The latest update on Line 5 must be prefaced, however, with a referral to the recording of the excellent webinar presented on November 18: Big Oil vs Big Water. The speakers featured in the webinar covered a lot of ground, historically, legally, and culturally, to explain the ongoing threat posed by the continued operation of Line 5. It’s well worth watching for the eloquence and passion of the speakers, who offer many compelling reasons to work to stop the tunnel and to shut down the pipeline, the most dangerous one in North America.
The webinar was timed to help boost participation in a letter-writing campaign to Phil Roos, the director of Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE), and MI Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who still have an opportunity to deny approval for tunnel construction. Opportunity #1 remains open: Public letter portal to Whitmer and Roos.
But a few days prior to the webinar, without any warning, the US Army Corps of Engineers announced a NEW (and not very satisfactory) alternative to the tunnel, which has thrown the whole tunnel approval process into question. This option would use horizontal directional drilling technology to create a borehole relatively close to the surface of the ground through which the pipeline would be pulled. If it sounds implausible for this to be feasible for traversing the Straits, you’re not alone in your reaction; Enbridge itself concluded in 2018 that it was not a practical alternative.
This new proposal has created opportunity #2: the chance to comment on this unexpected proposal to use horizontal direct drilling to create an enclosed pipeline beneath the straits. The public comment portal will remain open till Friday, Dec. 5; a related virtual public hearing will take place on Wednesday, Dec. 3.
For more information and relevant links, see this 11/21/2025 Bridge Magazine report by Kelly House. From House’s article:
“On Nov. 12, the Corps posted a “supplemental” impact statement describing the horizontal drilling option to a federal website, initiating a public comment window that closes Dec. 5. The agency has scheduled an online public comment session for Dec. 3 [1-4 PM] and is also accepting written comments.”
The links above offer as much information as is publicly available. There seems to be no requirement to register in advance to speak during the 12/3 hearing.
For a deeper analysis, see this blog post by Jeffrey Insko, Tomorrow Never Comes. (Insko, one of the panelists for the 11/18 webinar, is writing a book on the fight against Enbridge, a cause he has supported since he became directly impacted by Enbridge’s attempts to address the fallout from the Line 6B rupture in 2010 near Kalamazoo.)
If Insko is correct in suggesting that Enbridge really does not want to build a tunnel of any sort, but that it does want to continue operating Line 5 as it exists, then we do have our work cut out for us. Stopping the tunnel gains us relatively little until we succeed in shutting down Line 5 altogether.