Michigan governor: Resources brought by pipeline company, EPA to fight oil spill ‘inadequate’

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Mich. gov.: Spill cleanup resources ‘inadequate’

BATTLE CREEK, Mich. — Michigan’s governor says efforts by the company responsible for a more than 800,000-gallon oil spill making its way down the Kalamazoo River are “wholly inadequate.”

Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s remarks Wednesday evening in a teleconference came as a state police official who conducted a flyover of the site said the oil had spread past a key point in the river upstream of Kalamazoo.

Tom Sands is deputy state director for emergency management and homeland security. He says he saw oil across Morrow Lake and a light sheen past a dam a few miles downstream from Battle Creek.

Earlier, Alberta-based Enbridge Inc. said it was doubling the number of workers sent to help contain and clean the spill. The company and EPA postponed a news conference for Wednesday evening.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

BATTLE CREEK, Mich. (AP) — The company responsible for an oil spill making its way down the Kalamazoo River said Wednesday it had redoubled its efforts to clean up the mess, and state and local officials vowed not to let the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico overshadow their cleanup efforts.

Enbridge Inc., whose pipeline leaked more than 800,000 gallons of oil into Talmadge Creek, which runs into the river, said it was doubling the number of workers sent to help contain and clean the large spill. The Calgary, Alberta-based company had about 200 employees and contractors working on the spill on Tuesday. The Environmental Protection Agency also was bringing in additional contractors, likely pushing the overall work force on the spill Wednesday over 400 people.

As of late Tuesday, the Monday spill near Marshall had killed fish and coated wildlife as it made its way westward about 35 miles downstream past Battle Creek, a city of 52,000 residents about 110 miles west of Detroit. Company officials planned to update the containment and cleanup progress at a news conference later Wednesday.

The spill was a drop in the bucket compared to the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but it is still quite large and government and company officials have vowed not to let the Gulf spill diminish from their cleanup efforts in Michigan.

The amount of oil spilled in Michigan would be enough to fill enough 1 gallon jugs, lined side by side, to stretch for nearly 70 miles. It would also fill a wall-in football field, including the end zones, with a 14-foot-high pool of oil.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm has declared a state of disaster for Calhoun County and potentially affected areas along the river, and President Barack Obama called Granholm to offer federal support.

“The Gulf spill has raised awareness about oil spills and the damage they can do and helped make people more interested,” said Dave Petroelje, west Michigan director of the environmental group Clean Water Action.

State officials said they don’t believe the oil will spread past a dam at Morrow Lake, which is a few miles downstream from Battle Creek and upstream of Kalamazoo, the largest city in the region. Officials don’t believe the oil could make it to Lake Michigan, some 80 miles west, where coastal communities are heavily dependent on summer tourism.

On Wednesday, an oily reflective sheen could be seen in patches along the Kalamazoo, and the affected area still had a strong odor, although not as strong as on Tuesday.

Anil Kulkarni, a mechanical engineering professor at Penn State University, said containing and cleaning the spill quickly was vital to the river’s ecology. Snails, frogs, muskrats and even birds eat, live and nest on or near the riverbank.

“The river banks are nearby. It has more potential to inflict damage because of the proximity to land. Anything that comes in contact with oil is going to be affected badly. It prevents the natural life of species, whether it’s collecting food or anything else.”

Enbridge CEO Patrick D. Daniel said Wednesday the company has made “significant progress,” though he had no update on a possible cause, cost or length of cleanup.

“We still have a long way to go in terms of cleanup,” he said. Enbridge said it hasn’t had trouble securing booms needed to work on the spill, a possible concern because of the resources already committed to the cleanup in the Gulf.

Enbridge affiliates have previously been cited for skirting environmental regulations in the Great Lakes region.

Houston-based Enbridge Energy Co. spilled almost 19,000 gallons of crude oil onto Wiscon’s Nemadji River in 2003. Another 189,000 gallons of oil spilled at the company’s terminal two miles from Lake Superior. Most of that was contained.

In 2007, two spills released about 200,000 gallons of crude in northern Wisconsin as Enbridge was expanding a 320-mile pipeline. The company also was accused of violating Wisconsin permits designed to protect water quality during work in and around wetlands, rivers and streams, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said. The violations came during construction of a 321-mile, $2 billion oil pipeline across that state. Enbridge agreed to pay $1.1 million in 2009.

Granholm said Tuesday night that she wasn’t satisfied with the company’s initial response to the spill. The leak in the 30-inch pipeline, which was built in 1969 and carries about 8 million gallons of oil daily from Griffith, Ind., to Sarnia, Ontario, was detected early Monday.

“From my perspective, the response has been anemic,” she said then.

Calhoun County officials said they weren’t concerned about the municipal water systems supplying Marshall and Battle Creek, but that water would be tested.

Enbridge estimated that about 819,000 gallons of oil spilled into Talmadge Creek. But state officials were told during a company briefing Tuesday that an estimated 877,000 gallons spilled, said Mary Dettloff, spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

The river already faced major pollution issues. An 80-mile segment of the river that begins at Morrow Lake and five miles of a tributary, Portage Creek, have unsafe levels of PCBs and were placed on the federal Superfund list of high-priority hazardous waste sites in 1990. The Kalamazoo site also includes four landfills and several defunct paper mills.

Associated Press Writers David Runk and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed to this report.