Calhoun county disaster plan lacks content on pipeline dangers

MARSHALL — Thousands of pages of documents released by Calhoun County and reviewed by Michigan Messenger reveal that the county’s disaster plans contained no in-depth plans in the event of a pipeline incident in the county.

While the county Disaster Mitigation Plan contains only one reference to pipelines, buried in a appendix, an accompanying pipeline industry manual about responding to pipeline incidents directs county or other officials to call the company involved and let them handle the issue. Emergency responders are directed to keep people from the area to avoid exposure to chemicals.

The Disaster Mitigation Plan was prepared in 2005. It identifies various major hazards for the county, including severe weather, truck accidents involving toxic chemicals, and even earthquakes. The plan also lists various critical assets in the county including schools, businesses, and hospitals. None of the three major pipelines in the county are listed in the critical assets.

“I can’t speak to why,” said Calhoun County Administrator Kelli Scott. “It’s something that has to be reviewed. I am sure that is one of the things that will stick out.”

Scott said she could not explain why the pipelines were not included in the list of infrastructure and assets for the county in the plan, noting she was not working for the county at the time the plan was completed.

In the end, however, Scott says she is not sure having the pipelines in the plan would have made a difference in the way the county responded. Scott admitted the first 24 hours of the response was difficult for officials because the magnitude of the event was difficult to grasp. That confusion did not end until after the EPA and the Coast Guard stepped in and developed the Unified Command structure. The structure has been described as militaristic.

Calhoun County Clerk Anne Norlander said she had to review her information to explain why pipelines were not in the mitigation plan, but she never returned follow up calls. She was listed as one of several officials interviewed for the plan development.

Despite the fact that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ranks Calhoun county as one of the lowest potentials for an earthquake in the U.S., the county’s disaster plan included contingencies for a 6.5 magnitude earthquake — but provided no planning for the fracture of one of the pipelines that might well result from such a catastrophic event.

The issue comes to the forefront as the county prepares for a task force to review the response to July’s oil spill incident.

In July, a pipeline owned and operated by Enbridge Energy Partners out of Canada, ruptured spewing over one million gallons of crude oil into a two mile stretch of Talmadge Creek and 38 miles of the Kalamazoo river.

The pipeline was put back in service late last month, but the Environmental Protection Agency, state environmental officials and Enbridge and its contractors continue to clean up remaining oil, including sheen and submerged oil deposits in the river.

Messenger asked all the Calhoun County Commissioners for comment for this story, but they referred questions to Scott. One commissioner called the situation “a political hot potato” when declining to discuss the mitigation plan.

Scott said she was uncertain why that commissioner would say that, but indicated those officials are currently in campaigns to retain their seats. She also said they may be worried about discussing information involved in the ongoing National Transportation Safety Board investigation.

While the county has no disaster mitigation plans in place involving pipelines and pipeline incidents, Enbridge Energy Partners say they have hosted trainings for both local responders, as well as local elected officials.

Those trainings are in two separate categories: Meetings and hands-on events where booms are deployed to show officials how emergency response happens in the event of spills or ruptures.

The most recent field event was in 2002 and was attended by some Calhoun officials, says Terri Larson, an Enbridge spokesperson. But in general, she says, the company has a difficult time rounding up local officials for such trainings.

“We plan for one full-scale response exercise and one table-top exercise in the Chicago Region each year and rotate those exercises among the pipeline maintenance areas (PLM areas) in the Region,” Larson said. “Looks like our last full-scale boom deployment exercise in Calhoun County was in 2002. Emergency officials are invited to participate in the full-scale exercises.”

Scott says those trainings need to happen more often. She noted that many of the procedures necessary to respond to an oil spill are applicable to other events, and by practicing those the county can and would be more prepared in the event of another disaster.

“I think there needs to be regular refreshers for all these hazards,” Scott said. “Pipelines probably weren’t a priority before. There definitely needs to be training. And for us I would say every two years because there are elections every two years.”