by Mary Shesgreen
Enbridge recently held an open house about pipeline safety at the Holiday Inn in Elgin. They invited people by sending out postcards. We don’t know how they chose the recipients of those post cards, but we were concerned about the meeting for a number of reasons. Enbridge’s history of leaks and spills is really quite shocking, and we doubted that they would tell the public about it. Also, we felt that they were using the forum as advertising for themselves and their product, and that they would not tell the downside of the presence of oil pipelines in Illinois.
So, a couple of us who live in Elgin went and sat in the lobby of the hotel, and handed out flyers to people as they emerged from that open house. Most people took our flyer and said they were glad to get the other side of the story. Some engaged with us in conversations.
We were glad to have done this, and are considering organizing our own public meeting about the safety and the need for oil pipelines in our community.
