Enbridge oil line in Michigan nearly done

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LANSING, Mich., March 28 (UPI) -- Work on a replacement oil pipeline under the St. Clair River in Michigan is going "faster and better" than anticipated, a Michigan lawmaker said.

Crews from Enbridge pulled a 3,450-foot pipeline through a tunnel under the St. Clair River from Canada to the Michigan side in early March. Enbridge spokesman Joseph Martucci said the new pipeline was pressure tested last week. Oil from the old pipeline needs evacuation but the new line should be ready as early as June, The Times Herald newspaper in Port Huron, Mich., reports.

Line 6B of the Enbridge-operated Lakehead oil pipeline system ruptured in southern Michigan in July, spilling around 20,000 barrels of oil into area waterways.

U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., whose district lies near the river, raised concerns in August about a 12-inch dent in a section of the Lakehead system pipeline that runs under the St. Clair River.

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said in a restart plan for Line 6B that Enbridge needed to replace the damaged St. Clair leg within a year.

"It's really going faster and better, I think, than anybody could have anticipated," Miller was quoted by the newspaper as saying.