel in Jackson, Michigan, which 

is 45 minutes away, for approximately a week. We’re then asked 

to leave for 4 days because of the hotel’s fault. We return home. 

We get sick. 

We’re re-evacuated for another week, and then we’re returned 

home, and we’ve been there since, 3 weeks. We’re getting sicker by 

the day. 

Those were my previous entries into the CNN iReports. But I 

come from the airline industry. We are regulated by the DOT, the 

FAA, et cetera. So here are some of the questions presented by my 

fellow residents: 

Why are we allowing the ones who caused the disaster to decide 

medical emergency procedures? Why are they controlling the State, 

the county, the township, and medical procedures? Why are they 

controlling agencies like DNR, reporting procedures, 800 numbers? 

Why are they controlling the cleanup? Why is there no standard 

procedure on medical testing for residents when there is one for 

their employees? Why no standards on evacuations? 

Require these companies to set up escrow accounts for disasters 

and contribute yearly or quarterly. Kellogg’s and Post Cereal had 

to be shut down for hours. Businesses and farmers need to be advised and reimbursed by these companies. They’ve been told they 

are behind us homeowners in restitution. Please require quicker reporting and not just on oil, on other chemicals. 

Why was there no declaration of Federal disaster? A spill of 

major magnitude should automatically constitute a Federal disaster area. We need stiffer regulations, enforcement of the regulations, higher fines for failure to follow regulations. 

This company has known about these faults of this pipeline and 

done nothing for a minimum of 3 years. Freeze their assets, shut 

down the pipeline until it’s brought up to date. If this pipeline had 

broken in Detroit, you would be cleaning up two of the Great 

Lakes, affecting millions, not just a 30-mile stretch of river. 

This is not a Democrat versus Republic issue. This is an issue 

of protecting your constituents’ lives, health, and way of life. Ours 

has been destroyed. Our health hangs in the balance. And if the 

scientists are correct and this will affect our DNA and future generations of DNA, you are protecting the future generations of 

Americans. 

30 

You need to do more research on tar sands and transportation 

of this along with the effects on the environment, animals, and humans that should be funded by the oil companies or petroleum 

companies; and they need to be conducted by a third-party research 

team. 

In conclusion, you are elected representatives and are placed 

here to make changes, write new laws, and protect this country. 

We are asking you to do that. 

Oil companies must not be allowed to dictate their own rules and 

regulations. As they have clearly shown, they have no intention of 

protecting the environment, animals, or human lives in their pursuit of the almighty dollar. Therefore, you as our representatives 

must step in and regulate and enforce those regulations to protect 

us, the humans. 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for, again, your very heartfelt testimony, for your very specific recommendations. 

I assure you that the Committee is pursuing these matters and 

has done for more than 25 years. We have not had as much success 

in moving stronger regulations through the Congress and through 

the executive branch as we would like, or as I would like, but we’re 

at a place where I think we can do much better than we have done 

in years past. 

We’ve passed a very strong oil spill response legislation through 

this Committee through the House. It’s languishing over in the 

Senate because of procedural holds. But that legislation is patterned for raising the standards of accountability and oversight and 

action that on-land pipeline companies must undertake. So I assure 

you we are proceeding in this Committee on those issues. 

Mr. Lee. 

Mr. LEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Mark 

Schauer. Thank you for your dedication. We have talked about this 

oil spill in length, and I want to thank you for your dedication. It 

is our area, it is our community, and I’m right there. I’m not going 

away. 

I also want to thank Jason Leopold from truth-out.org. I have 

had numerous conversations with this gentleman, and he has the 

utmost care and respect in our neighborhood, even though he’s not 

from there, and has given me the power to move on and be here 

today. 

My story, even though in my written testimony started much 

earlier, early on in this oil spill, it’s going to start with my wife 

being in the hospital. I say wife now, because as of September 1st, 

when we were in the hospital, we exchanged vows. As of October— 

or August 10th, my wife went to the doctors. The symptoms were 

showing neurological—Bell’s Palsy, headaches, nauseous, lethargic. 

I am just going to give you the main points and not go into much 

detail of their readings as far as what points per million, what 

points per billion. I’m going to talk about she’s sick. That is why 

I’m here. It is my number one goal, to make sure my wife gets the 

treatment and the respect from a company that spilled over 1 million gallons of oil in our creek. 

I don’t live within 200 feet of this river. I don’t live in the Red 

Zone. I live 708 feet in Squaw Creek neighborhood and 250 yards, 

31 

according to my range finder that I hunt with in a bean field behind our house. 

My wife was crying in bed the day after we got married, September 2nd. She didn’t have any answers from the doctors. She 

didn’t have any answers from her husband, married the night before, because we don’t know if I can make decisions for her legally 

if something was to happen. I was sitting there in a helpless rage 

watching my wife scared out of her wits, scared of her life, scared 

of her future, scared about her kids, what they’re going to go 

through. 

I remember the meeting August 26th with Mark Schauer—Congressman Mark Schauer, excuse me—and saw the desire and the 

fight that he had against this company. I immediately grabbed our 

laptop and I wrote to Mr. Schauer, explaining to him the situation 

that we are going through. 

On August 10th, that first appointment that my wife had, we 

called Enbridge, their 800 number, and said—my wife said, I am 

going to get a CAT scan by recommendation from my doctor because I think it’s from this oil spill. They said, thank you, Mrs. 

Walters. We will go ahead and put that in our files. They asked 

for no claim, and they said nothing of the sort that they were going 

to help. 

Now I’m going to fast forward to—or, actually, I’m not going to 

fast forward. I’m going to go back to that August 26th meeting that 

Mark Schauer held and the information that we received. 

I was enraged by the numbers: 80 oil spills in 8 years. I am finance manager at a car dealership. I do numbers. That’s 10 a year. 

That’s almost one a month. 

And in my written testimony I wrote before the Chicago incident 

that 16 percent of defects fixed is going to result, in my opinion, 

in another state of emergency oil spill. I’m sorry. Two hundred feet 

set by our small little local agency Calhoun County department, 

they should have no business setting this in. We need higher government agencies stepping in and making a difference in an oil 

spill that is causing people and animals to get sick. 

I’m asking you with respect, Mr. Chairman and the Committee, 

please, make a difference. Make this company accountable for what 

they are doing. Because they don’t care about $2.4 million as far 

as a fine. I didn’t know—I knew of, and I talked about in my testimony, the $2.4 million fine in the State of Minnesota. The fact 

that—and I did not know this—that it was a mother and her young 

daughter that opened up the door to find out what was going on, 

that those were the two deaths, I almost came to tears. It’s appalling that it was $2.4 million. I wrote in it should have been $240 

million, and I don’t think that’s enough. 

They need to be held liable, zero tolerance. Do not let this oil line 

start, either 6A, 6B, or any other one they have that they have defects on. Zero tolerance, please, and make them fix the defects and 

make sure that they are being inspected. Because you’re looking at 

a small window of all the community that is in Marshall, Battle 

Creek, Ceresco, and on down line Kalamazoo. Make a difference. 

Make them accountable. 

I’m not going away. My voice is not going away. And I’m here 

to tell you I want changes. And I respect you guys. You are our 

32 

leaders. You guys are the ones that make the decisions. Please help 

the smaller people be safe. Because I no longer feel safe in my own 

neighborhood. 

And in closing—I know I’m way over, but I needed to get this 

out. In light of our hearing, Enbridge did come, and my wife did 

not have insurance, and they were asking for big deposits, hotel 

rooms, to get her treatment that she’s going to need neurologically 

that cannot be done in Marshall. As of Monday, I don’t know if it’s 

coincidentally 2 days before our hearing, but Enbridge has agreed 

to possibly assist and help in either getting her a referral or some 

of the damages. I thank them for that, because I needed the money 

to even show up here today because I was out of pocket about 

$1,800 in the past month. 

My wife is a dean’s list on-line student going for hospital administration and ethics, and that’s what it’s about, a company and ethics. And I love you, honey. 

Upon my flight home, she is meeting me in Detroit and we are 

going to the Cleveland Clinic. I did get her added on to my health 

insurance as of Monday, and they will not do pre-existing. 

So I do thank Enbridge for trying to assist in that situation. But 

you are a month late. And, Mr. Daniel, you were there at that 

meeting August 26th when you first found out about my wife. And 

I didn’t get a phone call. I did not get a letter. I didn’t get anything. Sir, I’m not going away. 

Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for, again, a very compelling and deeply felt testimony. 

Our next witnesses are Darla Thorpe and Denise Green. You’re 

now recognized. 

Ms. THORPE. Good morning. I would like to say thank you, Mr. 

Chairman, and Committee, Mark Schauer, for giving us the opportunity to be here. 

I would like to start by reading a clip out of an interview a year 

ago that was done on the village of Ceresco from the Battle Creek 

Inquirer. I’m just going to read the ending. 

Heather Brown Rocco couldn’t let me leave until we saw her favorite view in Ceresco. Paying no attention to the no trespassing 

signs, she undid the latch on a gate into the dam’s old power station. On a freshly cut lawn next to the old brick building, the Kalamazoo River stretched out before us, a tranquil, expansive water 

winding from Marshall. A pair of swans swam in the distance far 

out past the fiery leaves and crumbling railroad bridge. We walked 

out onto the dam and peered over the side. The brownish-green 

water, which had momentarily been held captive, rushed out with 

a spray and continued down its journey, much as it had done for 

more than a century. 

Questions we now ask: Where are the swans now and will they 

ever be back? 

I am one of two trustees, Denise is the other, of our parents’ 

trust; and it is my responsibility to get the estate settled. This 

alone has been a difficult process, as some of you probably might 

know. 

The stress of the sale of our parents’ home now as the oil spill 

has happened has risen to a much higher level. Enbridge last week 

33 

called me and said that they had reviewed our claim after I received a phone message 2 days prior saying that we were outside 

the 200 feet zone. But they said that they would purchase our parents’ home because of settling the estate. And that we sincerely appreciate. 

I understand since I’ve left to come here to Washington yesterday 

I’ve received three phone calls from Enbridge, including one from 

their lawyer. Our question—a new question has arisen. What are 

they going to purchase it for? We want only what it would have 

sold for if the spill had not happened at all. Because this is our 

childhood home and my family members still live there, we would 

like to know how Enbridge is going to, quote, unquote, make this 

right with the people, the people who live still in the Ceresco community? 

Thank you. 

Ms. GREEN. Good afternoon and thank you, Mr. Chairman and 

Committee Members. 

I am the sixth generation in my family that has lived in Ceresco. 

I am also raising my daughters, which are the seventh generation. 

I find it disheartening to now have my children being raised with 

the possible water contamination, vapor intrusion, possible cancer 

and, property devaluation from the oil spill. Until now, my family 

never had to worry about any of these things. How safe are we? 

We were told if we wanted to get away from the benzene-filled 

air that we could go to the McKinley Plaza Hotel. Some people did. 

When I asked my husband about going there, he replied, I don’t 

know what they are thinking. We wouldn’t be any safer there than 

we are at our home. The Kalamazoo River runs right by the hotel. 

How much thought did Enbridge take picking this hotel? 

We were told if we felt the need for medical attention to go, 

Enbridge would take care of it. I took my two daughters and myself. They said our symptoms were from the ingestion of the benzene and there really isn’t anything they could do for that. They 

cannot take the benzene out of our bodies. 

We have been told all along that the air is at a safe level. We 

question why our air purifier reads bad air three or more times a 

day. The only way—my 12-year old asks me frequently, am I going 

to get cancer? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Just take your time and be composed. 

Ms. GREEN. The only way I can answer that is, I don’t know. The 

only thing we can do is pray that everything will be OK. 

Again, I want to thank you for your time. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. It’s very difficult to relate these experiences. It’s 

one thing to say it to yourselves and write it down. It’s quite something else to express it in public. I can see all of the witnesses are 

overcome by their tragic experiences. 

And now, Mr. Buchsbaum, you’re next. 

Mr. BUCHSBAUM. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, 

thank you. It’s good to see you again. I wish it was under different 

circumstances. We’re just passing the tissues back and forth down 

here. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. I’m 

Andy Buchsbaum, Director of the Great Lakes Office of the National Wildlife Federation located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. AccomVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:18 Mar 25, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00057 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58236.TXT JEAN
34 

panying me is Beth Wallace, who is our Great Lakes Oil Spill Response Coordinator, a position we didn’t think we would need a 

couple months ago. Beth’s family lives in Marshall, Michigan. 

Ms. WALLACE. Battle Creek. 

Mr. BUCHSBAUM. Battle Creek. 

First, let me say that our hearts go out to the people in Marshall 

and the people who live alongside the Kalamazoo River, people like 

those testifying here today who have lost their river and in some 

cases their homes and their health and their businesses. 

Our office is about 70 miles from Marshall, so we were able to 

get down there as soon as we heard about the oil spill; and within 

about 48 hours we had staff down there that were trying to help. 

What we saw were proud people in one of the communities trying 

to cope with the devastation of the Enbridge oil spill. You’ve heard 

it: Oil in their backyards, fumes in their lungs, debris, booms, 

trucks in their neighborhoods. 

Our written testimony describes in detail what we saw there, 

and you’ve heard it firsthand here, so I’m not going to repeat it 

right now. We’re going to restrict our testimony to the impacts this 

bill has had on wildlife and recommendations for what we need to 

do to address those impacts to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t 

happen again. 

Beth is going to handle the wildlife impacts, and then I’ll return 

to talk about the recommendations. Beth. 

Ms. WALLACE. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, 

thanks for the opportunity to testify today. 

Like most of the people sitting next to me, I am from Calhoun 

County. I was born and raised in Athens, Michigan, which is 10 

minutes from Battle Creek. My parents and siblings still reside 

there, along with my extended family and friends. This area is my 

home. Sorry. 

When I heard about the spill I was on my way to work at the 

National Wildlife Federation. When NPR reported the latest information, I couldn’t believe my ears. I immediately called my mother 

who works downtown Battle Creek for her descriptions of what had 

happened that made me sick. In the afternoon a couple of my coworkers and myself made the trip to Marshall and Battle Creek, 

trying to get a grasp on why it happened. As you will read in the 

testimony, it’s completely devastating; and that devastation continues to this day. 

Three days ago, I was searching for information regarding the oil 

spill in Illinois when I came across the heading from the Globe and 

Mail: Enbridge Suffers Another Pipeline Breach. Enbridge suffers. 

I would like everyone to remember that Enbridge is not suffering. 

These residents are suffering, and the wildlife is suffering. 

As Andy mentioned, I would like to take this opportunity to provide my voice for wildlife. Because of delays in reporting, the continued lack of organization, little transparency, and letting 

Enbridge call the shots, we do not know the full magnitude this 

disaster has had on wildlife and our river. We do know the number 

of deaths of fish, birds, and other animals that Enbridge has reported to agencies is much lower than is occurring. 

Ms. WALLACE. In our first visit to the Marshall site, we personally came across a very distressed oiled muskrat, along with many 

35 

oiled geese. We attempted calling the number located on the newly 

posted signs which went to a woman who gave us a new number. 

That number went straight to voicemail. We now know that the 

animals in that instance were not rescued as the animal rescue facility was not up and running until weeks later. So they were left, 

died and suffering. Because of rain and heavy flooding in the days 

prior to the spill, the oil has completely coated the banks and the 

wetlands along the river where most of the wildlife resides. 

The Unified Command has said publicly in their cleanup plan 

that they are considering leaving this tarry oil in sensitive shorelines and wetlands because of the difficulties in cleaning it up. This 

is not good enough. The shorelines and wetlands are the lifelines 

for wildlife. Many of the species residing in the region consume 

food along the shorelines and those wetlands. They are at risk of 

being oiled and being exposed to toxic effects of oil for as long as 

it remains. 

Enbridge needs to be held accountable for every drop of oil that 

is spilled and all of the damage they have caused and will continue 

to cause until this oil is completely removed. 

Mr. BUCHSBAUM. Thanks, Beth. Just a few words about recommendations. The bottom line is that most of these pipelines, as 

you have heard, are getting old, getting to the point where they 

need to be better maintained and possibly replaced. As long as we 

rely on them to transport hazardous liquids like this heavy crude, 

there are going to be increasing numbers that spill. 

You have heard that in the last week there have been two additional Enbridge spills. That is actually about average for Enbridge. 

In 2008 alone, Enbridge nationally had a total of 93 spills. That 

averages about two a week. 

The only real solution is for our Nation to wean itself from addiction to dirty fuels. We need to stop subsidizing dirty fuels like the 

oil that is flowing through those pipes and we need to embrace, 

promote, and fund clean energy sources. But until that happens, 

we need to take action on pipelines. 

Our written testimony provides detailed recommendations for 

those actions. Just a few highlights here. First, we need to require 

much more effective and frequent monitoring, maintenance, and reporting on existing pipelines. Our regulations today require maintenance, inline maintenance, inline monitoring of these pipelines 

only once every 5 years and that is only for the most used pipelines, only for certain areas. We recommend inline monitoring at 

least once a year for all pipelines. And it sounds expensive, but 

look at the alternative with these crumbling and aging pipelines. 

If we don’t do that, the cost of the cleanups are going to far exceed 

that. And, of course, the damage to the community and the damage 

to the people, you can’t put a price on that. 

Second, we need to require companies to fix the weaknesses they 

find in the pipelines. You said it yourselves, we heard it today that 

Enbridge did monitor Pipeline 6B. It found weaknesses, decided not 

to repair them because they—it said that they didn’t meet the Federal threshold. Well, the Federal thresholds need to be a lot lower 

and Enbridge needs to go and the other pipeline companies need 

to go above and beyond. 

36 

Third, if the spill occurs, there is a government—there is a Unified Command unit. That command unit needs to maintain control 

of the cleanup, the wildlife cleanup, and recovery. In this case, as 

all too often, that control was ceded, it was delegated to Enbridge. 

Enbridge wound up calling the shots it never should have called. 

Enbridge certainly has to pay for all of the damage it does and pay 

for all the response actions, but it should not be the one delegated 

all the responsibility to do all the work or much of the work, which 

it has been in this situation. 

Fourth, Congress should pass the CLEAN Act, H.R. 6008, Congressman Schauer’s bill. That is going to be very important for deterring future actions. 

And finally—and you probably haven’t heard this one yet, but I 

think it is very important. We need a new kind of trust fund to 

help the Kalamazoo River and the wildlife in the Kalamazoo River 

and natural resources damage after the normal oil trust pipeline 

fund has been paid out. One thing we know is it is going to take 

years if not decades for the harm that is coming from this to be 

fully played out, and that is going to be far after the trust funds 

that are currently existent in law, far after those moneys are spent. 

There is a model for this in Michigan. It is called the Great 

Lakes Fishery Trust. It was financed by Consumers Energy to pay 

for damages to fish because of the dam. It is now 20 years old and 

it has been instrumental in helping fish in Lake Michigan recover 

from the damages from that dam. That is a good model here, and 

I would be happy to provide details later if you would like. 

Again, thank you for the opportunity to testify about this, and 

we would be happy to answer questions. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for your testimony as well. 

To all of the members of the panel, my first observation is while 

you have been speaking to Members of the Committee, you have 

also been speaking to the Deputy Secretary of Transportation sitting right behind you, to the Chair of the National Transportation 

Safety Board, who have been paying very careful attention and, I 

observe, making notes on the testimony given by all of you at the 

witness table. 

