Michigan Activist Skateboards into Enbridge Tar Sands Pipeline

24 June 2013, Folks in Michi­gan took two actions today to help kick off the Fear­less Sum­mer week of action against ener­gy extrac­tion.

24 June 2013, Folks in Michi­gan took two actions today to help kick off the Fear­less Sum­mer week of action against ener­gy extrac­tion. From Fear­less Sum­mer: “The Detroit Coali­tion Against Tar Sands (DCATS) turned away trucks adding pet­coke (an extra-dirty coal-like waste prod­uct of tar sands refin­ing) to an already-mas­sive pile along­side the Detroit Riv­er. In Kala­ma­zoo, a mem­ber of Michi­gan Coali­tion Against Tar Sands (MI CATS) skate­board­ed deep into the same Enbridge pipeline which spilled a mil­lion gal­lons of tar sands into the Kala­ma­zoo riv­er three years ago.”

UPDATE: Chris has been arrest­ed and is in need of bail funds. Please donate to his bail fund here.

Ear­ly this morn­ing Chris “The Wham­mer” Wah­moff climbed inside a seg­ment of Enbridge’s Line 6B Pipe south of Mar­shall, Michi­gan, to halt recon­struc­tion of the line. Chris used a skate­board to slide-crawl his way deep into the pipe, where he has said he is pre­pared to stay until at least 5:00 PM tonight. Chris is part of the Michi­gan Coali­tion Against Tar Sands (MI-CATS), a grass­roots group that seeks to stop all trans­porta­tion and refin­ing of tar sands in Michi­gan, and advo­cates against tar sands pro­duc­tion and trans­porta­tion every­where.

Chris is posi­tioned less than half a mile from where the Enbridge Line 6B pipeline broke in 2010, spilling bitu­mi­nous sands oil into the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er. The oil was being trans­port­ed through the pipeline from Cana­da to the Unit­ed States. Recent water sam­ples have shown that the riv­er is still con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, some three years after the spill occurred, yet Enbridge is already at work recon­struct­ing this stretch of the line. Chris’s action is an attempt to halt con­struc­tion, and bring atten­tion to the fact that Enbridge is mov­ing on with this dan­ger­ous project with­out hav­ing cleaned up the spill from the pre­vi­ous line.

Police and fire­fight­ers are on the scene, but are report­ed­ly hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time fig­ur­ing out how to remove Chris from the pipe. Fire fight­ers have said they are wor­ried about Chris get­ting enough oxy­gen, and have a fan blow­ing into the pipe to give him fresh air.

Chris climbed into the pipe at the cross­roads of the Enbridge Line 6B and Inter­state 69, a loca­tion described as “poet­ic” by peo­ple on the ground.

MI-CATS has been able to stay in con­tact with Chris, who is doing fine and has plen­ty of food and water.

MI-CATS is hold­ing an action camp in South­west Michi­gan  from July 19 – 22 to gath­er sup­port and stop tar sands. Check out their face­book page here to get involved. You can also donate to their wepay here.

P.S. Today is also Chris’s 35th birth­day. Hap­py Birth­day, Chris!