The view from Alcona County, “First Of The 83”, turns toward the Straits of Mackinac this month.

The South Fork Dam created a lake for rich people to build cottages, high above working-class Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The dam burst in 1889, sending a Mississippi-sized wall of water through Johnstown, sweeping the city away — its buildings and 2,200 people.

HMS Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable. You know what happened there.

British Petroleum designed its Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to go farther down to find oil than any previous platform. In 2010, after a decade of service, while drilling a well 18,000 feet below the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico, Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank, killing 11 crew members. The ensuing leak released almost 5 million barrels of crude oil in 87 days, from Texas to Florida.

The list of failsafe projects that failed is long. Should a new one be added in northern Michigan?

Enbridge Inc., of Canada, operates a pipeline called Line 5 that gushes petroleum products (all kinds of liquid goop) under the Straits of Mackinac. The state granted an easement for it in 1953, a decade before building the Mackinac Bridge. The pipeline, 645 miles long, transports the black gold of western Canada’s oil sands from Superior, Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario, across from Port Huron. The 4-mile section beneath the Bridge is long past its expiration date, so Enbridge wants to replace it.

In 2018, Gov. Rick Snyder inexplicably granted permission to build a new segment, encased in concrete in a tunnel drilled through bedrock.

What could go wrong?

Recently, a ship — probably one of Enbridge’s own maintenance vessels — dragged its anchor across Line 5, tugging it off of its mooring. Thank God Line 5 did not rupture! Imagine millions of gallons of nasty liquid petroleum fouling the fresh water of Lake Huron.

Had that happened, it would have been difficult, but not impossible, to stop the flow.

Now, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has moved to revoke Enbridge’s easement. Enbridge is fighting in court.

If Enbridge wins its lawsuits and drills a tunnel through bedrock for a new pipeline, they will make possible a catastrophic scenario. As demonstrated by the Johnstown Flood, HMS Titanic, and Deepwater Horizon — and the Hindenberg, 3-Mile Island, the Fukushima nuclear reactor, etc. — stuff happens.

Here’s an overdue disaster to consider. Envision the New Madrid Fault of Tennessee/Kentucky generating an earthquake that registers 9 on the Richter Scale, as it does every 200 years or so. The last time it shook the landscape, in a series of temblors in 1810-11, it made the Mississippi River run north and rang church bells in Boston, 1,300 miles away.

Mackinac is about 600 miles from the New Madrid Fault.

If the bedrock beneath the Straits heaved during an epic earthquake and cracked Pipeline 5 in its concrete tunnel, a hundred feet below the lakebed, how could such a leak ever be repaired?

An editorial in The Detroit News, reprinted in this newspaper on 28 November, could double as an Enbridge news release. It made Line 5 sound indispensable to the state, and asserted that the new pipeline-in-a-tunnel idea would bring “the risk of a damaging spill to near zero.”

Says who?

Enbridge says so, but they are alone in that assessment.

As reported on the front page of The Alpena News on 29 September, a coalition of environmental, business, and tribal organizations called Oil & Water Don’t Mix pointed out flaws in the Enbridge proposal. It only makes sense if the risks are remote and the benefits are great. Neither is true. The benefit of Line 5 for Michiganders is nil, unless they own stock in Enbridge or if they are propane-burning Yupers.

The risk is incalculable.

A spill would coat the coastline with the same tarry slime that Deepwater Horizon spewed onto the shores of The Gulf. It would blacken the beaches of Lakes Michigan and Huron. And it would cause our regional economy to collapse.

According to The Detroit News, “opposition to the tunnel is based less on concerns about a spill and more on an objection by renewable energy advocates to the use of fossil fuels.” Good point! We have to shift away from fossil fuels, which cause environmental contamination, to renewable energy sources. That’s probably a stronger argument against Line 5 than the risk of a rupture that permanently fouls the Great Lakes!

If we burn the rest of the Canadian oil sands, which Line 5 facilitates, it will be Game Over on climate change. There is enough carbon in that filthy soil to doom our species. The planet will be fine — but too hot for humans. Jellyfish and cockroaches will endure and prosper.

Humans will go extinct …

Line 5 is a dangerously myopic, misguided idea. Citizens of northern Michigan should oppose it!

Eric Paul Roorda is a professor, historian, lecturer, author, and illustrator. He has called Alcona County home for 50 years.