The second point I would like to make is that Enbridge in this 

situation is subject to the provisions of the Oil Spill Liability Act 

of 1990, OPA ’90 as it is known. I was on the Merchant Marine and 

Fisheries Committee at the time when we wrote that legislation to 

deal with oil spills principally from vessels, and we have updated 

that act. My first term in Congress was right after the Torrey Canyon disaster in the English Channel, and we wrote legislation then 

to require over a period of time double hull vessels. And then came 

the Amoco Cadiz, a similar oil spill from a vessel. And then came 

the Exxon Valdez, in the aftermath of which we enacted OPA ’90. 

The provisions of OPA ’90 are very broad and very compelling. 

First, it establishes an Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, from which 

funds, some $18 million, have been drawn down by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to cover costs from the spill, and the 

Federal Government will then pursue Enbridge to compensate the 

fund for all of the drawdowns from the liability trust fund. 

Second, the provisions in OPA ’90 where there is a spill for which 

the—and the operative language is facility, in this case the faciliVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:18 Mar 25, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58236.TXT JEAN
37 

ties and on-land pipeline that spilled into a navigable water of the 

United States. And that then makes Enbridge liable for natural resource damage restoration, as well as damage to persons and property, with no limit on liability, no limit on liability. 

I want you to keep that in mind in the context of this hearing. 

I will now yield to Mr. Schauer for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, thank you all for 

testifying. I know it was very difficult for you to share your stories. 

I want everyone here to know that I didn’t know any of you until 

you came to a public meeting a couple of weeks ago, until you 

began contacting my office to tell your story and ask for help. And 

I appreciate you coming. 

I wonder if we could put up a slide or two. First, I will start out 

with a quick question. My time is limited, so you don’t all have to 

answer. If you have something you want to say about a particular 

question. First, how far do you live from the river or how far do 

your children go to daycare and what is that? What does that distance—what has that meant with regard to how you have been 

treated by Enbridge Energy Company? Some of you have mentioned this 200 feet. If you could quickly respond. 

Ms. Connolly. 

Ms. CONNOLLY. Our child’s daycare is right where Talmadge 

Creek and the Kalamazoo River meet. From there, our daycare is 

about six-tenths of a mile, which is much further than that 200 

feet. 

Mr. SCHAUER. About 3,000 feet. 

Ms. CONNOLLY. So pretty much we have been told none of this 

is legitimate. The claims are just—they are just totally ignoring it. 

We have been told these are not legitimate claims. 

Mr. SCHAUER. So a legitimate claim is one within 200 feet of the 

river? 

Ms. CONNOLLY. Right. But we are talking about children, infants. 

I understand that they just questioned staff. Speak to the parents, 

talk to the parents who have had children having health reactions 

to this. So don’t dismiss us just because we are out of the yellow 

zone. 

Mr. SCHAUER. I heard the CEO of BP use that term, they will 

pay all legitimate claims. Patrick Daniel, who we will hear from 

today, at that public meeting said we will pay all legitimate claims. 

So 200 feet is something we will explore here. 

Could we put up a slide picture of something that may look familiar to you. I don’t know if you can see that. Do you know what 

that is? Does it look familiar? It is an air purifier. I think they 

were purchased from Wal-Mart I was told by the company to distribute. Did any of you receive one of these or offered one of these? 

OK. Some of you. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, they 

actually don’t do anything for hydrocarbon inhalation. It might 

help with dust mites and animal dander, but that is about it. Were 

you led to believe that this would be helpful to you? 

Go ahead. 

Ms. BARLONDSMITH. I received one and many of the neighbors in 

the neighborhood received the magical air purifier. I very quickly 

realized that it was not going to do anything except assist with the 

38 

dust and air mites. Many of my neighbors, however, believed that 

this would keep them from becoming ill and they signed waivers. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Has it done that? 

Ms. BARLONDSMITH. No. I have neighbors that have been hospitalized three and four times. I have had neighbors that have left 

that are living with relatives because they can’t return. 

Mr. SCHAUER. But they were given an air purifier. Ms. Connolly, 

what about the child care center? 

Ms. CONNOLLY. I believe it was out of the daycare’s cost, which 

they have not been reimbursed. But they were advised by the Calhoun County Health Department and I believe also CTEH, they 

said you can put these humidifiers or whatever they are called in 

each classroom and that would help with the smells that were coming inside the center. They also had indicated that they put some 

fancy air filter on the HVAC unit because the unit at the daycare 

is up on top of the roof and it draws the air. It faces right where 

this spilled and it draws the air from that location. So the air that 

they are pulling into the school, it is pulling it right from the spill. 

So they have put in some fancy filter saying it is from NASA and 

it will break down any chemicals that are coming into the school 

and that is how we are going to fix it. We will put purifiers in the 

rooms and we will put this fancy filter in your HVAC unit. 

Mr. SCHAUER. I want to go to the next slide. It is something 

called a full—it is a release, full and final settlement—I don’t know 

if this is one we are going to put up there. No, that is not the right 

one. It is the liability waiver that the company is using and this 

one is redacted. But what it says, it is to a local resident, it was 

dated August 17th. Payment amount $40 plus air purifier. No. 

That is not the right one either. But was anyone—did anyone that 

you know sign one of these release forms signing away all of your 

legal rights in exchange for an air purifier? 

Ms. BARLONDSMITH. I did a small survey. I did not survey every 

single person in the park. But out of about 30 homes, I found 20 

that have signed the waivers giving full legal responsibility away 

from Enbridge for air purifiers and air conditioners. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Anyone else know anyone who was presented this 

form and signed this liability form? 

Ms. BARLONDSMITH. I did not sign that liability form. I signed 

the medical liability form. 

Mr. SCHAUER. I wonder if we could put that medical liability 

form up. We just had it up a minute ago. I guess not. 

Yes? 

Ms. THORPE. When we first went down to the—we called the 800 

number and they told us to go down to the claims office, or whatever, and that was when they only had one in Battle Creek at the 

time. They were getting one in Marshall. But we were told we had 

to go to Battle Creek. So we went down there and we told the guy 

who took our information, made out the claim, and he flipped over 

the paper and he wanted me to sign that form and I said that I 

am not signing, I refuse to sign that. Well, why not? And I said 

because I am not going to. I refused to. That is something that— 

and just left it at that. I never did hear from them, from that portion from the claim. 

39 

Mr. SCHAUER. Chairman Oberstar and I have asked the Justice 

Department to look into the company’s use of this form. The form 

on the screen now is a form that if signed by someone who is sick 

that is screened by the company and determined that they are in 

need of medical attention caused by this spill, they are asked to 

sign this form. I am going to ask any of you if you have done that 

or know anyone—I don’t know if you know, but that gives the company access to all of your medical record, all past medical records. 

Ms. BarlondSmith. 

Ms. BARLONDSMITH. I wanted to go see the doctor. I do not have 

health insurance. My husband and I did go to the ER in Jackson 

when we were evacuated there and diagnosed with chemical inhalation. This form is what was required and they would not send 

you to a doctor until you signed it, period. It was not a suggestion. 

It was not a side request. 

Mr. SCHAUER. So you signed that form? 

Ms. BARLONDSMITH. I did sign that form. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Are you comfortable with this company having access to all of your medical records, past medical records? 

Ms. BARLONDSMITH. To be very frank with you, one of the side 

effects that you have with this is you do not think clearly. People 

are dizzy. Your brain cells don’t work. Some of us have started 

stuttering, shaking and stuff like that. I read over it twice very 

quickly. I gave it to my husband. He glanced at it because he was 

going to go to the doctor also. 

Mr. SCHAUER. He is not an attorney, I take it, or a health care 

provider? 

Ms. BARLONDSMITH. Unfortunately, he is not an attorney and I 

wish he was. But I signed it because I was told if you wanted to 

see the doctor, you must sign this. Later, after I did get an attorney because they don’t want to deal with us, I found out how evasive this form is. So they can go back and check 20, 30, 40 years. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Well, fortunately, the Secretary of Health and 

Human Services, who Chairman Oberstar and I wrote to, has determined it is a violation of something called HIPAA and it is a violation of your medical privacy. 

A final comment and then a quick question. First to the National 

Wildlife Federation, thank you. I went to the animal rehabilitation 

center and saw, as I described in my opening statement, animals, 

geese, fully coated, black. There is a photo within our packets that 

Members of the Committee and the public have. I have never seen 

anything like it. Again, it is what we were seeing on television 

from the Gulf. 

Final question. Ms. BarlondSmith, is there still oil where you 

live? 

Ms. BARLONDSMITH. Yes, sir. There is—I live in Battle Creek 

where two bridges adjoin, crossing the Kalamazoo. Behind the mobile home park is a wetland area. The oil and the water was literally to the backdoors of some of the residents’ homes. They came 

in, they attempted to clean it, or so they say. They took a lot of 

stuff away. You can still find oil, pure crude oil in spots. They have 

covered up some areas with sand. There has been areas that are 

still completely covered. You can see the leaves, the grass; it is not 

cleaned up and they claim that it is cleaned up. We are frustrated 

40 

because now they are saying that further back in one of the wetland areas or marsh areas that they are going to allow that to 

stand and it will just dissolve magically over the next three—— 

Mr. SCHAUER. Anyone else see oil near their property? 

Ms. MILLER. Yeah. Again, we have our property—our business 

property is immediately above the dam. As I testified earlier, it 

was one of the major cleanup sites. We had a number of workers 

below, down at the river banks. Our trees are now covered with oil, 

maybe 6, 7 foot—6 foot high. I took pictures on Sunday. And the 

back of our pole barn is covered. I am assuming from that it was 

the garbage bags that they filled with all the brush. But if you go 

down to the river at the dam on the top, there is an alcove back 

there and you can call it muck, your can call it whatever. If it is 

not oil, I really don’t know what it is. I didn’t get close because I 

do have some health concerns. I didn’t trust the Calhoun County 

Health Department’s judgment that I am safe to be down there. So 

I took pictures from a distance. 

At our home immediately below the dam, we had a tree fall into 

the river this spring. It is a large tree. And equally I went down 

there Saturday with my grandson in the rain and there is—in between the branches, down in there, there is all—they haven’t done 

anything. We live there. We live there and I can tell you the only 

thing we have seen them do on our property at home was to take 

the big hoses and they washed it down. What appeared to be just 

river water running through those hoses, I don’t know technically 

what it was. But we have not had workers where they have 

cleaned the banks like they have in other areas. So our property 

as far as I am concerned at home hasn’t been touched. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Just finally—sorry, Mr. Chairman—before the accident, did you all know that you lived so close to a Canadian pipeline that was pumping 8 million gallons of heavy crude oil through 

your neighborhood? Anyone? 

Ms. CONNOLLY. I would say no and actually I am someone who 

comes from the East Coast. I have only lived in Michigan for 8 

years. I am from a suburb of Philly. We left that area because we 

loved Marshall and its beauty and its nature and to have a better 

life to start a family. I think we would be safer if we were still in 

the suburb of Philly instead of living right in this town where my 

children are spending 10 hours a day in a daycare where they can 

still smell it. So it is just ironic we come to move somewhere and 

we had no clue. I don’t even know if the city knew, if the first responders knew. I think that should be put in the legislation as 

well, is that any town that has a pipeline running through it, everyone needs to know. So—— 

Mr. SCHAUER. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The gentleman’s time has expired. The Chair now 

recognizes Mrs. Miller. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I 

would just make a comment first of all to Enbridge. You know, as 

we have watched what has happened with the Gulf spill, all of us 

have seen all of these ads on TV with folks who say, well, I live 

in the Gulf, born and raised here, this has interacted me personally 

and I am here to talk about what BP is doing to clean up, et cetera. 

And they show the face of a sort of average looking American with 

41 

their name—this is who they are and they are talking very heartfelt about what has happened in their area in the Gulf. And I was 

reading an article in one of the Detroit papers the other day about 

apparently Enbridge is doing a poll to determine who might be a 

good spokesperson for them and who people might like to see on 

TV. Apparently they are going to be doing some advertising as a 

public relations thing. And they mentioned would you like to hear 

from a former Democratic Governor, Jim Blanchard, a former Governor of Michigan, because he is on the board of directors of 

Enbridge, or who would you like to hear from. 

My only suggestion to Enbridge is I don’t know if any of you 

would be interested in doing such a thing, but if they want to hear 

from the people, if they want to hear somebody who has been impacted, that has no interest, financial interest or any other interest 

in their company other than being able to be an advocate for what 

Enbridge could do to mitigate damage that has been done, I would 

just suggest to Enbridge, very respectfully, they don’t have to look 

much further than our first panel of testimony here today. It was 

very difficult for all of us to listen, particularly about the daycare. 

Every one of you was very difficult to listen to that kind of a thing. 

So I would suggest that. And I would just also mention again, 

our job here is oversight. That is the Congress’ job. Everybody has 

a role to play just as you are playing today. And our role is to listen to testimony and to—whether or not we develop legislation, 

change some of the legislation our Nation has in regards to pipeline 

safety, et cetera, as well as talking to the regulators, suggesting 

that they promulgate rules, regulations, all to assist us in safety 

with our pipelines. And as I mentioned to you just as part of my 

oversight, I had sent a letter to Cynthia Quarterman, again who 

is the Administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety 

Administration. This was on August 3rd. I am a Members of Congress and I am just saying I have not received any response at all. 

Now, I can understand they are not going to get it the next day, 

but we have received no response at all. They certainly have been 

aware that we are going to have this hearing. And I was again 

looking very forward to being able to question her today at the 

hearing. And I appreciate what the Chairman has clarified here. 

But that they—why she could not appear. But we do not have anybody from PHMSA here, and I know in the next panel I will have 

a chance to question a person from DOT. But does anyone, particularly the residents, have any comment when you learn that Cynthia Quarterman, who is the regulator, the Administrator, actually 

just before she came here, got this appointment to regulate pipeline 

safety, she was the attorney for Enbridge, representing Enbridge 

here? Just generally. 

Ms. BARLONDSMITH. The fact is whether it is EPA, DOT, 

PHMSA, they need to be out of the equation. They can’t be involved with—the fact that she used to be an Enbridge attorney, she 

had to recuse herself? It is outrageous because unfortunately it 

makes the rest of the staff—I am sure he is a very nice gentleman—how do we know he is not getting pressure from his boss. 

Yes, she has recused herself. But how do we know that he is going 

to be able to do his job when she is standing over him as a boss. 

It cannot be—they must be kept separate. It must be as clean as 

42 

possible that there is no possibility that a department, whether it 

is DOT, health department, whatever, is lying in bed with the company in question. There is ethics that need to be involved, And the 

ethics in this, to be very frank with you, are questionable. If you 

ask, you will find. 

Ms. CONNOLLY. One question I have in reference to that as well 

is I believe the people from the Calhoun County Health Department along with CTEH that are doing the air quality testing, the 

control of all of this is Enbridge because I believe the director for 

the Calhoun County Health Department is on their payroll now for 

his overtime or he is getting reimbursed for all of his extra work. 

Whether or not that is true, I am not 100 percent certain, but I 

believe that is what we were told at the forum that night was that 

he is getting reimbursed by Enbridge. CTEH, who is monitoring 

the air, they have been contracted by Enbridge. So they are in control of the air monitoring. The EPA has now recused themselves 

because they claim that they can’t post all of the air data. So now 

they gave that back to Enbridge. Enbridge is in control of posting 

all the air quality results and the water results, and I don’t understand how if one government agency was supposed to be in charge, 

bit by bit it is going back to Enbridge. How can they be controlling 

their own data and their own testing? That is just—I just can’t understand how they can be put in charge. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Well, it does—some people say you 

might make an analogy, Jesse James guarding the train or something like that. But where does the buck stop? And if the buck 

should be stopping with PHMSA, with the Administrator, who was 

a former lawyer for Enbridge—I am not making any accusations. 

I am just pointing that out. It does strike—yes, Mr. Lee. 

Mr. LEE. Yeah. I was really unaware of that situation that you 

just brought to light to me. So obviously that is a huge conflict of 

interest. As far as getting truth and something done to legislate 

this company as far as rules and regulation, as far as the smaller 

agencies local, Calhoun County Health Department, I don’t feel 

that they should be in charge of some of the important decisions, 

especially, in my opinion, the health—unfortunately they are the 

health department, but I don’t feel that I think an emergency of 

this magnitude, they are not set up. Actually, Mr. Rutherford actually contradicted himself in one of those meetings saying that—and 

I believe Mr. Schauer had asked him are you—do you have everything you need, are you OK, fully staffed and he said yes. But another comment was made, I believe it was either that meeting or 

the meeting before, that he is overwhelmed, overworked, his 60— 

small little 60 employees just can’t keep up. So there is a contradiction there and why doesn’t he want another agency to come in 

there to help him is drawing speculation from me, raising eyebrows 

saying why don’t they want other agencies to come in to help him, 

is there something being hidden. And that as a family from the 

community, if people are hiding truth about whether they are actually cleaning up, covering up this oil spill we need other agencies. 

There is checks and balances. We have got them in government, 

and that is what we need as far as when there is an emergency, 

we need the checks and balances. 

Thank you. 

43 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Thank you. I know my time has expired. I would just again thank all of the Michiganians who have 

come here today to testify and others as well. Sometimes at our 

hearings we have very high profile witnesses testifying about various things, and I think all of us on this panel feel very confident 

in the state of America by being able to take advantage of the inherent good commonsense of everyday citizens who are impacted 

and give us suggestions on how we should proceed with our government. Thank you so much for coming. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. And I join you in thanking the witnesses. 

Ms. Edwards. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you especially also to my colleague from Michigan. I am not from Michigan. 

I am from Maryland, and why should it matter to me what happens in Michigan. Well, it matters because you are our communities and I just really want to thank you very much for your testimony, and I have to say in my short service on this Committee we 

have had on several occasions, Mr. Chairman, companies come before us who have done some wrong thing in some community, some 

accident where there are people who are affected and they try in 

so many creative ways to avoid their responsibility, to avoid accountability, to hoodwink, blackmail, however you want to name it, 

people in communities who have been victimized by their wrongdoing or by their accident, their—avoid liability and to people who 

come before us like Mr. Lee’s wife who needs medical insurance 

and doesn’t have it and so has to accept whatever it is that the 

company offers because you just want to be treated for somebody 

else’s wrongdoing. And I just think if anybody asks why we need 

government, Mr. Chairman, this is why we need government. Because government has to be in a position, we have to be in a position as a Congress to look out for the little guy, look out for most 

of us who are in communities just trying to raise our families, take 

care of our families and do what is right. And then it turns out 

that just because we happen to live by a river in a community and 

a pipeline runs through it and there is a spill, that there is then 

no accountability. And I just think it is really not acceptable. And 

while this didn’t happen in Maryland where I live, it could and it 

could in any kind instance. And I think we just have to really look 

out for our communities. 

