Enbridge, the company responsible for the biggest inland oil spill in American history in the Kalamazoo River, has been trying to expand their Clipper pipeline and double the amount of tar sands shipped through the Great Lakes. But since the pipeline crosses the Canadian border, the new construction needs a permit from the State Department.

But in an effort to avoid a public review they're instead adding new Clipper pipe on both sides of the border, and then a few miles out on either side, switching the tar sands over to a different pipeline that is already built, running the tar for a few miles across the border from Canada to the US, and then switching it back to the Clipper pipe to continue to the Great Lakes.

Enbridge quietly sent this plan to State, and someone in the bureaucracy quietly wrote them back and said, basically, ‘yup, looks fine to me.’ One of two things could be happening here:

One, a mid level bureaucrat has gone rogue, and is approving pipelines across the border with essentially no review or oversight from his bosses. That's bad. But the other option is worse: the State Department leadership has deliberately blown a loophole in federal law big enough to pass a tar sands pipeline through.

Send the State Department a message that this is unacceptable and blow this scheme wide open.