By Joel Brammeier, Alliance President & CEO

A decade ago, boosters of oil and gas drilling in the Great Lakes were confident that "it couldn't happen here."

On Tuesday, Michigan woke up to what is being called one of the Midwest's largest oil spills ever: a slow-streaming gush of reality in the form of an estimated 1 million gallons from an oil pipeline into a creek feeding the Kalamazoo River -- a river ultimately draining into a Lake Michigan freshwater estuary near Saugatuck and Douglas.

In 2001, the record of accidents, mishaps and poor enforcement convinced Great Lakes citizens that oil and gas drilling was, is and always would be a bum deal.

Though operations continue at a handful of grandfathered directional drilling wells in Michigan, state and federal laws banning new drilling are on the books. As the cleanup effort now moves forward in Michigan, it's clear this is no time to relax our vigilance on fossil fuel development.

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