I really appreciate your testimony. I don’t have any questions for 

you today. I think we have to get to the bottom of this. There has 

to be accountability and you have to receive the kind of compensation to which you are entitled to make your lives whole again, all 

of your communities, and that is part of our responsibility and 

oversight. It is part of our—and whether it is the Congress making 

sure that our Federal agencies do right or it is those Federal agencies simply doing right and taking care of their responsibility in 

communities, it has to happen. And so I just want to say, you 

know, in conclusion, that there are so many questions raised all the 

time about whether government costs too much or whether it intervenes too much. We see over and over again there are times when 

we don’t intervene enough and where we allow people to go without 

44 

meeting their fullest responsibilities. And thank you very much to 

the advocacy folks at the National Wildlife Federation and others 

who are looking out for our people, for our communities and for our 

environment to make sure that there really is accountability. And 

this is not about stopping business from growing and doing business. But it is saying that in some instances, in all instances there 

has to be a balance that it is struck between protecting our community, protecting our families, protecting our environment and making a buck. And with that the buck stops with this Committee, it 

stops with the administration, it stops with our agencies. And 

someone is going to be held to account and you all are going to be 

made whole. 

And with that, Mr. Chairman, I am finished. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Mr. 

Shuster. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank all of you for 

being here. I just want to echo some of what my colleague from 

Maryland said. It is important—I am from Pennsylvania, but what 

happens in Michigan may happen in Pennsylvania or Maryland or 

some other State in this Union. So it is important for us to find 

out what happened, get to the bottom of it, and having you here 

today is extremely important. I know how difficult it is for you to 

be here because of what you have gone through, what you are 

going through. But we assure you that your testimony here today 

will be taken into consideration as we move down the road. And 

it is important for us to hear from everybody involved because that 

way we can step back and hopefully make wise decisions on whether it is further oversight hearings or passing new legislation that 

addresses some of the problems that we see or uncovered because 

of your situation. 

So again thank you very much for being here today. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Mr. Shuster. And Mrs. Miller and the 

members of the panel raised questions about the role of the Administrator of PHMSA. I am sure that Deputy Secretary Porcari will 

be responding to those questions raised. I saw him making notes 

and I am quite confident that he will respond to your concerns. If 

not, we will ask him about those. And I just did. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Will the gentleman yield for a second? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Yes. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I would just comment, Mr. Chairman, he does not 

work for PHMSA. He is the Deputy Secretary of Transportation, 

which the Chairman pointed out that somebody still might be 

under the false assumption. She works for him. He doesn’t work for 

her. So we are glad to have him here today. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Finally, I just want to cite from section 1002, the 

Oil Pollution Act of 1990, covered removal costs and damages; all 

removal costs incurred by the United States, a State or an Indian 

tribe are covered by Federal law. Enbridge is required to pay any 

removal—Section B, Subsection B, any removal costs incurred by 

any person for acts taken in response to an oil spill. They are liable. They are responsible under Federal law. You don’t need a new 

law to hold them accountable and responsible. Natural resource 

damages, damage for injury to, destruction of, loss of, or loss of use 

of natural resources, including the reasonable costs of assessing the 

45 

damage, which shall be recoverable by a United States trustee, a 

State trustee, an Indian tribe trustee. And I won’t go on through 

all the other provisions. But there is very specific and very strict 

liability imposed on a company which has an oil spill covered by 

the provisions of OPA ’90. And this Committee will ensure that 

Enbridge is held accountable, and we thank you very much for your 

extremely heartfelt testimony. 

The panel is dismissed, and now we will bring Panel 2. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I ask members of the panel to rise. Raise your 

right hand. With regard to the testimony you provide to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure today and all subsequent communications regarding this hearing, do you solemnly 

swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 

so help you God? 

[Witnesses respond in the affirmative.] 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. We are now under some really severe 

time restraints because I have just received notice that we will 

have votes on the House floor a little after 2:00. So we will have 

to begin this hearing and hold ourselves to the strictest timelines 

and we will begin with the Chair of the National Transportation 

Safety Board, Deborah Hersman. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HON. DEBORAH HERSMAN, CHAIRMAN, 

NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD; THE HON. 

JOHN D. PORCARI, DEPUTY SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT 

OF TRANSPORTATION; THE HON. LISA P. JACKSON, ADMINISTRATOR, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; ACCOMPANIED BY SUSAN HEDMAN, ADMINISTRATOR FOR 

EPA’S REGION 5; AND SCOTT MASTEN, SENIOR SCIENTIST, 

NATIONAL TOXICOLOGY PROGRAM, NATIONAL INSTITUTE 

OF ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SCIENCES, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH 

Ms. HERSMAN. Good afternoon. Thank you for allowing me to be 

here today. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. We are not allowing you. We have asked you to 

be here. 

Ms. HERSMAN. Thank you for inviting me to be here today, Mr. 

Chairman. 

The accident pipeline, 6B, is owned and operated by Enbridge 

and was put into service in 1969. It is a portion of Enbridge’s 

1,900-mile Lakehead system with the operational control center in 

Edmonton, Alberta. Line 6B is a 30-inch diameter pipe extending 

approximately 300 miles from Griffith, Indiana, to Sarnia, Ontario, 

Canada. 

Two goals of our investigation will be to determine what happened and when it happened. We do know that events surrounding 

the rupture began on Sunday, July 25th. Enbridge scheduled a 

shutdown of the pipe at 6 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on July 25th 

and planned to restart the pipeline at 4 a.m. on Monday July 26th. 

By 5:58 p.m., the control center stopped the pumps—and you can 

see it on the slides up here—from Griffith to Mendon. At the same 

time, an alarm triggering pressure drop in Marshall initiated an 

automatic shutdown of the pump station there. At 9:25 Sunday 

evening, Calhoun County received the first of four 911 calls. The 

46 

four callers described natural gas, propane gas, and petroleum 

odors as well as a natural gas leak. Firefighters and a Michigan 

gas and electric utility technician went to the area, but they found 

no gas leak. 

Line 6B was restarted at about 4 a.m. on Monday, July 26th, setting off another series of alarms at the control center over the next 

hour. It was shut down at 5 a.m. and then restarted about 7 a.m., 

triggering multiple alarms again. By 8 a.m., the line was shut 

down for the final time. The control center in Canada contacted an 

Enbridge technician in Marshall to survey the pump station, but 

that technician did not discover a leak at the pump station. 

A Consumers Energy employee called Enbridge at 11:18 to report 

the spill which was visually confirmed by an Enbridge employee at 

about 11:45. An NTSB team arrived the following day. The section 

of ruptured pipeline was located in a swampy wetland area which 

was further saturated by the oil that had spilled. As a result, the 

process of excavating the ruptured pipeline took almost 2 weeks. 

However, the NTSB was ultimately able to transport two sections 

of pipe, each exceeding 20 feet in length, from the accident site to 

our training center in Ashburn, Virginia. 

We are still in the very early stages of our investigation. We 

have cleaned the exterior of the pipe as well as the rupture surface 

to have a better look at the fracture under our microscopes. Select 

areas of the pipe have been inspected using nondestructive testing 

methods to survey the surface for cracks and flaws. Also, five samples were taken from the pipe and transferred to our materials laboratory for closer examination. A detailed analysis will be carried 

out by our laboratory staff over the next 3 months. 

Although we have just begun our work on this investigation, we 

expect to focus on the following areas: supervisory control and data 

acquisition, or SCADA system operations; pipeline controller performance; operator notification and spill response; responses to 911 

calls; inspection and maintenance history and; PHMSA oversight 

activities and actions. 

As you all know, last week we received reports of a crude oil leak 

in Romeoville, Illinois, along Enbridge’s 6A line. This pipe is 34 

inches in diameter, and we discovered a 2–1/2 inch hole in the pipe. 

Our investigator in charge from the Marshall accident was in 

Romeoville and supervised the excavation and the shipment of that 

pipe back to our facilities. 

Finally, I would like to take a moment to mention the NTSB investigation of the fatal natural gas explosion in San Bruno, California. There are 11 members of our team on the ground, including 

our vice chairman. We have removed three pieces of that pipe and 

it is in transit to Washington, D.C. for testing. 

Like the Marshall accident, we are committed to finding the 

causes of these ruptures and making the appropriate recommendations to ensure that these tragedies do not occur again. 

Thank you, and I am ready to answer any questions. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you for a very succinct summary of a very 

extensive documentation on the spill at hand. 

Deputy Secretary Porcari, I welcome you to the hearing. Thank 

you for being here. 

47 

Mr. PORCARI. Thank you, Chairman Oberstar, Ranking Member 

Shuster, and Members of the Committee. I am John Porcari, Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation. If I may, 

let me first clear up any misconceptions about the reporting relationships as has been previously discussed. 

Administrator Quarterman is recused from these issues involving 

Enbridge. I would point out that the recusal is, in part, because as 

one of the first acts of this administration, President Obama doubled the recusal period for appointed officials to make sure that we 

are being held to a higher standard. That is obviously something 

that we all support. 

I would also point out that, as I have been before with safety 

issues regarding PHMSA, as Deputy Secretary, I am directly involved. Secretary LaHood and I take safety very seriously. There 

is no greater illustration of that than the personal involvement 

that the two of us have in safety issues. If you are thinking about 

distracted driving or the longstanding, 20-year long attempt to try 

to have flight safety and duty time improvements in aviation, it is 

the personal involvement of the Secretary and his senior team that 

actually drives those advancements. So it is something we take 

very seriously. 

Congresswoman Miller, you also pointed out that you had written to us on August 3rd asking questions regarding this incident. 

We did respond on August 18th. I will be happy to personally brief 

you either on the contents of that responsive letter or on any other 

questions that you have. It is a very important part of our job to 

be responsive and we take that very seriously. So thank you for 

your questions. 

I would also point out that I visited Marshall twice this summer 

since the incident. I have seen firsthand the devastating impact 

both on the ecosystem and on the community and its members and, 

above all, on the families that call this community home. 

Since the Obama administration took office, we have repeatedly 

warned Enbridge to focus on the safety and performance of its entire Lakehead pipeline system, of which 6B is a portion. This year 

alone, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration 

conducted 11 inspections of Enbridge’s Lakehead system and we 

initiated five enforcement actions. Last month PHMSA issued a 

final order assessing a $2.4 million civil penalty against Enbridge 

in conjunction with an incident near Clearbrook, Minnesota where 

two workers died as a result of Enbridge’s failure to follow safety 

regulations while repairing a pipeline. 

Let me assure you that DOT will continue to ensure that 

Enbridge and all pipeline operators are held fully accountable for 

the safety of their operations and that they understand there are 

serious consequences if they fail. 

As Secretary LaHood has stated from day one of this administration, safety is our Department’s highest priority. So when Line 6B 

ruptured, releasing over 800,000 gallons of crude into the environments around Marshall, our response was swift. We immediately 

dispatched investigators to the scene. We were also quick to issue 

a corrective action order to Enbridge requiring the company to take 

specific steps to ensure the safety and integrity of Line 6B before 

48 

its return to service. That corrective action order is still in force 

today. 

Let me also assure the Committee that our goal is to make sure 

that Line 6B is free of safety and environmental risks before granting Enbridge permission for a gradual restart. 

Now, fortunately, no lives were lost in the Enbridge oil spill, but 

sadly the same can’t be said for the tragic and deadly PG&E gas 

line explosion in San Bruno, California, which killed several innocent victims and injured scores. 

Mr. Chairman, we are committed to working with you and Members of this Committee to ensure that accidents like this do not 

happen again. That is why our Department has launched a comprehensive review of the current pipeline safety regime so that we 

can identify potential legislative solutions and other actions we can 

take to ensure that all pipeline operators put safety first. To that 

end, Secretary LaHood this morning unveiled a legislative proposal 

to strengthen our regulatory authority and oversight capabilities on 

pipelines. This proposal would, among other things, raise the maximum penalty for the most serious violations from $1 million to 

$2.5 million. It would authorize 40 additional inspection and enforcement experts over 4 years. It would also improve the prevention, detection, and remediation of safety problems in hazardous 

liquid pipelines before we have an incident. 

The legislative proposal will complement additional regulatory 

initiatives to improve pipeline safety. Specifically, we are going to 

be considering extending regulation to certain pipelines that are 

currently exempt from regulation, identifying additional areas 

along pipelines that should receive extra protection, and establishing standards and procedures for minimum leak detection requirements for all pipelines, among other initiatives. 

Finally, this week, the department issued a notice of proposed 

rulemaking proposing to expedite new standards for pipeline control-room management procedures and controller fatigue. We are 

proposing to move up the timeline for that from February 2013 to 

August 2011. We look forward to working with you and the Committee to make sure that the underground pipeline infrastructure 

that we rely on coast to coast is safe, reliable, and has the most 

stringent oversight possible. 

That concludes my remarks, and I look forward to answering any 

questions. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for those comments, and 

your full statement will be included in the record, as well as the 

complete statement of all other witnesses. 

And now Administrator Jackson. Thank you for being with us 

once again before this Committee. 

Ms. JACKSON. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Chairman Oberstar and Ranking Member Shuster, Congressman Schauer and 

other Members who are here with the Committee. Thanks for the 

opportunity to testify on EPA’s response to the Enbridge pipeline 

oil spill near Marshall, Michigan. 

On July 26, at 1:33 p.m. Eastern Time, Enbridge notified the national response officer that a pipeline release totaling an estimated 

819,000 gallons of oil had occurred near Marshall, Michigan. The 

oil entered Talmadge Creek, flowed into the Kalamazoo River, a 

49 

Lake Michigan tributary. Heavy rains caused the river to overflow 

existing dams and carry oil 30 miles downstream. But now, thanks 

to the hard work of countless individuals, I am glad we have moved 

from the emergency response phase of this incident to the longterm cleanup phase of this incident. 

I am glad to be joined this morning—this afternoon—excuse 

me—by Susan Hedman, the Regional Administrator for EPA’s Region 5, who personally spent 17 days on site during the response 

working around the clock with a dedicated team of responders. And 

4 days after the spill, I visited Marshall, where I met with local 

and State officials and saw directly the major challenges that EPA 

as Federal lead for this type of oil spill response would face. 

The main goals of this operation were to contain the flow of oil 

and prevent its release into Lake Michigan, to directly communicate constant updates to the public and to Congress, and to ensure the protection of public health and the environment. 

To achieve these goals, EPA mobilized an incident management 

team made up of numerous Federal, State, and local agencies, including the Coast Guard, the State of Michigan and other local 

agencies to oversee all of Enbridge’s plans and actions. EPA also 

immediately began specific activities to ensure that the company 

would fully comply with EPA directives. EPA quickly issued an 

order under Section 311(c) of the Clean Water Act forcing Enbridge 

to conduct specific response actions, including deployment of recovery and containment equipment and proper disposal of waste. 

EPA also began evaluating more than 30 miles of contaminated 

shoreline, floodplain and wetland areas through land, boat and air 

surveys to understand exactly where the oil was, where it might 

go and what it could contaminate. We began monitoring the air for 

harmful emissions and assessing water quality for contamination 

that could endanger public health. 

Throughout the response, data show that both air and water 

quality was within acceptable levels for human health. The data, 

once compiled and verified, were quickly posted on our Website and 

we made it a major priority to keep the public fully abreast of the 

work ahead and the challenges posed. 

In addition to constantly updating our Website with the most 

current information, we held three community meetings in Marshall, Battle Creek, and Kalamazoo to not only update residents on 

the overall status of the cleanup but, more importantly, to interact 

directly with community Members, to answer their questions and 

help assuage their fears. We also participated in other community 

meetings, including one hosted by Congressman Schauer. We also 

held daily calls for local and State elected officials and Members of 

Congress so they could respond to constituent concerns. Congressman Schauer in particular was a regular participant, and I commend you for your hands-on involvement in this response, sir. 

Over the first weeks of the spill, both EPA and Enbridge continued to add response personnel and equipment to contain the movement of oil and to remove contamination from affected areas. We 

observed dramatic changes during this time. In less than 1 week, 

response efforts reduced heavy oil to a sheen over the majority of 

the creek and parts of the river. After an additional week, the 

sheen was visible only intermittently along the waterway. On AuVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:18 Mar 25, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00073 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58236.TXT JEAN
50 

gust 10, 2 weeks after arriving on the scene, the EPA declared the 

emergency response phase over, with the flow of oil contained 80 

miles from Lake Michigan. 

Let me show a few pictures to illustrate some of the major challenges associated and still associated with the spill. This is where 

it all started. You can see the edge of the pipe when it was first 

uncovered. For a perspective, the pipe is about 2–1/2 feet in diameter. Here is a picture showing oil covering the entire surface. It 

doesn’t show too well in this light. But the entire surface of the 

Kalamazoo River is covered. That is near the leak site. You can see 

there is already some boom deployed there. 

Here, this picture shows oil covering the entire surface of the 

Kalamazoo River further downstream. This is taken the day after 

the spill. 

Note that the heavy flooding caused the water to overflow the 

dam. So we had oil coming through the dam but also overflowing 

due to the heavy rains that complicated the response effort. 

Oil not only covered the water, but also got trapped in vegetation 

in the waterway and in the shoreline, and I want to be clear that 

when we say we have been able to reduce a lot of the sheen on the 

water, we are fully aware that the effort is really just beginning 

in all this vegetation and the sediment along the shoreline and it 

is a continuing potential source as long as it is there for additional 

sheens and impacts to the water itself. 

The leak itself initially soaked five acres of wetlands with oil. We 

heard that in Ms. Hersman’s testimony. Here is a glimpse of what 

it looked like after the contaminated pipeline was removed and the 

pipeline was exposed. 

And here are some EPA employees working on the response. Just 

to go through some numbers from the response to date. 85 miles 

of absorbent boom, nearly 10 miles of containment boom have been 

deployed. 45,000 cubic yards of waste shift offsite to licensed landfill for disposal. More than 9–1/2 million gallons of oil and water 

mixture were collected from the spill creek—the spill site, the creek 

and the river. More than 200 boats currently deployed on the river. 

Total personnel on site ranges from 1,300 to 1,800 workers. And to 

date, the cost that EPA has incurred to respond to the spill totals 

$17 million. While we expect that total to rise during the coming 

months, I assure you that we will work to recovery every penny of 

these costs from Enbridge. 

But let me be clear, we still have work to do to clean up the longterm damage from this spill, and we will not leave until the work 

is done. 

I thank the Committee for holding this hearing and look forward 

to taking any questions you may have. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And we will have questions. Thank you very 

much, Administrator Jackson. 

Mr. Masten. 

Mr. MASTEN. Chairman Oberstar, Members of the Committee, 

thank you for the opportunity to provide information about the potential human health issues associated with oil spills. 

My name is Scott Masten, and I am a staff scientist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, an institute of 

the National Institutes of Health, which is part of the Department 

51 

of Health and Human Services. My work supports the National 

Toxicology Program, an interagency program that is administratively housed at the NIEHS. I am testifying today on behalf of the 

NIH, and I shall present a brief overview of our current understanding of the possible human health effects of exposures related 

to oil spills, along with a preview of some of our research efforts 

aimed at increasing our understanding of adverse health impacts 

among oil spill response workers and exposed communities. 

Crude oil is a complex combination of chemicals consisting predominantly of carbon and hydrogen. These are collectively known 

as hydrocarbons. The chemical composition of crude oils can vary 

substantially from different geographic regions and even within a 

particular geologic formation. There are hundreds, if not thousands 

of chemicals present in crude oil, and we have incomplete knowledge of the toxicity of many of them. 

We are most concerned about a particular class of hydrocarbons 

known as aromatic hydrocarbons, as well as other volatile organic 

compounds such as benzene, naphthalene, and polycyclic aromatic 

hydrocarbons. 

