Renegade Polluter Pays Fine For Wisconsin Violations

Does the name Endridge ring a bell?

They're the folks whose corporate network of companies and pipelines and other energy interests has had multiple pipeline spills in Wisconsin, recently polluted the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, and had a gasoline pipe break near Chicago that contaminated the ground and ran up the price of fuel here in Wisconsin.

Some details here.

And more from Midwest Environmental Advocates.

Now we learn that an arm of Enbridge has reached a settlement and will pay a fine for clean air violations at its Superior, WI facility, along with even more basic misdeeds there that date back nine years, like building and operating the facility without permits.

How do you miss that sort of stuff?

Yeah, the fine was one million bucks - -  but to a company the size of the Enbridge uberparent, it's a minor cost of business probably recovered in a matter of hours, I'd guessetimate.

[Note: I looked it up. In the last quarter, Big Enbridge in Canada netted, even in a bad patch, about $336 million in US dollars, or about $4 million a day. $1 million is about six hours profit. Chump change.]

Remember all this when you hear that the private sector that makes all the right calls while the government can't even deliver the mail, and that we need to move the private business model and mindset into government while reducing all that red tape and regulation so the private sector can do its thing unfettered.

If it's the Enbridge model, give me the public sector regulators every time.