Sulfur compounds such a hydrogen sulfide and heavy metals 

such as aluminum, lead, nickel, and vanadium can also be present 

to varying degrees in crude oil. These substances may also be of 

concern, depending on their level in the crude oil. 

From studies of these chemicals individually, we know quite a bit 

about their hazardous properties, and we believe these are some of 

the chemicals most likely to be encountered in air, sediment, or 

water subsequent to an oil spill. The composition of spilled oil 

changes over time, and the oil nearest the source of the spill contains higher levels of some of the more volatile hazardous components. 

Oil that has been exposed to air and water for a period of time, 

so-called weathered oil, has lost most of these volatile components. 

Nonetheless, this weathered oil still contains less volatile hazardous chemicals, and, therefore, skin contact should be limited. 

And if aerosolized by wind or physical disturbance, weathered oil 

could also be taken into the body through breathing. 

It is critically important to note that the specific risk of developing adverse health effects are dependent on many factors, but, 

most importantly, risks increase with prolonged exposures to higher concentrations of the chemicals. Protective equipment and other 

precautions can be effective at reducing exposures and thereby reducing risks. 

Given the chemicals present in crude oil, the potential for human 

health effects exist. However, understanding and quantifying these 

effects requires further study. There has been relatively little longterm research into the human health effects from oil spills. The few 

studies that have evaluated the human health consequences of oil 

spills have primarily focused on acute physical effects and psychological sequelae. 

A number of the studies reported respiratory symptoms, including cough, shortness of breath, decreased lung function. These were 

among workers involved in cleanup operations. Other commonly reported symptoms in these studies include itchy eyes, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, headaches, skin irritation, and dermatitis. AddiVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:18 Mar 25, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00075 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58236.TXT JEAN
52 

tionally, in several studies of one particular spill, the cleanup workers there found evidence of genetic and endocrine effects in exposed 

individuals. 

Regarding psychological consequences, generalized anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depressive symptoms 

were reported among communities affected by the Exxon Valdez oil 

spill. Similar measures of decreased mental health were observed 

among communities near other oil spills. 

The NIH is using a variety of funding mechanisms and programs 

to carry out important research related to the human health impacts of oil spills. The NIEHS, through the National Toxicology 

Program, has completed important steps in identifying knowledge 

gaps for oil-spill-related exposures of concern. The NTP has 

reached out to key agency partners to assess ongoing research activities within the Federal Government and to begin compiling 

common toxicology research needs. 

Our initial research efforts are focused on chemical characterization of the oil and dispersant samples that were collected in the 

gulf region to gain a better understanding of the physical and 

chemical changes associated with weathering and biodegradation. 

The output from these various chemistry studies will guide the development and conduct of additional toxicological studies to identify 

important biological effects of the mixed exposures encountered 

during oil spills. 

In June, NIH Director Francis Collins announced that the NIH 

will devote at least $10 million to support these NTP studies in the 

initial stages of an NIH-led, large, prospective health study of oil 

spill cleanup workers and volunteers, termed the ‘‘Gulf Worker 

Study.’’ In addition, BP has contributed $10 million through its 

Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to help fund the Gulf Worker 

Study. 

This study will focus on exposure to oil and potential health consequences, such as respiratory, neurobehavioral, carcinogenic, and 

immunological conditions. The study plan also includes evaluation 

of mental health concerns and other oil-spill-related stressors, such 

as job loss, family disruption, and financial uncertainties. The 

study plan will be updated as comments and suggestions are received from the gulf communities and scientific experts via a series 

of NIEHS-sponsored meetings, community fora, and webinars. 

In addition, the NIEHS has a grants program for time-sensitive 

research and community education that will include additional opportunities for research, including research on various health effects, to understand the unique risk of vulnerable populations, such 

as children, pregnant women, the elderly, and people with chronic 

health problems. 

Although the above-mentioned research activities are focused on 

the gulf region, our expectation is that these research results will 

have widespread applicability to future public health activities relating to oil spills. 

In conclusion, it is clear from our current and ongoing review of 

the available research studies regarding human health effects of 

spilled crude oil that there is a need for additional health monitoring and research. Follow-up of exposed people has only occurred 

for a handful of the oil tanker spill incidents from the past several 

53 

decades. These incidents involved exposure to different types of 

crude oil and, in some cases, refined petroleum products. 

Historically, cleanup workers have experienced the highest exposures; although, for most of these studies, there is a lack of quantitative exposure information. And human health impacts are dependent on the scale of the release and on our ability to minimize 

exposure through proper safety precautions, training, and spill containment. 

Ongoing and planned research in the gulf by the NIH and others 

will increase our collective understanding and provide a better 

foundation for making public health decisions for future oil-related 

incidents. 

Thank you, and I am happy to answer any questions. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for those observations. We 

appreciate your testimony. 

And we will now continue with Kelli Scott, administrator and 

controller and public information officer for Calhoun County. 

Ms. SCOTT. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Oberstar, 

Ranking Member Shuster, Members of the Committee. I appreciate 

the opportunity to be here today. 

And thanks, also, to our local congressman, Mark Schauer, for 

your commitment to include local governments in the mix of panel 

members today. 

My brief testimony will be from the perspective of county government on the oil spill and its impacts on our community. Given the 

fact that, although we are out of the official crisis mode, the oil 

spill is not yet all cleaned up, we still have more questions than 

conclusions to offer. 

I am here today to frame briefly for you a picture of what Calhoun County, Michigan, was like before July 26th, what the county’s involvement in the response effort has been to date, and what 

we believe the local concerns will be going forward. 

Before this crisis that started locally ends locally, it is important 

to our board chair and our county commissioners that we begin 

through various engagements, such as this, to plan long-term restoration strategies. If what you hear today offers any preliminary 

lessons learned for future reference or leads to any assistance in 

this recovery strategy, we will all be better off. 

As county administrator/controller, my position is that of the appointed county executive, reporting to a board of seven county commissioners. My main role in the oil spill response efforts has been 

that of public information officer. I have had some incident command structure training, but it paled in comparison to the real onthe-job experience I have had for the last month and a half with 

this major environmental disaster happening literally in the county’s backyard. The oil spill site was less than a couple of miles from 

my office and from the county administration in Marshall. 

I was notified of the spill by county officials at about 8:30 on 

Monday night, July 26th. And they informed me that I needed to 

get to the incident response and that we probably needed to declare 

a state of local disaster and emergency. At that point, I had never 

heard of Enbridge and was unaware that its pipelines traveled 

through our county. 

54 

When I got to the site, there were many local, State, and Federal 

officials already there, and the effort was already under way to 

form the incident command and to deploy resources. Included in 

the mix of who was there were our public health officer, Jim Rutherford, emergency management services director Durk Dunham, 

the county sheriff, and others. And it became apparent, even 

though we had no clue what the magnitude of the spill was, that 

we were going to essentially have to clear our calendars of all of 

the other county initiatives, meetings, full schedules, and dedicate 

as much resources as were needed to assist in this process. 

So, the picture before July 26th: We are one of the larger counties in Michigan at about 136,000 in population. However, we have 

very much a small-town feel. Battle Creek, which is our largest 

city, is known as ‘‘Cereal City, USA.’’ When we get outside in the 

morning, we are used to smelling the sweet smell of cereal from 

Kellogg’s and Post. We are happy now that that smell of cereal is 

back and not the smell of oil. 

Our Web site encourages people to visit, live, and do business in 

the county, proudly stating that we offer the serenity of country living and the cultural and recreational amenities offered in urban 

settings. The resources from our river are very much a part of the 

tourism strategy, and it is very unfortunate that we experienced 

this local tragedy that cut off recreational use of the river, which 

resulted in cancelled camping, fishing, canoeing trips, and other 

events that were already booked before the July 26th incident. 

From a county budget standpoint, property taxes provide nearly 

half of our operating revenues of $40 million. So, before July 26th, 

we were just ramping up our budget process for fiscal year 2011. 

We have a calendar year. We were projecting a budget deficit of $2 

million, had been experiencing 2 or more years of property value 

declines just due to the State and national economic crisis, and tax 

foreclosures had experienced significant increases in our county. 

Also, our county ranks low compared with others when it comes 

to numerous key health indicators. So we were already challenged 

and had begun several local efforts to turn those health indicators 

around. And part of that strategy, again, was use of our environmental assets, such as the Kalamazoo River. 

So our response as county government, the first step we had to 

do was to declare the local state of emergency. And then State statute really requires us to look out for public health, public safety. 

And beyond that, we realized quickly that we didn’t have the resources necessary and have had to rely on a lot of environmental 

experts to make the tough decisions about evacuations, about water 

quality safety and air quality safety. 

So the bottom line is, to date, the county of Calhoun has expended over $300,000, coming mostly from our public health, office 

of the sheriff, administration, but even other offices such as equalization, who created over 400 maps for Enbridge, and the Environmental Protection Agency for various uses. Our road commission 

estimates over half a million dollars of damages to roads that we 

still have to wait to assess until the heavy equipment is gone. And 

we haven’t even looked at the damages to at least one of the county 

parks that is on the river and is being used as a staging area. 

55 

My role, again, was as a public information officer and have been 

attending regular meetings—they were twice daily, initially—with 

all of the public information officers, including that from Enbridge. 

We tried to coordinate the media briefings. And communication 

throughout this process was one of the most difficult things, especially when we were dealing with evacuated residents and trying 

to communicate to them. 

One of the early stories that had been in the media and I understand is being investigated is the response time and the reporting 

of the oil spill. One statement that I would just make on that issue 

is that we didn’t find any record from our consolidated dispatch authority, which I have to state is separately governed from that of 

the county, of Enbridge contacting the county or the consolidated 

dispatch to alert of any potential problems with the pipeline, which 

we understand could have been Sunday night, the night before the 

reported spill. 

Our understanding is that Enbridge was required to notify the 

National Response Center, but, there again, there was not notification from either Federal or State agencies directly to the county or 

consolidated dispatch. So there was some confusion there. 

Looking forward, I would summarize with the five questions that 

our county and our residents have communicated to us that they 

are very concerned with on the long term. How long will Enbridge 

be here in town, and what will we be left with once they are gone? 

We are concerned that the EPA’s September 27 deadline under 

their administrative order will be only an artificial end to the situation. 

Number two, when will the Kalamazoo River be open for recreational purposes again? Will it be 2011, 2012, or beyond? And we 

also have no sense of how long the county government will need 

to be involved in air and water quality monitoring and testing. 

Number three, how will this environmental disaster impact future economic development? How many businesses will avoid Calhoun County when contemplating start-up, expansion, or relocation? 

Number four, what will happen to our property values, which we 

thought were close to bottoming out before the spill but were expected to rebound in the next year or 2? 

And, finally, and maybe most importantly, are we safe? How can 

we be sure another pipeline failure doesn’t happen in the near future? For vulnerable areas like ours where the pipelines run 

through populated areas, one spill is too many. 

And I would just add, from a local response, just so that you are 

aware, on August 5th the Calhoun County Board of Commissioners 

resolved to create a local task force that will include officials from 

State, Federal, and maybe even the private sector to look at longterm strategies for dealing with these types of tragic events. One 

premise that we will be discussing is whether there is a need to 

accelerate the development of environmental cleanup and restoration technologies. We expect to start meeting next month. 

And so, in closing, even though, again, the cereal smell is back 

and the river is much cleaner, submerged oil and residual oils in 

the flood plains and on vegetation and in sensitive areas still concerns the community. From my perspective, communication plans 

56 

that begin from the responsible party and include early and direct 

notification to local emergency centers of potential issues with pipelines would streamline response efforts, if nothing else. 

And that concludes my remarks. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much for your testimony. And 

the questions that you raise are very important ones that we will 

pursue as we continue our oversight of this situation. 

Chair Hersman, you have heard me say it many times that I 

hold the NTSB as the gold standard for accident investigation. 

Other countries in this modernized transportation world have developed or put in place accident investigation units modeled after 

the NTSB. And you are continuing to uphold those very highest 

standards. 

I know that there will be lessons to be learned after the metallurgical studies and evaluations of the pipeline segment. And 

when do you—I would like to ask you if you can just give us an 

off-the-top-of-the-table estimate of when that work would be concluded. 

Ms. HERSMAN. Mr. Chairman, are you talking about just the lab 

work, or are you talking about a final report? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The lab work. No, not the complete investigation, 

but the lab work so that you will have some idea of the questions 

that I have. That is, this is a 39-year-old segment of pipe. It is 

three-quarter-inch steel, if I understand, if I recall rightly. And was 

it steel of a quality that would meet standards set today? Or are 

even today’s standards adequate or inadequate? What pipeline 

pressure was it built to withstand? Were the pressures greater 

than the design spec of the pipe? And while it was operating at 

lower pressure levels, was that possibly a factor in the pipeline failure? 

Those are a number of questions I don’t think you can answer 

yet because you don’t have all the metallurgical analysis results. 

Ms. HERSMAN. You are right, I can’t answer all of those questions. But we do know that this pipe has a maximum operating 

pressure of 624 psig. At the time of the rupture, they were under 

a restriction from PHMSA to operate at a lower pressure, 523 psi. 

The operating pressure just prior to the failure was something less 

than that, 440 to 475. 

We are still working through all the details, but that is some preliminary information. 

The pipe is carbon steel and one quarter-inch thick. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Oh, it is quarter-inch. I thought it was threequarter. OK. 

Ms. HERSMAN. One-quarter-inch thick. It was manufactured to 

meet the specifications existing at the time it was installed. 

You mentioned the Marshall pipeline was installed in 1969. The 

three events that I mentioned in my testimony, the other Enbridge 

pipe was installed on 6A in 1968. The San Bruno pipe that is involved in the California gas pipeline explosion, is from 1956. It is 

not uncommon for us to see pipe that is older. 

There are a number of things that our team in our lab will be 

doing over the next few weeks and months. They are going to reconvene with the parties to the investigation as they conduct some 

of this work so that PHMSA and Enbridge have an opportunity to 

57 

see what we are doing. If we identify any concerns, the parties will 

have the ability to take action, too, as far as safety issues are concerned. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Do you know whether cathodic protection was 

maintained on that line continuously throughout its operation? 

Ms. HERSMAN. That is certainly something that we will be looking at as part of our investigation. We know that it was coated 

with a polyethylene coating to provide some additional protection. 

We did document some issues in our initial examination of the pipe 

of corrosion on the pipe. We are certainly going to be looking at 

that as part of our investigation. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. 

Deputy Secretary Porcari, I know that when the administration 

took office that PHMSA was a disaster of its own. It has been that 

way for a long time. And that you have taken steps to improve operations and upgrade the organization itself. 

And you have outlined the proposals for reauthorization of 

PHMSA. But from just a quick reading, I don’t see any provisions 

on leak detection. I don’t see any upgrade on integrity management. And I wonder if you could address—I would like you to address those two issues in particular. 

Mr. PORCARI. Mr. Chairman, I think those are very good questions. 

The proposal that was submitted this morning, we believe, is a 

very good starting point and a significant advance over the previous requirements. From this incident, which we take very seriously, there are five issues, for example, that I am asking staff tp 

review and determine if we can update the proposal, as necessary. 

For example, for the integrity plans themselves, which are 

viewed prior to inspection, should copies of those be in PHMSA’s 

possession, and should those be reviewed more aggressively before 

and outside of inspection cycles? 

The second broad issue is the operating control centers. In addition to the recent rule-making that we just did, the processes and 

procedures there, are there further improvements that we should 

have? 

Third, what is the threshold for damage repair? Is today’s 

threshold adequate? Has technology advanced, has research advanced so that we can update that? 

The fourth broad area is leak-detection systems. Should there be 

performance standards? Redundancy? Is the state-of-the-art different, and should those be requirements? 

And then finally, fifth and broader, what are we doing in our research program, going forward for future requirements? Are we actually funding the research that we need that will define the future 

requirements so that this doesn’t happen again? 

And on all five of those, and likely more fronts, we will be moving forward. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. 

I would like to proceed, although we have very limited legislative 

time remaining before the recess for elections, I would like to engage in a bipartisan conversation with you, your staff, and also 

with EPA Administrator Jackson to scrub this proposal that you 

have submitted, incorporate into it lessons from this hearing and 

58 

also from the BP oil spill, and at least fashion a draft bill in the 

remaining 3 weeks that we would be able to consider in this Committee. And if we can get there, to take at least Subcommittee action. And if not, have a bill ready so that, after the election, we 

might be able to proceed on it. Because the authorization is expiring for PHMSA, and I would not want that to happen. 

Ms. Jackson, you have already, EPA has already issued Section 

311 order authority on the Enbridge spill. What other authorities 

does EPA have to ensure cleanup and to hold the responsible parties accountable? And do you need additional action in light of this 

Enbridge experience? 

Ms. JACKSON. So far, Mr. Chairman, I think that our general belief is that the authorities under the Clean Water Act, the Oil Pollution Act, are broad enough to enable us to pursue the response, 

to ensure reimbursement of response entities. There are opportunities for claims to be made from the fund if Enbridge does not live 

up to its responsibilities to the community or to individual folks. 

There is an enforcement case to be brought potentially at some 

point. And that investigation, from the standpoint of EPA only, not 

speaking at all about NTSB’s ongoing investigation, will focus on 

potential violations of the Clean Water Act with respect to the spill 

itself. 

And, at this point, we have no reason to believe that there have 

been any authority issues. The law is quite broad. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Very good. 

We know, those of us in the northern tier, that winter is en 

route. Although we have had one of the hottest summers on record, 

if not the hottest summer on record, we know in northern Minnesota and upper Michigan that the glacier is trying to reclaim its 

footprint. 

And there are lessons to be learned from the Exxon Valdez, that 

cleanup in cold water—that was cold saltwater; this is cold freshwater—are different from those experiences in the gulf with warm 

saltwater. We know and you testified very thoughtfully at our BP 

oil spill hearing—and I appreciate your testimony; I have referenced it many times in talks since then—bacteria may be devouring the oil in the gulf, but at the same time they are consuming 

oxygen in the water column and leaving behind a carbon footprint 

of the decayed bacteria matter. 

Think for a moment of the lessons to be learned from Exxon, 

from BP, and apply them to Enbridge and the river and the riparian lands. 

Ms. JACKSON. Certainly, sir. You know, as you point out, very, 

very different environments, not just because it is marine versus 

freshwater. You know, it hasn’t been spoken of much here, but this 

was a very beautiful recreational area, as I went over it. People 

hunt, they fish, there are kayakers. It is just a beautiful spot, especially in the summer. I am a southern girl, so the winter is a little 

less appealing to me, but I am sure people up there love it in the 

winter too. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. We love it up there. 

Ms. JACKSON. But I think one of the hardest things about this 

cleanup going forward—and I want to be very careful not to make 

any excuses for Enbridge, who must clean this up—is we don’t 

59 

have some of the assets we might have where biological degradation is going to happen as quickly. But yet, we have such a very 

beautiful ecosystem. In many places, as you know, we didn’t have 

roads to even get to these shorelines to access them. You know, we 

had to put in roads or temporary structures to get down there. 

So there will be a real process with the teams and, of course, 

with folks who are also trustees to try to determine where active 

removal, say, in the case of sediment, is really crucial to ensure 

that we get this source material out. But where, in some cases, the 

best thing we can do is allow the shoreline to recover over time, 

which will certainly impact people’s ability to enjoy certain areas. 

So, there were no dispersants used or any agents, if you will, introduced into this environment—very different. This is, you know, 

freshwater close to land. We don’t have anywhere near the dilution 

factor that would even indicate consideration of such a thing. And 

so, in some ways, we are more limited in our tools. And all of our 

tools for some of the remaining cleanup will have the unfortunate 

consequence of having, you know, potential real impacts to the ecosystem. So that will have to be weighed. And, certainly, the State 

and local officials, as well as Federal trustees, will weigh in on 

those issues. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. Do you and Secretary Porcari concur 

with me that the provisions of Open 90 apply to the Enbridge spill? 

Ms. JACKSON. Absolutely, sir. I believe that this is—it says if 

there is even a danger that it is going to hit waterways, we should 

respond. But we absolutely believe that. 

Mr. PORCARI. Yes. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. We have a—I will conclude, but I was with my 

son and granddaughters on the edge of the Boundary Waters 

Canoe Area Wilderness in the first week of July, taking just a couple of days of respite. We hiked into and canoed into, portaged into 

the wilderness. And then in the evening we were sitting on the 

shore and observing a family of loons calling to each other, with a 

chick in the middle, and diving for food for their chick. 

And it just occurred to me that in 3 months they are going to 

be migrating to Louisiana, to the wetlands. And they are going to 

land in those oil-soaked marshes. And I thumbed through my provision, which I had brought with me, of Open 90. And BP is liable 

for every oil-soaked loon that comes from Minnesota, Wisconsin, or 

Michigan. And I am going to hold them to it. 

Ms. Miller? 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. That is an interesting observation and frightening in its own 

way to think about the fly routes of migratory birds coming from 

your beautiful State and our beautiful State and going down to the 

gulf, et cetera. 

And I would just, not to keep belaboring this point about Ms. 

Quarterman, but I did want to mention one more thing. And you 

don’t have to respond to this; I just want to make a comment on 

here. 

I will say that this administration, this President, said that they 

were not going to have lobbyists or folks from K Street, industry 

folks, coming in and regulating the agencies that they once either 

worked for or represented. That was a pledge that this administraVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:18 Mar 25, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00083 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58236.TXT JEAN
60 

tion said. And here is Ms. Quarterman, the PHMSA administrator, 

who, again, had to recuse herself from coming to talk at a congressional hearing because here she was, you know, a partner in the 

Washington, D.C. Office—I will leave out the name of the law firm. 

Her practice was focused on litigation and administrative law associated with pipeline safety, pipeline acquisitions, oil, gas, liquified 

natural gas facilities, et cetera, et cetera. 

So I appreciate that somebody has to recuse themselves from 

talking to a congressional panel hearing, Members of Congress trying to understand that if a regulatory agency has been able to do 

their job, and the administrator has to recuse herself because she 

formerly was an attorney who represented Enbridge, the company 

that we are talking about now. 

I am not asking for any comment. I make that statement. 

But I would like to ask a question of you, Secretary Porcari. And 

as has been mentioned here—and I have not seen your reauthorization proposal, because, as you mention, you just submitted it a 

couple of hours ago, even though the pipeline safety programs do 

expire in 15 days. In 15 days, it is going to expire. 

And I know you are still a relatively new administration, but, 

still, it would seem—I guess I would ask this question: Why did the 

administration take so long to transmit a proposal to the Congress? 

And if you just gave it to us this morning, some might think perhaps that is in response—that you have finally focused on this as 

you see what happened in Marshall, Michigan, as you see what 

happened in Illinois, as you saw what happened in California, as 

you saw what happened in Buffalo, New York. 

And I am not sure if you—you know, just understanding the 

process of Congress, it is highly unlikely that we will be able to 

have Committee hearings, take testimony on your reauthorization, 

pass something out of Subcommittee, Full Committee to the floor 

of the House in about 10 legislative days that is left. It is highly 

unlikely—maybe, maybe, but I don’t think so. 

So I would just ask, what happened here? 

Mr. PORCARI. Thank you, Congresswoman Miller. I will take the 

opportunity, if you don’t mind, to first make a couple of points regarding Administrator Quarterman, because I think it is really important. 

We selected an administrator that has both public- and privatesector experience that is relevant. As I mentioned before, the President put a higher public standard, a higher ethical standard, in 

place by doubling the recusal period, which is, in part, why Administrator Quarterman is not here today. 

I would be here either way, given the severity of this event. As 

I mentioned before, both Secretary LaHood and I take these safety 

issues very seriously. You can only lead from the top levels of the 

Department if you want to change the culture. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. OK, I appreciate that. And I want to 

give you time to respond, but I have a limited amount of time. I 

appreciate your statement. Could you answer about the reauthorization? 

Mr. PORCARI. I should also point out Administrator Quarterman 

is on the ground today in San Bruno with that very significant incident. 

61 

On the legislation itself, we are moving forward on a number of 

safety fronts. We are trying to do all of these simultaneously. We 

are trying to make up for lost time in terms of what needs to be 

done. We are also trying to make sure that the highest safety priorities are addressed as quickly as possible. This is one of those. In 

an ideal world, we would have had more time with this legislative 

proposal. We also thought it was important to understand, at least 

preliminarily, some of the lessons learned from this incident in the 

reauthorization proposal. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. OK, I appreciate that. 

Now, the last reauthorization actually doubled, almost doubled, 

the number of Federal inspectors for the pipelines. And you are 

asking apparently—again, I have not read through this since we 

just got it—but for an additional 40 inspectors. Do you happen to 

know if you hired all of the inspectors that were authorized during 

the last reauthorization? 

Mr. PORCARI. We currently have 137 authorized positions for our 

inspectors and enforcement personnel. We are continually hiring 

because of turnover. Those 110 of the 137 are currently filled. We 

have a very aggressive plan in place. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. So you did hire all that were authorized then? 

Mr. PORCARI. No. We have 110 of the 137 authorized, currently. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. So you have not hired as many as 

you have been authorized for? 

Mr. PORCARI. Yes. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. So you are running short on inspectors. 

Mr. PORCARI. We are running short. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. OK. Let me ask you this, then. You 

also have initiated 24 enforcement cases against Enbridge’s 

Lakehead system in the past several years, yet you are stating in 

your testimony that Enbridge techniques used to manage their 

pipelines have not changed. 

Do you have any comment on that? Even though you are—I 

mean, you don’t think they should change their management techniques? What is your thought on that? 

Mr. PORCARI. Absolutely, we have very substantial concerns, and 

expressed them well before this incident, about Enbridge’s management and operation, including the extraordinary step of summoning the CEO to a meeting where we could recount these previous issues and incidents and very directly ask the most senior 

management what they are doing about it. We followed that up 

with a meeting in the Kansas City regional office with the 

Enbridge senior officials, as well. 

I think it is fair to say that that kind of action is atypical, and 

it is part of what we want to do and are going to do to make sure 

that this is a safer system. We saw problems, and are moving to 

act on them. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Thank you. 

And I would just have one further question then. I know I am 

running out of time here. 

In regards to the dent in the pipeline in the St. Clair River that 

I have been so focused on here, Enbridge actually has told us, told 

62 

me at a meeting that they think that this dent might have been 

in there since the construction of the pipeline. I am not sure what 

your thought is on that. 

But in August of 2009 when they discovered it, some 40 years 

after the pipeline was installed, apparently the dent meets the Federal regulatory requirements for a 60-day repair condition. And I 

have been told that you were apprised. I am not sure if it was you; 

somebody in your agency that understood this, informed about the 

dent. 

Do you have any comment on—I mean, obviously the 60-day rule 

did not happen here. 

Mr. PORCARI. Yes, and thank you for asking that. My understanding is, first of all, inline inspection has revealed this for about 

30 years, this dent. It is something we take very seriously. 

Enbridge has until September 26th to present a plan for how they 

are going to remediate that problem. That is when the 60-day clock 

will apply. We will hold them to the highest standard on that. 

I would also point out, however, that because it is work in the 

St. Clair River, the Corps of Engineers’ and other permitting requirements will most likely apply. They will have to go through a 

permitting process. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Depending on which one of the remediation—and I am going to discuss that when the Enbridge fellow 

comes here. 

Mr. PORCARI. Correct. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Three different—I met with them, 

and I will say that his story was different than yours, in regards 

to how long they knew about this dent. 

But I appreciate your—and thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much. 

Any additional material may be submitted by the witnesses. 

Now, the Deputy Secretary and Administrator Jackson both are 

due in the other body to testify. We have called to the Senate Committee and asked for a few minutes extra time. So I am going to 

ask Mr. Schauer and Mr. Garamendi to combine their time and be 

succinct. And then I would like to, before they go on with other witnesses, to then turn to Mr. Shuster, who may have some questions. 

So we would like to compress this time. We gave the local witnesses an enormous amount of time to express themselves, which 

I think is appropriate, but that also now cuts into—— 

Mr. SHUSTER. I just want to remind my colleagues, this is the 

House. We are quicker, faster, briefer than the Senate. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Better. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Exactly. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Now, Mr. Schauer and Mr. Garamendi. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a very important panel. I will go right to Secretary Porcari and Administrator 

Jackson. 

I would like to thank you both for being present, very present in 

my district. To your respective staffs, it is good to see some of them 

in the room that have been fixtures in Calhoun County. 

This is an important panel because it will—we do play an oversight function, and this will help us make changes to the law that 

will hopefully prevent this from happening again. 

63 

Secretary Porcari, I look forward to reviewing your legislation. I 

think that is ultimately the product of where we are headed with 

this. 

I am concerned, Mr. Secretary, about stalling from Enbridge. I 

will try to paraphrase, but they relied on a consultant at least to 

analyze an inline inspection, I believe from 2007. It took a year of 

back and forth between the consultant and the company to finalize 

that report. Enbridge knew of defects as a result of that inspection, 

but the question really goes to, what is the date of discovery? 

But here is how it applies here. At that point of discovery, the 

company requested a year to operate under reduced pressure. So 

there was a year of back and forth between the consultant and the 

company. Discovery was delayed. Then there was an additional 

year granted by PHMSA for them to operate under reduced pressure and decide what to do about all of those defects. 

I wonder if you can talk about that relationship discovery and 

even the reliance in your oversight of some of those consultants. 

Mr. PORCARI. Congressman Schauer, that is a very important 

point because, from my vantage point, this has taken entirely too 

long. It is clear that twhen he year that Enbridge was entitled to 

under the law, the year of reduced pressure, was followed by a request, on July 15th, to extend that up to two and a half additional 

years it was a real source of concern to us. I should point out that 

we have formally notified Enbridge that we will not extend that. 

But this gets to the heart of how enforcement works with 

PHMSA. Given the staff that we have, we rely on our State partners, in most States, and we also rely on the inspection and recordkeeping that is done by the private-sector owners of the pipeline. 

It is clear that there are some lessons learned from this incident. 

We know that better recordkeeping, quicker understanding of the 

types of anomalies that can exist out there in the pipelines, and 

quicker action on that may or may not have made a difference 

here, but it certainly makes sense to push that as hard as we can. 

We know also that there are a number of aging pipelines like 

this throughout the country. We are trying to make sure that, 

whatever broader conclusions we can draw from this extended time 

period, we are applying them to other sections and pipelines as 

well, so that we can move as aggressively as possible. 

But hindsight is 20/20. It is clear that reduced pressure for an 

extended period of time is not a strategy. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Mr. Secretary, does PHMSA have too much discretion under current law or in its regulations in allowing companies 

to choose to operate under reduced pressure and, in some cases, for 

extended periods of times, rather than make repairs? 

Mr. PORCARI. Congressman, one of the five steps that I have on 

my personal list on this, that I mentioned earlier, is the threshold 

for damage repair, which should inform the discussion and help 

drive us on that. Whether the current threshold is adequate or not 

really is an important question, because that would get to your 

question, which is how much time we would permit a pipeline company to have. 

Mr. SCHAUER. I am going to keep us going, since we are in lightning round. But I would assert that the current threshold is not 

adequate, where the company knew that there was a problem at 

64 

this mile post where the accident occurred and was not required by 

your threshold to repair it. 

Finally, it is a comment and question. Thank you for the tough 

corrective action order within days of the incident. One of the statements that you made, which is telling, about your decision on the 

restart plan is that, ‘‘The immediate—the corrective action was required because failure to order that would result in likely serious 

harm to life, property, and the environment.’’ 

My editorial comment is, it is a little late. But I would ask you 

to forecast for us where you are headed with the restart plan. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Briefly. 

Mr. PORCARI. Briefly, the restart plan, which is currently under 

consideration, is much more comprehensive than the original one 

that we rejected. We are adding the extraordinary step of requiring 

a third-party that is reporting directly to PHMSA to come in and 

provide technical expertise, oversight, and essentially look over 

Enbridge’s shoulder throughout this process. 

We are also going through the extraordinary step of making this 

as transparent as possible for the community’s benefit. We want to 

put on the web site as much information as possible, including the 

restart plan. It is not yet approved. Assuming that a restart plan 

is approved, there would be a gradual restart, not a light switch, 

but a restart if you will, where it would be restarted in phases. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I am going to interrupt at this point. I had intended to have Mr. Garamendi and Mr. Schauer share time, but 

Mr. Shuster has a couple of points that he wants to raise. We will 

ask him to do that. Mr. Garamendi for a brief comment. 

We will then recess for these votes and resume after the 9/11 

ceremony to take testimony from Enbridge. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Just two letters that I want to direct to the Department of 

Transportation. One to Ms. Quarterman and Mr. Secretary, it is 

from my colleague in Pennsylvania, Glenn Thompson, who represents the northern tier, a town of Warren, Pennsylvania. 

He has a facility up there, United, that that pipeline directly 

feeds it. They are cut in half with the production in that facility. 

And there are 4,000 people employed there. He is urging PHMSA 

to do its review, obviously make sure all the safety is in place, but 

to restart that line as soon as possible because there are 4,000 people in that part of Pennsylvania whose livelihoods depend on it, 

and I am sure there are thousands across that line. 

So I will submit that letter on his behalf. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Without objection, the letter will be included in 

the record. 

[The information follows:] 

65 


Insert offset folio 25 here 58236.025
66 

Mr. SHUSTER. And also, to Secretary LaHood, Mrs. Biggert from 

Illinois, where the other spill occurred, she sent a letter on Friday 

and wanted to get as quick as possible a response from DOT with 

a number of questions. Here is a list of reported accidents, inspection reports, things like that. 

So we would hope that DOT could get Mrs. Biggert that letter, 

you know, in the next 24 to 48 hours. It looks like it is pretty 

straight-up information that she is requesting. So if you could do 

that, we certainly would appreciate it. 

And I appreciate the Chairman’s consideration. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The letter from Mrs. Biggert will be included in 

the record, without objection. 

[The information follows:] 

67 


Insert offset folio 26 here 58236.026
68 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. She is a very dear friend and colleague. And I invited her to participate in the hearing, either as a witness or to sit 

with us. She is unfortunately not a Member of the Committee and 

not able to ask questions. 

Mr. Garamendi, do you have a question? 

Mr. GARAMENDI. I will be very, very quick with this. 

To Ms. Hersman, thank you for your testimony thus far. 

I understand investigations are under way. There will undoubtedly be lessons and information along the way that would inform 

us about the other high-risk pipelines in the area. I would hope 

that you would make that information available to California regulators, as well as to the utility companies, so they can immediately 

address any concerns that you find in your investigation and not 

wait for the final report. 

Ms. HERSMAN. Absolutely. California PUC is a party to our investigation, so they have access to all of the information we are discovering in our investigation. 

Mr. GARAMENDI. And the next question: Mr. Porcari, thank you 

very much for your work for bringing forth a proposed piece of legislation. I have asked the Chairman for a field hearing in California. We have enough pipe in California to keep us busy for a 

long time. 

Specifically, at that hearing, I would like to hear a—or maybe at 

the October 6th hearing—a full discussion about the role of the 

Federal Government in setting standards and the implementation 

of those roles by the various State agencies across the Nation. 

And, finally, I think we need to deal with urbanization. It is a 

major issue. It certainly was the situation in San Bruno. I know 

it is a situation in other parts of California. Do we need regulations 

for setback and protecting the public from urbanization over these 

pipelines? 

We are out of time. You can comment in writing and at the next 

hearing, which I understand may be October the 6th. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Schauer has a 30-second intervention. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Administrator Jackson, please explain what the 

September 27nd cleanup deadline means. I am very concerned 

about that deadline being met and the additional residue and oil 

that will need to be cleaned beyond that. 

Ms. JACKSON. Sure, Congressman. The September 27th deadline 

was in the original administrative order to Enbridge, and it says 

that all oil and residue must be removed from the creek and the 

Kalamazoo River. That would include areas like sediment—you 

know, oil that has entered into the sediments or vegetation. 

Obviously, that deadline is in front of us. And I will not speculate 

because it is an administrative enforceable order that the government has issued to the company. It was done, you know, because 

we felt it was important to put deadlines in, so people would understand that we were pushing this company to move as quickly as 

possible. 

That being said, they have already passed one deadline, which 

was the August 27th deadline that all oil be remediated at the site 

of the actual rupture and leak. And EPA has yet to make a finding 

as to whether they have completely complied with that. So the deVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:18 Mar 25, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00092 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58236.TXT JEAN
69 

termination on whether they are in compliance with that enforceable order is outstanding on both of those counts. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. I would ask Mr. Masten and Ms. Scott, do you 

have any time limitations? Would you be able to return after, I 

would think it would be after 3:30, around 3:30? Are you available? 

Mr. MASTEN. Perhaps I could be. Just an airplane. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. What time is your flight? 

Mr. MASTEN. 3:45. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Then you are not available. 

Ms. Scott? 

Ms. SCOTT. I could be if needed. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. We will ask you to return at 3:30. 

The Committee will stand in recess until after the 9/11 ceremony 

and resume at 3:30 or as soon thereafter as possible. 

[Recess.] 

Mr. OBERSTAR. The Subcommittee will resume its sitting when 

we recessed for the votes and the 9/11 observance. I asked Ms. 

Scott to remain behind because Members have questions for her. 

And we will turn to Mrs. Miller, who was next in line. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And, again, Ms. Scott, we certainly appreciate you coming. And 

I listened to your testimony when you said you became an expert 

in an issue that you weren’t previously an expert in probably, with 

the horrific thing that happened in Calhoun County therein. I am 

well familiar with Calhoun County, even though I don’t have the 

pleasure of representing it in Congress. As you know, being the 

former Secretary of State, been there many, many times. I was 

through Marshall during the time that this incident was being attended to, et cetera, and had an opportunity to talk to a number 

of people downtown and around. And I certainly am appreciative 

of you coming. 

You mentioned, though, about the emergency response and 

whether or not Enbridge—how they didn’t contact the county or the 

consolidated dispatch, that they only were required to notify the 

National Response Center after the pipeline spill. And I am just 

wondering if you could flesh that out a bit for me on how you think 

that could be improved. 

I don’t know if you heard my comments. During August when we 

were home, I had an opportunity to meet with the Enbridge officials. And that was one of my biggest concerns, was the communication loop with counties, with the county, with first responders, 

with emergency management in some of my counties, because I am 

concerned about the dent in the pipeline under the St. Clair River. 

And I am going to talk about that when we have an opportunity 

in the next panel with the fellow from Enbridge. 

But, as somebody on the local level, front lines, what was your 

thought about how the notification process and the notification protocols that are required were followed? 

Ms. SCOTT. Sure. I guess our thought is that the county was actually—consolidated dispatch authority, which, again, is separately 

governed from what I would be responsible at the county. But they 

indicate that they were notified really only because the individual 

70 

from Consumers Energy called 911 and reported that they did actually find oil leaking on the morning of July 26th. 

And so, our thought process is, you know, if there was any potential for Enbridge or anyone else who may have been notified sooner 

to call the county directly, possibly the process of notifying other 

local officials and/or dispatching the appropriate HAZMAT response and other teams could have started sooner. And/or when we 

started to get the 911 calls from local residents with the odor complaints that possibly if there would have been any sort of headsup that there had been, you know, any concerns with pipelines, 

even though there was no confirmation of a leak, that they may 

have been able to put two and two together. 

And some of that is just hindsight is 20/20. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Right. You know, in my meeting with 

Enbridge, I asked them for, you know, the kinds of safety information that they put out. And I have a couple of brochures, which I 

will share with the Committee. And this is for emergency responders, local public officials. I said, what do you actually send to the 

first responders? And they were giving me some of this information. And then I said, in my case, who do you talk to, and had them 

give me a list of all the first responders in my district that, you 

know, would be interested in the pipeline and who the contact was, 

et cetera. 

But it is interesting, in light of what has happened in Marshall 

and the attention that has been given even to the dent in the St. 

Clair River portion of it, that my first responders don’t seem to 

know who to call from Enbridge. And I don’t know if that is what 

happened in your case. But, you know, you are wondering about 

people, whether or not—who is notifying whom. It is very important that the first responders would have an immediate contact 

person at Enbridge. And perhaps they did, although I am finding 

that I don’t think that was as clear as it could be to the local first 

responders. 

And I did mention subsequent to that now in 2 or 3 weeks we 

are putting together a meeting in my district with all of the first 

responders along the affected area, both on the U.S. Side and the 

Canadian side. Thank God we haven’t had an incident yet. We 

don’t want to have an incident. We are going to be talking about 

what is going to happen with that dent. But whether this or anything, quite frankly—I mean, you are not going to have enough 

boom to respond immediately and probably shouldn’t have all of 

that. But you need to know where to get it immediately and have, 

as I say, the notification protocol, et cetera. 

So I would just, sort of, mention that to you. I don’t know what 

your thought is. I mean, are you familiar with getting all these 

kinds of brochures? I am sure they sent the same brochure to everybody. 

Ms. SCOTT. I would think so. And, again, you know, in hindsight, 

we know now that all of the pipeline owner information is readily 

available online, the pipeline maps. There are regular—and I don’t 

know how regular—meetings with first responders that specifically 

meet with pipeline owners. 

I think it has more to do with, you know, direct notification and 

whether it should come from the company or what you are referVerDate Aug 31 2005 16:18 Mar 25, 2011 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00094 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58236.TXT JEAN
71 

ring to, which is, do we know who to call? I think they are two different questions. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Uh-huh. 

Ms. SCOTT. And I think, from the local perspective, it would be 

better to get a direct heads-up from the company and/or, if they 

call the National Response Center, could they then notify the 

locals. Because, honestly, we were notified through the 911 call 

from Consumers Energy. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. 

And I thank you again for coming to Washington. And we appreciate all of the work that you have done on the front lines and appreciate your testimony here to the Committee. 

Ms. SCOTT. You are welcome. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. 

And now the Chair recognizes Mr. Schauer. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Kelli, thanks for hanging around. I appreciate it. 

Kelli, you live in the community too. And we have bumped into 

each other at official functions, at even things like high school 

graduation open houses. And I know you care very much about the 

county that you serve, and you do it very well. 

I want to publicly thank you and all of those who are part of Calhoun County government that have been a part of the response in 

the overall effort, from the sheriff’s department, the emergency response coordinator, the health department, the road commission, 

and others that I am sure I am forgetting. You are under-resourced 

and certainly struggling during a tough budget time—you noted 

that earlier—of declining property values. And the unimaginable 

happened. And your people have been working almost 24/7, and I 

want to publicly acknowledge that and thank you for that. And I 

hope you will take that back from this Committee and from me. 

I did want to ask you a couple of questions, sort of, following on 

what my colleague from Michigan was asking about, was, sort of, 

do you know who to call? 

And my observation was, you know, the 911 calls were starting 

9:26 p.m. Sunday night, and then subsequently there were—there 

are two natural gas pipelines in that area, and they were both out 

there at different times. There was a mysterious truck that some 

thought was Enbridge. It was actually Michigan-Indiana Gas, I 

think, is the company. And then, of course, Consumers Energy was 

out there. 

Do folks locally within coordinated dispatch and so forth, do 

emergency responders know that—or did they know prior to Sunday July 25th that that Enbridge oil pipeline was there? 

Ms. SCOTT. I am told that the consolidated dispatch does have 

pipeline maps, albeit they were not online on their GIS system. 

They did have paper information and information about the pipelines. 

I guess one point to note is that our consolidated dispatch center 

did not start operating until March or April of this year. So it is 

fairly new in consolidation, and so the dispatch operators came 

from other local communities. I mean, there is that dynamic, as 

well. 

72 

But they did have pipeline maps and definitely dispatched the 

proper fire response from the local units. And they did go check out 

and they did, on the record, have conversations about, well, it is 

not natural gas, it does smell like crude oil, petroleum, something; 

simply were unable to locating anything. And, again, it was 10:11 

p.m. Before they were out there. 

Mr. SCHAUER. And I am not finding fault at all with our local responders, but—and this may be, Mr. Chairman, something we have 

to look at in the law, as far as the local role, that first responders, 

dispatchers know exactly what that underground infrastructure is 

and have that emergency contact information. Because, apparently, 

Enbridge wasn’t called until 11:18 the following morning by an official from Consumers Energy. So I think that is something we have 

to learn from. 

I want to just ask you—this is really the big question. You talked 

about Calhoun County’s assets, its recreational assets. And you, I 

think, asked the question rhetorically yourself, can this community 

ever be made whole at a time where there are declining property 

values? 

And one thing I want to mention is that people who are being 

offered the purchase of their home are required to have an appraisal done. That is fair, sounds fair. It is a down market. So if 

someone’s property has been contaminated or they are fearful, legitimately, that they would never be able to sell their home in the 

future—there are disclosure requirements in terms of selling your 

home, right? You have to disclose any contamination. So, essentially, they are being forced to sell their home in a down market, 

a very, very difficult prospect. 

Here is my question: Can you even try to estimate the overall 

economic impact on our community and, you know, whether the 

company could ever really make the community whole, economically? 

Ms. SCOTT. I think I started in my opening statement by saying, 

at this point, we have more questions than answers. And that is 

the big question. I think that is precisely why our county commission voted to establish this local task force or authority, where we 

can garner some expertise from those involved in economic development, we can talk to the economists, we can start to build a baseline for what our economy is right now, some of the indicators that 

will need to be measured. Because, as you noted, the real estate 

appraisals are being done according to normal real estate practices 

and appraisal practices, and the sales are being recorded accordingly. 

The county’s role in that is, from an equalization standpoint, 

when we go to equalize property values county-wide, we have to 

look at sales studies. And so it may not be for, you know, 1 to several years before some of the affected properties get sold and we 

figure out or we try to estimate what they may have been sold at 

if there were no oil spill versus what they are really being sold at. 

If we start to see evidence that businesses are choosing not to come 

to town, that will be factored in. 

But I think we are really committed to a data-based approach to 

this, where we actually create a baseline, start to measure, and 

then the cause and effect will still be difficult to calculate. We have 

73 

about a $4 billion tax base in the county. Some of the properties 

that were affected were not just residences but businesses, as was 

noted earlier, including at least one golf course that is right on the 

river that is currently for sale. 

So, honestly, it is tough to say. And we still have faith that whatever can be documented and measured as far as economic impact 

will be made whole by Enbridge. 

Mr. SCHAUER. I do have another question. We understand that 

Enbridge provided the county with a material safety data sheet on 

heavy oil that provides direct guidance and emergency response 

and evacuation—or direct guidance for the purposes of emergency 

response and evacuation. Unfortunately, it is not the real material 

safety data sheet of what was in the line at that time. The real one, 

which we obtained, is much more descriptive of emergency response and recommends an immediate, mandatory 1,000-foot evacuation. 

Does that concern you, that the county that is responsible for 

public health wasn’t provided that real material safety data sheet? 

It was provided to the EPA later, but not to the county. 

Ms. SCOTT. I do know that what is on our Web site and what we 

obtained from Enbridge is what was considered more of a generic 

materials safety data sheet, and that we, from a county health 

standpoint, we didn’t work alone in the decisions to evacuate, that 

we had the State’s assistance, with their toxicologists, the department of community health. And so it is hard to say that, if we 

would have had different information earlier, you know, would the 

evacuation process have been different. And, again, that was a very 

difficult decision, whether to mandate evacuations or to make them 

voluntary. 

That is one lesson learned that we will probably continue to reflect on. I think we did the best with what we had to work with. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Well, I am going to answer my own question. It 

is a concern to me. And it would help you and people like Jim 

Rutherford, the county health officer, make decisions much more 

quickly. To have a generic material safety data sheet is not helpful. 

This was—I am trying to find the—this is Cold Lake blend heavy 

oil, including naphthalene as a diluent. The material safety data 

sheet—and we have it there; that is the real one, as opposed to the 

generic one—requires mandatory evacuation for anyone within 

1,000 feet. 

So I think a disservice was done to Calhoun County and a disservice was done to the people that were affected. And that 200 

feet that was derived around, you know, safe wells and safe drinking water seems to also be used for the purposes of this company 

to determine who should be compensated and who should not be. 

Ms. SCOTT. I can’t argue with that. 

I would want to clarify on the issue of the 200-foot buffer, that 

was specifically only for the water quality issue and the drinking 

wells, and was strictly precautionary, that there were no drinking 

water quality issues found by any of the environmental experts. 

In effect, the larger red zone that was referred to, which was 

used for purposes of the voluntary evacuation, was much larger 

than 200 feet from the river and could have been—and I don’t 

74 

think we have the measurements yet, but it was closer, if not more 

than, the 1,000 feet. 

So I think that will all need to get clarified. But it is my understanding that the red zone that was developed may actually be in 

compliance with the one—although it wasn’t mandatory. 

Mr. SCHAUER. It was voluntary. And that, I think, came 4 days 

later. Again, I am not finding you or the county at fault at all. You 

didn’t have the information. 

So, Kelli, thank you so much. I hope you and your husband get 

to enjoy Washington a little bit before you fly home. 

Ms. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much, Ms. Scott, for your testimony and your patience all throughout this, waiting throughout 

this long day. 

Ms. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Our next witness and final witness of the hearing 

is Mr. Patrick D. Daniel, president and chief executive officer, 

Enbridge, Incorporated. 

Welcome, Mr. Daniel. Thank you again for waiting throughout 

this day. I will now administer the oath. 

With regard to the testimony that you will provide to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure today and all subsequent Committee communications concerning this hearing, do you 

solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 

the truth, so help you God? 

Mr. DANIEL. I do. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. You are sworn in. And we look forward to your testimony. If submit any additional material for the 

Committee record, it will be received for our hearing purposes. And 

you may begin. 

TESTIMONY OF PATRICK D. DANIEL, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, ENBRIDGE, INC. 

Mr. DANIEL. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, thank 

you for the opportunity to discuss the rupture of Line 6B near Marshall, Michigan. 

Mr. Chairman, from day one, I have personally apologized for the 

mess that we made in Marshall and Battle Creek. Since July 26th, 

I have made it my personal mission to take full responsibility for 

cleaning up the spill and addressing all impacts on the environment and on individuals and businesses in Marshall, Battle Creek, 

and the surrounding area. 

For the past 7 weeks, I have met with hundreds of residents, 

first responders, and government officials. I have participated in 

numerous public meetings, talked to residents on the street, and 

visited in living rooms with the families most affected. 

The people of Marshall and Battle Creek have been open, they 

have been understanding, and they have been warm, despite very 

difficult circumstances. They have offered encouragement. They 

have shared their thoughts on how we can improve. And even some 

of our most vocal critics have been willing to sit down with me to 

work out solutions. They have treated Enbridge and our cleanup 

crews as neighbors, and we are doing everything possible to be a 

75 

good neighbor in return. But nothing short of restoring the area to 

the satisfaction of regulators and to the community will be enough. 

Thanks to the dedication of emergency crews and the 500 Michigan residents that we put to work, the spill was quickly contained 

and we are now well on our way to remediating it. Throughout, we 

have worked with local mayors and sheriffs and State and Federal 

officials. And I thank them very much for working cooperatively 

with us. 

Mr. Chairman, for Enbridge no spill is acceptable. We are committed to upholding the highest standards for pipeline safety and 

integrity, and we will continue to invest heavily in safety. 

I am proud to say that we have approximately 2,200 employees 

in the United States. We deliver approximately 12 percent of the 

total daily imports of crude oil into the United States. That is more 

than Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, or any other country. 

Even though we built our business in the oil and gas industry, 

we are also investing heavily in green energy, including seven wind 

farms and North America’s largest photovoltaic solar facility. 

Now to Line 6B. Upon confirmation of the release of oil, the pipeline was isolated. Crews began installing containment boom that is 

stored in Marshall, Michigan. Teams from our regional offices 

throughout North America arrived that day, and I arrived that 

night. We mobilized as quickly as we could so that anyone affected 

would have housing and medical care at our expense. We provided 

direct assistance for prepaid hotel stays, equipment, and services. 

We reimbursed individuals for cost-of-living and other expenses. 

And we established a home purchase program. 

In doing so, we sought to establish a fair, reasonable, and efficient process with as little bureaucracy as possible. Even though 

we believe the process that we put in place was fair, we recently 

engaged former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Dennis Archer to 

evaluate the claims process and to make recommendations. 

Before closing, I would like to talk about the recent spill on Line 

A in Romeoville, Illinois, and then about an issue of particular interest to Representative Miller. 

On September 8, a leak was discovered on our Line 6A in 

Romeoville. We also understand there was a leak in an adjacent 

water main. Our line was immediately shut down and the oil contained. Nearly all of the oil has now been recovered. The cause of 

that line break is under investigation by the NTSB. 

With respect to the St. Clair River dent, an internal inspection 

in August of 2009 indicated the existence of a dent in Line 6B 

where it crosses under the river. Because that site is very difficult 

to access, we immediately lowered the operating pressure to 50 percent of maximum allowed pressure to be conservative while we 

completed a comprehensive engineering assessment. 

The likelihood that that dent will cause a leak is very remote. 

It is smooth, without evidence of corrosion or cracking. The pipe at 

that point is twice as thick as normal and is protected by concrete 

and engineered gravel. Nonetheless, Enbridge is committed to replacing or repairing that segment of pipe, and we will submit our 

proposed plan to the regulator by the end of this month for doing 

that. 

76 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, let me reiterate that for Enbridge 

no spill is acceptable. We understand that we must hold ourselves 

to the highest standards of openness and care in the communities 

where we operate. We have been serving America’s energy needs 

for 60 years, and we intend to be a good neighbor for decades to 

come. 

Thanks again for the opportunity to share our perspective. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Again, thank you for being with us. I know it is 

in your best interest to be here and to be open and accountable. 

And you have noted the very considerable efforts made locally to 

make people whole, but you also heard the testimony earlier today 

by the families and the victims of the aromatic hydrocarbons, benzene and other vapors that caused illness, caused disorientation, 

severe problems for residents; the business owner whose assortment of carpeting was so infected by the spill vapors that they had 

to shut the business, couldn’t sell product. 

You have a huge hill to climb to make communities whole again, 

to make individuals whole again. And your statement makes it 

clear that the company will do so. And I took special note of your 

comment, no spill is acceptable. 

And yet, when we took testimony prior to this tragedy, Mr. 

Adams, Richard Adams, vice president of U.S. operations for 

Enbridge, testified, quote, ‘‘Our response time from our control center can be almost instantaneous, and our large leaks are typically 

detected by our control center personnel. They can view that there 

is a change in the operating system, and there are provisions that, 

if there is uncertainty, they have to shut down within a period of 

time, and that would include the closing of automatic valves.’’ 

And yet this spill went undetected for, or unresponded to, a very 

long period of time. That is a serious departure from the testimony 

that was given by Mr. Adams. And it is something that should 

have been acted on, as he said, almost instantaneously. 

I gave the example of the spill in the Koch oil pipeline in my district, in Little Falls, just outside of Little Falls, where within half 

an hour the line was shut down. And within minutes of seeing the 

anomaly on the screen in their headquarters in Oklahoma, the 

company was beginning to take action. They got a call from the 

sheriff’s department. They didn’t wait hours or days. 

Why did it take so long to shut off that pipeline? Why were there 

not proximate shutoff valves both up- and downstream of this spill 

to prevent this huge loss of product and its consequential environmental as well as human effects? 

Mr. DANIEL. Mr. Chairman, as I indicated, absolutely no spill is 

acceptable, and this is, by far, the worst spill we have had in the 

history of our company. We are currently working very closely with 

the NTSB, as indicated earlier, to find out exactly the cause, to go 

through the timeline to find out what the cause of the leak was. 

We have our own independent investigation under way, as well. We 

are working as a participating party with the NTSB. As you know, 

they have the pipe in their lab. 

We want to find out more than anyone else why that pipe failed 

and all of the circumstances leading up to it. So we are working 

very hard on doing that. 

77 

Mr. OBERSTAR. But you didn’t answer my question. Why was 

that—where is the nearest shutoff valve? 

Mr. DANIEL. The nearest shutoff valve is just upstream at Marshall station. So, as soon as we were notified of the leak, the shutoff valves were closed. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. How were you notified, though? Don’t you have 

your own internal company monitoring systems to detect a drop in 

flow? 

Mr. DANIEL. The leak was first brought to our attention, as indicated by NTSB earlier, at 11:16. We shut the system down, and we 

had confirmed by 11:45 that that leak had occurred. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. But you didn’t have an internal control system to 

tell you that it had failed? 

Mr. DANIEL. Chairman, the pipeline was shut down overnight, 

and that was part of normal operating practice. It was not operating. And it was when they tried to start the pipeline up that the 

leak was notified. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Now, you were notified of and reported defects 

that total up to 329 defects in this segment of pipeline, but asked 

the agency, PHMSA, for time to reduce the pressure, rather than 

immediately act to cure those defects. Why did the company take 

that decision? 

Mr. DANIEL. Mr. Chairman, the normal process that is used in 

inspecting a pipeline, as you know, is to run internal inspection 

tools through the line looking for corrosion, looking for cracks, or 

looking for geometric deficiencies in the pipeline. 

Even a brand-new pipeline will have a certain number of anomalies in the pipeline or effects. And then what you normally would 

do would be to track those over time. And, as a result, we have a 

very extensive program for doing that inline inspection and tracking of those. It doesn’t mean that every anomaly would require repair. They do over time. And we were in full compliance with that 

repair criteria. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. But your supervisory control data acquisition report in response to the questions, did your SCADA, your control 

and data acquisition report, did its information, such as alarms, 

alerts, events, and volume calculations, assist with detection of the 

accident? And the company’s response was ‘‘no.’’ So you are saying 

that your own internal operational control systems were not supportive, were not operational. 

Mr. DANIEL. Well, that is all part of our investigation in conjunction with the NTSB as to the exact cause and the timing of events 

that led up to the incident. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. In August of last year, an internal inspection 

showed that a dent existed in the pipe where it crosses the St. 

Clair River, something Mrs. Miller is very concerned about. But 

your company analysis report that we have, the Committee, had 

likely been there for 40 years. Why it was not discovered prior to 

that time? Why was it not inspected? Why haven’t you done something about it? 

These kinds of incidents, that the numbers of defects that are 

discovered in the line and on which action is not taken, are serious 

failures in safety management. 

78 

Mr. DANIEL. And, Mr. Chairman, with regard to the dent under 

the river, as you are indicating, it was confirmed in August of 2009, 

and it was confirmed to be a smooth dent. And the reason why it 

was detected and confirmed in 2009 was as a result of the progression in technology for inline inspection that has occurred over the 

years. 

And the analogy that I have used with many people is that we 

have gone through a similar progression as the medical profession 

has, from X–Ray to CT to MRI. Our technology keeps getting better. And in 2009 the nature of this feature was identified as a 

smooth dent with non-injurious indications. 

We immediately did a full engineering assessment, with both 

crack and corrosion detection, to make sure there were no injurious 

impacts on that smooth dent. But even at that, we reduced the 

pressure to 50 percent to be extra cautious while we put the repair 

replacement program in place. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. For how long a time would you retain reduced 

line pressure? 

Mr. DANIEL. We will remain at reduced line pressure until that 

line is either repaired or replaced. And we will have the repair replacement program filed by the end of this month with the regulator. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you. 

I will now turn to Mrs. Miller. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I am 

just going to follow right up on what you were just asking about, 

in regards to the reduction of the pressure because of the dent. 

Now, I am not going to ask you, Mr. Daniel, any questions about 

the Marshall, Michigan, spill because my colleague, Mr. Schauer, 

is well prepared to do that. But I am going to focus on the dent, 

since it is my district and I am very interested in that. And I would 

appreciate the staff putting up the overhead so everyone can see 

again why I have such a big interest in what the dent means. 

But just in the previous panel we had Deputy Secretary Porcari, 

who testified that—he said PHMSA knew about the anomaly, the 

dent, since 1978, is what he said. And now you are indicating you 

didn’t know about it until August of 2009. What is the discrepancy 

there? 

Mr. DANIEL. Congresswoman, my understanding is that—and I 

believe last week when our people met with you, they indicated 

that anomaly most likely has been there since the line was installed, as indicated earlier. It wasn’t clearly identified as to what 

the nature of the anomaly was until August 2009 when we filed 

that with the regulator. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Now, in regards to the flow and the 

reduction by 50 percent in an abundance of caution, I suppose, additionally you were asking for a 2–1/2-year waiver to continue that 

flow; is that correct, at 50 percent? 

Mr. DANIEL. I must admit I don’t know whether there was a 2– 

1/2-year request on that. But I do know we will be filing by the end 

of this month with a plan to repair or replace it. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Could you talk a little bit about the 

possible remediations for that dent? 

79 

And when you file your plan at the end of this month, again, as 

we are looking at that pipeline, which is the red for those that are 

looking at the overhead there, and the dent, which is identified 

close to the U.S. side, about 300 feet offshore there, that is about 

maybe 30, 32 foot of water, depending on the water levels, I suppose. And the pipe is 15 feet below the riverbed, as I understand 

it. And then it is, as you mentioned, encased in concrete, pea gravel, whatever your construction techniques were all those many 

years ago. And the pipe, if I am not mistaken, is 30 inches, and 

it is a half-an-inch thick. So it is thicker than you would normally 

have. 

Mr. DANIEL. Yes. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. And the dent is 12 inches long and 

almost 7 inches wide. So however the dent got there, it is very difficult for us to understand how could you have had a dent after the 

construction of the pipe. So perhaps it did happen during the actual construction. I mean, the freighters going through, even if they 

were dragging an anchor, how are they going to dent a pipe that 

is under concrete, et cetera? It doesn’t make sense. So, I appreciate 

that. 

Now, your fellows, your staff was telling me that you have got 

three different possible remediation plans. And one of them would 

be to—and I guess I am asking you to correct me if—I am trying 

to understand what you might be suggesting at the end of this 

month. 

One of them would be to drill under the river there and replace 

that section of the pipe. And I mention that that would immediately set off a lot of alarms, I think, just because, from an environmental standpoint, I mean, everybody in the Great Lakes Basin 

is just up in arms about any kind of drilling under the Great Lakes 

for gas or oil, although that is not what you would be doing here. 

Mr. DANIEL. Right. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. Still, you can think about the public’s 

concern about that. I am not quite sure how long the permitting 

process would—I mean, just the public hearings on that alone. But 

I am sure there would be a lot of debate about that. 

And, secondly, that you would, as I say, replace that portion of 

the pipe, as was explained to me, which would necessity possibly 

actually closing the shipping lane there. And the Chairman is well 

aware of what a critical component the shipping is of not just 

Michigan but the entire basin. And so there would be, obviously, 

a lot of hesitancy about that. 

And then again, with this 30-inch pipe, it was indicated to me 

that one of your remediation plans and possibly what you would be 

recommending would be that you would actually insert then a different, maybe a 21-, 22-inch, I forget, pipe inside that section, 

which would seem to me, as a layman, to be the easiest. 

Now, I don’t know if that is what you are going to be recommending. I don’t know, if you do recommend that, what that means 

to you monetarily. I don’t know what the psi is there with that, as 

opposed to the 30-inch. I don’t know how much you—can you pump 

enough oil to continue to do what you need to do for your company? 

I am not sure. 

80 

I guess those are my questions. I know you are going to be answering us in a couple of weeks, but can you tell us a little bit 

about some of these things as you are going through your decisionmaking process? 

Mr. DANIEL. Yes. Well, I can briefly outline that, Congresswoman. And, again, I have been so focused in Marshall over the 

last 7 weeks, myself, that I have not been through those three engineering alternatives in detail. 

But you are right, those are the three different alternatives. And 

we will be assessing every part of each one of those, as you indicated. 

The total replacement of the line involves boring under the river. 

And you are absolutely right that the permitting process is probably the biggest challenge there, because it is a very congested area 

and it will take time to get permitting and room in order to be able 

to do that. 

Mr. DANIEL. So that option is being evaluated. 

The one of pulling the smaller pipe through is certainly one that, 

on the surface, seems to work very well. It sometimes creates challenges with regard to cathodic protection of a pipeline, when you 

have a pipe within a pipe. So we are assessing that, as to whether 

that will lead to further problems down the road. 

But those are the three alternatives that we will work our way 

through, and we will put forward at the end of the month the recommended one with the other two alternatives. And, believe me, 

our interest is in the safety of the line, and the cost is not relevant. 

We will do whatever is right. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. With the Chairman’s indulgence, if 

I could just ask one final question. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. We will continue for another couple of minutes, 

and then I will call on Mr. Schauer, and then we will come back 

to you after that. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. OK. I will just ask one final question. 

Mr. Daniel, one of the things that we have in that immediate locale, although you can’t see it from the overhead, but slightly upstream from that is the largest concentration of petrochemical 

plants in our hemisphere, I think, perhaps next to New Jersey. So 

we have had a lot of incidents, unfortunately, with chemical spills 

over many, many decades. 

And, as a result of that, in the last several years, we have installed now a real-time water quality monitoring system, which has 

been located now—there are seven water intake pipes along the St. 

Clair River. One of them is just a football field from that dent, in 

Marysville. And then we have now extended that through Lake St. 

Clair, all the way down the Detroit River into Lake Erie. 

And I mention this because notification has been a big topic of 

concern today. And by having this system, we have all the water 

plants sampling every 15 minutes. And they are sampling for 28 

different types of whatever, whether they are sewage contaminants, various types of things, you know, polymers, whatever might 

come out of there. 

And it is interesting, since we have put these in place, I don’t 

know if it is serendipity, coincidence, now that all the chemical 

plants know that we are going to know when it happened and 

81 

where it came from, guess what? Almost no more chemical spills. 

It is really been a wonderful thing. 

However, I was just notified today, the Macomb County—which 

is right downstream from there—Water Quality Board apparently 

had a meeting last night. And your company was represented 

there. And they were asked by the County Water Quality Board to 

participate in a public-private partnership, financially. They asked 

you for some financial assistance to continue this monitoring system. 

And I would just urge you to consider the request that came from 

the Macomb County Water Quality Board because it is a very, very 

important thing. And notification is absolutely optimal. And it 

would seem to me almost in your best interest, as well. 

Mr. DANIEL. Yes. 

Mrs. MILLER OF MICHIGAN. So I just ask that, as well. 

And, Mr. Chairman, I thank you very much for your indulgence 

and time. Thank you. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. It is a very, very important subject nationally and 

especially for Michigan, where the tragedy has occurred. 

I will now call on Mr. Schauer, but ask the gentleman to take 

the Chair while I step out for some other Committee business. 

Mr. SCHAUER. [presiding.] Thank you, Mr. Daniel. 

This gives me no joy, to go through this process. I would much 

rather be spending time helping businesses create jobs, helping 

communities grow and be healthy. But I remember when we first 

met—I am sure you do, too—was at the cafeteria at Marshall High 

School, and you asked me to hold you to the highest possible standard. And that is what I am doing. 

I want to touch a little bit more on the question of 329 known 

defects. And I want to add to that—well, these are additional 

known defects on top of the 329 that were unrepaired, such as that 

at milepost 608 in Marshall, south of Marshall. That didn’t meet 

PHMSA’s threshold. 

We know that you had been operating under reduced pressure 

for a year while considering what to do about them. And we know 

that, 10 days before the incident occurred, your company had asked 

for an additional 2–1/2 years to consider what to do. That doesn’t 

give me great confidence. 

And I hear your statements about safety being the number-one 

priority, but here is the question: When are you going to repair 

these defects? 

Mr. DANIEL. Congressman Schauer, the repairs areunder way. 

And we have had a very active dig and repair program through the 

summer this year. As a matter of fact, there were dig and repair 

work programs under way in the Marshall vicinity at the time of 

the leak. 

So we established with PHMSA those defects that did require inspection. We are in the process of going in, digging up each location 

to determine whether there was a defect. If no defect was present, 

then we didn’t do anything. If there was a defect that met the repair threshold, then those repairs were made. 

So that program was under way at the time and continues to this 

day. 

82 

Mr. SCHAUER. Now, for all 329 identified and unrepaired defects 

within Line 6B, you are telling me that all 329 were under the 

process of repair or inspection to determine if repair was necessary? 

Mr. DANIEL. No. Sorry if I misled. Not all simultaneously. We 

started a program of going in and inspecting those defects in the 

line and doing the repairs in an orderly fashion. But, no, obviously, 

not all simultaneously. I didn’t intend to say that. 

Mr. SCHAUER. So when will they all be repaired? 

Mr. DANIEL. Well, that is something that we are working on with 

PHMSA on exactly what the timeline needs to be for the repairs. 

As you know, we reduced the pressure in the line while we were 

going through the repair program and as a result of just having 

done the hydro test on one section of the pipeline. Then we will 

start up at further reduced pressure going forward. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Well, I am sure you know that I have asked 

PHMSA and the Department of Transportation to make sure that 

every inch of that pipeline is inspected and every defect is repaired. 

I have said it at the community meeting in Marshall, with you 

present, that I have no confidence that Enbridge can operate this 

pipeline safely, certainly not until all of those defects are taken 

care of. 

I want to talk to you about, you know, a vendor you have used 

for inspections back to the 2007 inline inspection. And I mentioned 

this earlier to Secretary Porcari about a vendor reported back to 

you in April of 2008, and a revised report was—in which it indicated a number of these defects. A revised report was issued in 

September of 2008, a third revision in December of 2008, and a 

fourth revision to the report in May of 2009. 

Why did this occur? This goes directly to discovery and to decisions that need to be made about these defects. That seems to be 

a game where the can is kicked down the road. That was a year’s 

time that delayed the possibility of any repairs. 

Mr. DANIEL. Congressman, my understanding is that, as a result 

of running the inline inspection tools through the line, there is a 

very large volume of data generated because it does a millimeterby-millimeter analysis of the wall thickness and any defects in the 

pipeline. 

And I believe, if I am understanding your question correctly, that 

the delay was with the vendor as a result of the time taken in 

order to inspect all of the data, the huge volume of data that they 

get back from these runs. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Can you explain why your company asked for an 

additional 2–1/2 years on top of the 1 year you were operating 

under reduced pressure? If safety is your number-one priority, why 

were you not committed to making repairs rather than operating 

for another 2–1/2 years on Line 6B under reduced pressure? 

Mr. DANIEL. Well, the program was one that was agreed to with 

the regulator. And by reducing the operating pressure, reducing 

the likelihood of any failure in the pipeline while it was undertaken as a result of the disruption associated with the digging program. But that was with the regulator. 

Mr. SCHAUER. I want to be clear. You are not saying that the 

regulator had approved an additional 2–1/2 years, are you? 

83 

Mr. DANIEL. I am sorry, I can’t answer that. I don’t know. 

Mr. SCHAUER. No, they had not. They had not. That was a request that was made 10 days before the spill occurred. It was July 

15th. 

I also want to ask about—you know, you sent a worker to the 

site about 9:41 in the morning on Monday, July 26th. Drove 

around, I am not sure he got out of his car; he said he could smell 

nothing. Everyone in the area stated that there was a very strong 

smell, almost stifling. 

What was your person doing out there? 

Mr. DANIEL. Well, the individual, I believe, was part of the normal operating crew. We have, I believe, 8 or 10 people at the Marshall station. But I can’t speak to the specifics around any action 

he was taking at that time. He obviously conducted the inspection 

as requested. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Just one more note on the operating under—your 

pipeline was operating at 80 percent of pressure. That is a pressure 

reduction. It had been for a year. And, again, there was a 2–1/2- 

year extension requested that had not been approved. 

This accident, this—I don’t know if you saw the pipe yourself. I 

did. It is a 6–1/2-foot-long rupture. The pipe tore open. Why should 

the people of Calhoun County or the people of Michigan have any 

confidence that your policy of operating under reduced pressure, including under the St. Clair River, actually is safe? 

Mr. DANIEL. That is exactly what we want to find out from the 

NTSB investigation. And it is very important—in fact, more important to me than anyone else—that we find out, as a result of the 

metallurgical work that is being done with that pipe now in lab, 

as to exactly why it failed. And we are party to that investigation. 

We will also be conducting our own investigation. 

But it is very important that we find out why it failed. And, at 

this point, as indicated by the NTSB earlier, we don’t know why 

it failed. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Well, I want to again remind you that there were 

329 defects, plus this one, that hadn’t met the threshold. The preliminary data—I didn’t get a chance to ask Chairman Hersman to 

talk about it—was there were signs of corrosion in that line. 

Chairman Oberstar talked extensively and asked you about your 

control room. You say you have trained people. I have talked to the 

NTSB about their findings. They have been there. There were 

alarms going off for 13 hours, all different varieties. Why couldn’t 

they figure it out? 

Mr. DANIEL. That, once again, is part of the investigation with 

the NTSB. And as they indicated earlier, we are in a preliminary 

stage of that. But, believe me, we want to know more than anyone. 

And we are conducting our own internal investigation, as well. 

Mr. SCHAUER. I mean, can you understand why 10 days after 

that Vice President of U.S. Operations Richard Adams quote that 

Chairman Oberstar read to you about the control center and the 

ability to defect the smallest of leaks, why I don’t have very much 

confidence? 

Mr. DANIEL. I certainly want to understand the cause, and more 

so than anyone else. And it is very important for us to get to the 

bottom as to why that piece of pipe failed. So, yes. 

84 

Mr. SCHAUER. I want to talk about claims for a minute. Has 

Enbridge established levels of compensation for certain claims? We 

have heard of inconvenience claims. Does Enbridge have some sort 

of set amount that they offer people for inconvenience of harming 

them due to the pipeline rupture? For example, in this kind of situation, this person would get this much, and in this kind of situation, they would get that much. 

Do the amounts $210 and $105 mean anything to you? 

Mr. DANIEL. With regard to the latter part of your question, no. 

But with regard to the first part, yes. Depending on the level of 

impact, if someone was in the direct impact area along Talmadge 

Creek, for example, where their property backs onto the creek or 

onto the river and therefore they had the cleanup crews and trucks 

often working through the night, their level of inconvenience payment and impact would be quite different from somebody who was 

maybe miles away but was inconvenienced because of roadblocks 

and traffic. Still both were inconvenienced, but at different levels. 

Mr. SCHAUER. I will have you look at this quote from your 

spokesperson, Terri Larson. She has been in the newspapers a lot. 

‘‘Enbridge was encouraging people most affected by the spill in the 

red zone to sign the full and final settlement release for $210 dollars per adult in the household and $105 per child.’’ 

I wonder if can you comment on her statement. That seems to 

be new information to you. Do you have knowledge of this? 

Mr. DANIEL. I am not aware of the level of those settlements, no. 

Mr. SCHAUER. So do you think $210 per adult and $105 for a 

child is fair compensation? 

Mr. DANIEL. I don’t think it would be fair for me to comment, not 

knowing the circumstance. 

We have established what we think to be a very fair process with 

regard to claims. And it is very important, as you know, Congressman, as I have indicated before, that Enbridge feels that it should 

not be necessary to sue Enbridge to recover costs. And we want to 

be able to settle with everyone involved in this incident. 

In order to make sure that our process is fair and perceived to 

be fair, we have arranged to have the former mayor of Detroit and 

a member of the Supreme Court of Michigan, Dennis Archer, come 

in to do a review of our claims process to ensure that it does meet 

those requirements. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Now, a representative of your company, someone 

named Meredith, was contacting witnesses leading up to this hearing. I mentioned that earlier. Some of them mentioned that, as 

well. And I hope that, after their testimony, your company plans 

to live up to those commitments that were made to them. 

Mr. DANIEL. Any commitments that we have made we will live 

up to. Obviously, we—by the way, as you know, I have met with 

many of the individuals that were on the panel earlier. I met recently with them in Ceresco. And we continue to work with them 

to ensure that we address their needs. 

Mr. SCHAUER. I want to ask about the medical release forms. I 

think we have that that we are going to pull up on the screen. 

Now, Mr. Daniel, is Enbridge a health care provider? 

Mr. DANIEL. No, we are not. 

85 

Mr. SCHAUER. OK. How about a health care plan, health insurance plan, a health care plan? 

Mr. DANIEL. Well, we have health care for our employees, a 

health care plan for our employees, but—— 

Mr. SCHAUER. OK. Or a health care clearinghouse or involved in 

the health care business in any way? 

Mr. DANIEL. No. 

Mr. SCHAUER. OK. The reason I am asking is because those three 

entities are the ones that are subject to HIPAA, not Enbridge. It 

is not only an infringement on people’s rights, but it is borderline 

fraudulent. The top line alone of your form—it is very hard to read 

here—says, quote, ‘‘Authorization for release of medical records 

pursuant to 45 Code of Federal regulations (HIPAA),’’ end quote, 

leading people to believe that this is somehow required by Federal 

law. Every person we interviewed told us they thought they had to 

sign it—we have heard that here—in order to obtain care. 

Now, what are you doing about this form and about the forms 

that were already signed? 

Mr. DANIEL. Congressman, once again, we set up a process that 

we felt that was very fair and reasonable with regard to medical 

claims and care, very similar to the claims process that I mentioned earlier. It was very important to us that, for those that could 

afford to go to their primary care provider, that they do that and 

that we would then reimburse them. In the cases of those who 

could not afford to go and prepay, we then made arrangements 

with a family health center such that they could bill us. And, therefore, those individuals seeking health care didn’t have to go 

through us. 

The health claims—we made it known to all individuals they 

would have to take their health records with them to get service 

with the health care provider. 

Mr. SCHAUER. But do you understand what this form does? I am 

not sure that you do. This is a blanket form. And, typically, health 

care providers—physicians, doctors, health insurance companies— 

offer it to patients to sign. They are not required to sign it. And 

what it does is it provides for confidentiality of sharing of medical 

records for medical purposes. 

This form gives you access, your company and oil pipeline company, to one of these individuals, a person who has no health insurance—that is why they are coming to your person and getting 

screened and authorized by a non-medical person in one of your 

claims offices—this gives your company access to all of their medical records. Do you think that is appropriate? 

Mr. DANIEL. We have no need or interest in the medical records 

of individuals, Congressman. I can assure you of that. All we have 

tried to do from the outset was to set up a system that was very 

responsive to the health care needs of the individuals. And that is 

one of the reasons why we have asked Dennis Archer to come in 

to review it, to make sure that the process is very fair and acceptable. 

Mr. SCHAUER. So have you stopped the use of this form? 

Mr. DANIEL. I don’t know that offhand. I can get back to you and 

confirm that. 

86 

Mr. SCHAUER. Well, and I also request—and I think I requested 

this in writing—that you rescind all of those that have been signed. 

Would you agree to do that? 

Mr. DANIEL. Yes. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Thank you. 

Just a couple of other questions. I am very concerned about the 

report of illegal aliens, undocumented workers, working on the site. 

Now, your testimony talked about—this was page 5 of your written 

testimony: ‘‘Our contractors are continually required to comply 

with all laws, and that includes that their workers are fully documented and qualified.’’ 

Now, if it was a newspaper report, maybe it is true, maybe it is 

not true. Even an online publication, maybe it is true, maybe it is 

not true. But there were reports of one of your subcontractors, 

Hallmark Industries, that works for one of your contractors, Garner, that, first of all, bused workers from Texas. And I will remind 

you the unemployment rate in Michigan is 13 percent. And we 

have HAZMAT-trained workers and those that are prepared quickly to go through HAZWOPER certification. 

So the first question—you can answer or not—is why your subcontractors are busing people up from Texas. And there are questions whether they actually were certified to do this work and 

whether they were provided to do the proper safety equipment. 

But they fled back to Texas, loaded their busses, went back. You 

claim the contractor subsequently decided to terminate the contractor. These buses were raided by a sheriff in Texas, and, of 

those who ran, a number of them were caught. Forty-two of them 

were illegal aliens, undocumented workers. 

So, you know, you are under oath. Is your written statement accurate? Your spokesman, Terri Larson, has said that is what you 

do. You obviously don’t. It is of grave concern to me. 

Mr. DANIEL. Contractors, Congressman, are bound to represent 

to us that they have complied with all laws. And when we heard 

of this—and I heard of it probably the same way you did, through 

the media—we approached our contractor, and they terminated the 

subcontractor. We had not hired the subcontractor directly; we had 

hired the contractor. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Would you admit that you are responsible for all 

contractors working for you, contractors and subcontractors? Isn’t 

that your obligation? 

Mr. DANIEL. We do require that all contractors represent to us 

that they have complied with all of our rules and regulations. 

Mr. SCHAUER. It didn’t work out very well. I contend you have 

an obligation, and you have an obligation to actually do it. 

I want to go to the other release form that Chairman Oberstar 

and I wrote to you about and wrote the U.S. Attorney General. It 

is this release/full and final settlement form. 

The first one I want to show you actually is signed by your vice 

president of finance, Mark Maki. It has been redacted. They were 

paid $206.40. And then at the bottom, note their addition. It says, 

‘‘They’’—I am assuming that means your company—‘‘will not give 

me my money back. No longer in motel. Returning home without 

me doing this settlement. I don’t agree with this.’’ 

87 

So they don’t agree with this form. This, apparently, is a requirement for them to receive payment apparently for a hotel. Can you 

comment on this practice by your company? 

Mr. DANIEL. Congressman, the intent of our claims process was 

never to cause people to sign releases for expenses incurred. And 

we have gone back through our records, have found out that, with 

the hundreds of claims processed, there were, I believe, 36 where 

that was the case. We have contacted all, and we have indicated 

that we will relieve them of the release that was signed. That 

should not have been done. That was not our intent. 

Mr. SCHAUER. So you have changed your policy. So this person 

will have this form rescinded, then? 

Mr. DANIEL. If that was for expense only, yes, that would be the 

case. 

Mr. SCHAUER. OK. And similarly for this person with the $40— 

not sure. It says, ‘‘Plus air purifier.’’ They were apparently given 

$40 for something, then got an air purifier. 

So that one would be destroyed or rescinded, as well? 

Mr. DANIEL. I am sure, again, if that was expense only, that it 

will. And I understand, Congressman, that there was one case 

where someone signed a release for an air purifier, and, again, that 

was inappropriate. For expense or something like an air purifier, 

there was no intent in the original design of this claims process for 

a release to be signed. 

Mr. SCHAUER. My concern about this form is that it releases— 

and I am not an attorney—but it releases yourcompany from all liability—‘‘from and against all liability, claims, action, causes of action, costs and expenses, including without limitation claims for 

personal injuries, property damage that claimants ever had, has, or 

may have against the Enbridge Released Parties, whether known 

or unknown, related to the event.’’ 

So you are using this under some circumstances, or are you completely ceasing use of that form? 

Mr. DANIEL. The medical release portion of that we have discontinued using. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Now, both of these forms I have been talking 

about, this release of medical records and this liability waiver, have 

they been used for other accidents, other Enbridge spills? 

Mr. DANIEL. Not that I am aware of. 

Mr. SCHAUER. OK. So you have 83 alone in the Lakehead system 

in the last 8 years. So you are saying that this is new to Calhoun 

County. 

Mr. DANIEL. Congressman, this is by far the worst spill we have 

had in the history of this company, and, hence, it is unprecedented 

in our history. 

Mr. SCHAUER. My concern is, you seem like a very nice person, 

but your words and your sentiments and the actions of your company just haven’t matched up, from the July 15th testimony of 

your vice president about the impeccability of your leak-detection 

system, of your decisions about how to operate and maintain the 

pipeline itself, to how you have treated some of my constituents. 

These are my neighbors. These are my neighbors. 

88 

What was your company—and I am not a corporate lawyer, an 

expert on corporate structures. But for the entirety of your 

Enbridge businesses, what were your company’s profits last year? 

Mr. DANIEL. Enbridge, in total, had profits in the range of $800 

million. That is Canadian dollars. 

Mr. SCHAUER. $800 million. 

Mr. DANIEL. Yes. 

Mr. SCHAUER. And you have in your testimony talked about the 

amount of money you have actually spent in maintaining your 

pipeline. It just gives me pause. 

I appreciate you coming. I am sure this is difficult. But this Committee has a job to do, and not just to learn from this but, as Chairman Oberstar said, to hold your company accountable for what 

happened, its actions. 

You know it, you have been meeting with people, you heard them 

here: This is a community that has been turned inside out. You 

have spread some good will in the community. I acknowledge that. 

But I will ask this as a question. How can you keep your promise? I am giving you the benefit of the doubt. I think you mean it. 

But how can you keep your promise to make sure that this community is made whole? 

Mr. DANIEL. Congressman, as you know, I have been primarily 

in Marshall, with the exception of 2 or 3 days, since the 26th of 

July. I am personally committed and our company is committed to 

doing everything that we can to make up to the people in Marshall 

and Battle Creek for the mess that we made. We are working very 

diligently to meet the September 27th deadline for cleanup of the 

spill, in conjunction with the EPA and all of the coordinating agencies. 

But we are going to be there long after that. We have been in 

the community for 41 years, and these are our neighbors as well. 

And they will be our neighbors for decades to come. And you have 

my commitment that we will be there to make your constituents 

happy that we have done the right job. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Well, I think there will have to be along-term relationship, because, as I said to Calhoun County Administrator Kelli 

Scott, I don’t know how we calculate a further reduction in property values, a loss of recreational use of the Kalamazoo River. It 

is a very vibrant river. People canoe, fish. And believe it or not, in 

my community—and it is somewhat economically distressed—there 

are people that fish and feed themselves from that river. I don’t 

know what kind of accountant we would need to find to calculate 

the real financial cost. 

I think all of us wished that we had not met, because that would 

have meant that your pipeline had never ruptured. But I want to 

remind everyone here that this should never have happened. And 

the result was a million gallons of heavy, heavy crude oil spilled 

into the Talmadge Creek and Kalamazoo River. 

To put that into perspective—this is your business, so I am sure 

you can relate to this. As our Nation watched the BP spill, weeks 

and weeks and months and months, it was 200 million gallons of 

oil. This is about one-two-hundredth. Think about that. One-twohundredth the amount of oil dumped into the Kalamazoo River as 

was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, one-two-hundredth. 

89 

I will conclude by asking for a commitment from you. In good 

conscience, I am not confident in your pipeline,pipeline 6B. The evidence will not allow me to be confident or have faith that you can 

safely operate your pipeline. I am asking for your assurance that 

you will not restart this pipeline until it is absolutely safe. Will you 

make this commitment to this Committee? 

Mr. DANIEL. Congressman, we will not restart thispipeline until, 

not only do we deem it to be safe, but also the regulator deems it 

to be safe. And you have my commitment. 

Mr. SCHAUER. Thank you. 

I don’t think I have any further questions. Mr. Daniel, you are 

excused. Thank you. 

Members of this Committee will have 14 days to revise and extend their remarks. 

And the Committee hearing is now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 5:07 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

90 


Insert offset folio 27 here 58236.027
91 


Insert offset folio 28 here 58236.028
92 


Insert offset folio 29 here 58236.029
93 


Insert offset folio 30 here 58236.030
94 


Insert offset folio 31 here 58236.031
95 


Insert offset folio 32 here 58236.032
96 


Insert offset folio 33 here 58236.033
97 


Insert offset folio 34 here 58236.034
98 


Insert offset folio 35 here 58236.035
99 


Insert offset folio 36 here 58236.036
100 


Insert offset folio 37 here 58236.037
101 


Insert offset folio 38 here 58236.038
102 


Insert offset folio 39 here 58236.039
103 


Insert offset folio 40 here 58236.040
104 


Insert offset folio 41 here 58236.041
105 


Insert offset folio 42 here 58236.042
106 


Insert offset folio 43 here 58236.043
107 


Insert offset folio 44 here 58236.044
108 


Insert offset folio 45 here 58236.045
109 


Insert offset folio 46 here 58236.046
110 


Insert offset folio 47 here 58236.047
111 


Insert offset folio 48 here 58236.048
112 


Insert offset folio 49 here 58236.049
113 


Insert offset folio 50 here 58236.050
114 


Insert offset folio 51 here 58236.051
115 


Insert offset folio 52 here 58236.052
116 


Insert offset folio 53 here 58236.053
117 


Insert offset folio 54 here 58236.054
118 


Insert offset folio 55 here 58236.055
119 


Insert offset folio 56 here 58236.056
120 


Insert offset folio 57 here 58236.057
121 


Insert offset folio 58 here 58236.058
122 


Insert offset folio 59 here 58236.059
123 


Insert offset folio 60 here 58236.060
124 


Insert offset folio 61 here 58236.061
125 


Insert offset folio 62 here 58236.062
126 


Insert offset folio 63 here 58236.063
127 


Insert offset folio 64 here 58236.064
128 


Insert offset folio 65 here 58236.065
129 


Insert offset folio 66 here 58236.066
130 


Insert offset folio 67 here 58236.067
131 


Insert offset folio 68 here 58236.068
132 


Insert offset folio 69 here 58236.069
133 


Insert offset folio 70 here 58236.070
134 


Insert offset folio 71 here 58236.071
135 


Insert offset folio 72 here 58236.072
136 


Insert offset folio 73 here 58236.073
137 


Insert offset folio 74 here 58236.074
138 


Insert offset folio 75 here 58236.075
139 


Insert offset folio 76 here 58236.076
140 


Insert offset folio 77 here 58236.077
141 


Insert offset folio 78 here 58236.078
142 


Insert offset folio 79 here 58236.079
143 


Insert offset folio 80 here 58236.080
144 


Insert offset folio 81 here 58236.081
145 


Insert offset folio 82 here 58236.082
146 


Insert offset folio 83 here 58236.083
147 


Insert offset folio 84 here 58236.084
148 


Insert offset folio 85 here 58236.085
149 


Insert offset folio 86 here 58236.086
150 


Insert offset folio 87 here 58236.087
151 


Insert offset folio 88 here 58236.088
152 


Insert offset folio 89 here 58236.089
153 


Insert offset folio 90 here 58236.090
154 


Insert offset folio 91 here 58236.091
155 


Insert offset folio 92 here 58236.092
156 


Insert offset folio 93 here 58236.093
157 


Insert offset folio 94 here 58236.094
158 


Insert offset folio 95 here 58236.095
159 


Insert offset folio 96 here 58236.096
160 


Insert offset folio 97 here 58236.097
161 


Insert offset folio 98 here 58236.098
162 


Insert offset folio 99 here 58236.099
163 


Insert offset folio 100 here 58236.100
164 


Insert offset folio 101 here 58236.101
165 


Insert offset folio 102 here 58236.102
166 


Insert offset folio 103 here 58236.103
167 


Insert offset folio 104 here 58236.104
168 


Insert offset folio 105 here 58236.105
169 


Insert offset folio 106 here 58236.106
170 


Insert offset folio 107 here 58236.107
171 


Insert offset folio 108 here 58236.108
172 


Insert offset folio 109 here 58236.109
173 


Insert offset folio 110 here 58236.110
174 


Insert offset folio 111 here 58236.111
175 


Insert offset folio 112 here 58236.112
176 


Insert offset folio 113 here 58236.113
177 


Insert offset folio 114 here 58236.114
178 


Insert offset folio 115 here 58236.115
179 


Insert offset folio 116 here 58236.116
180 


Insert offset folio 117 here 58236.117
181 


Insert offset folio 118 here 58236.118
182 


Insert offset folio 119 here 58236.119
183 


Insert offset folio 120 here 58236.120
184 


Insert offset folio 121 here 58236.121
185 


Insert offset folio 122 here 58236.122
186 


Insert offset folio 123 here 58236.123
187 


Insert offset folio 124 here 58236.124
188 


Insert offset folio 125 here 58236.125
189 


Insert offset folio 126 here 58236.126
190 


Insert offset folio 127 here 58236.127
191 


Insert offset folio 128 here 58236.128
192 


Insert offset folio 129 here 58236.129
193 


Insert offset folio 130 here 58236.130
194 


Insert offset folio 131 here 58236.131
195 


Insert offset folio 132 here 58236.132
196 


Insert offset folio 133 here 58236.133
197 


Insert offset folio 134 here 58236.134
198 


Insert offset folio 135 here 58236.135
199 


Insert offset folio 136 here 58236.136
200 


Insert offset folio 137 here 58236.137
201 


Insert offset folio 138 here 58236.138
202 


Insert offset folio 139 here 58236.139
203 


Insert offset folio 140 here 58236.140
204 


Insert offset folio 141 here 58236.141
205 


Insert offset folio 142 here 58236.142
206 


Insert offset folio 143 here 58236.143
207 


Insert offset folio 144 here 58236.144
208 


Insert offset folio 145 here 58236.145
209 


Insert offset folio 146 here 58236.146
210 


Insert offset folio 147 here 58236.147
211 


Insert offset folio 148 here 58236.148
212 


Insert offset folio 149 here 58236.149
213 


Insert offset folio 150 here 58236.150
214 


Insert offset folio 151 here 58236.151
215 


Insert offset folio 152 here 58236.152
216 


Insert offset folio 153 here 58236.153
217 


Insert offset folio 154 here 58236.154
218 


Insert offset folio 155 here 58236.155
219 


Insert offset folio 156 here 58236.156
220 


Insert offset folio 157 here 58236.157
221 


Insert offset folio 158 here 58236.158
222 


Insert offset folio 159 here 58236.159
223 


Insert offset folio 160 here 58236.160
224 


Insert offset folio 161 here 58236.161
225 


Insert offset folio 162 here 58236.162
226 


Insert offset folio 163 here 58236.163
227 


Insert offset folio 164 here 58236.164
228 


Insert offset folio 165 here 58236.165
229 


Insert offset folio 166 here 58236.166
230 


Insert offset folio 167 here 58236.167
231 


Insert offset folio 168 here 58236.168
232 


Insert offset folio 169 here 58236.169
233 


Insert offset folio 170 here 58236.170
234 


Insert offset folio 171 here 58236.171
235 


Insert offset folio 172 here 58236.172
236 


Insert offset folio 173 here 58236.173
237 


Insert offset folio 174 here 58236.174
238 


Insert offset folio 175 here 58236.175
239 


Insert offset folio 176 here 58236.176
240 


Insert offset folio 177 here 58236.177
241 


Insert offset folio 178 here 58236.178
242 


Insert offset folio 179 here 58236.179
243 


Insert offset folio 180 here 58236.180
244 


Insert offset folio 181 here 58236.181
245 


Insert offset folio 182 here 58236.182
246 


Insert offset folio 183 here 58236.183
247 


Insert offset folio 184 here 58236.184
248 


Insert offset folio 185 here 58236.185
249 


Insert offset folio 186 here 58236.186
250 


Insert offset folio 187 here 58236.187
251 


Insert offset folio 188 here 58236.188
252 


Insert offset folio 189 here 58236.189
253 


Insert offset folio 190 here 58236.190
254 


Insert offset folio 191 here 58236.191
255 


Insert offset folio 192 here 58236.192
256 


Insert offset folio 193 here 58236.193
257 


Insert offset folio 194 here 58236.194
258 


Insert offset folio 195 here 58236.195
259 


Insert offset folio 196 here 58236.196
260 


Insert offset folio 197 here 58236.197
261 


Insert offset folio 198 here 58236.198
262 


Insert offset folio 199 here 58236.199
263 


Insert offset folio 200 here 58236.200
264 


Insert offset folio 201 here 58236.201
265 


Insert offset folio 202 here 58236.202
266 


Insert offset folio 203 here 58236.203
267 


Insert offset folio 204 here 58236.204
268 


Insert offset folio 205 here 58236.205
269 


Insert offset folio 206 here 58236.206
270 


Insert offset folio 207 here 58236.207
271 


Insert offset folio 208 here 58236.208
272 


Insert offset folio 209 here 58236.209
273 


Insert offset folio 210 here 58236.210
274 


Insert offset folio 211 here 58236.211
275 


Insert offset folio 212 here 58236.212
276 


Insert offset folio 213 here 58236.213
277 


Insert offset folio 214 here 58236.214
278 


Insert offset folio 215 here 58236.215
279 


Insert offset folio 216 here 58236.216
280 

Æ 


Insert offset folio 217 here 58236.217