Larry Bell speaks out about Kalamazoo River oil spill in new video

KALAMAZOO, MI -- Bell's Brewery owner Larry Bell speaks about his experiences during the 2010 Kalamazoo River oil spill and its aftermath in a new video.

Bell, owner of Comstock-based Bell's Brewery, and others talk in the video about Enbridge's response to the spill.

The video was posted online Tuesday, May 23, nearly seven years after the July 2010 rupture of Enbridge Inc.'s Line 6B oil pipeline, which spilled more than 843,000 gallons of oil.

Bell says he didn't realize how big the spill was at first.

"The thing that breaks my heart is the first responders who got sick, when they went to the doctors, the doctors said what were you exposed to and they said I don't know because they won't tell us because they don't have to tell us because it's proprietary," Bell said in the video.

"Now when you talk about being a good corporate citizen, if you're not caring about people's health and you care more about your competition finding out about the proprietary chemical mix in your pipeline, things have gone wrong, in my opinion," Bell said.

The video was produced for the National Wildlife Federation.

It also features former U.S. Representative Mark Schauer, displaced homeowner John LaForge and acting executive director for the Kalamazoo River Watershed Council Dr. Kenneth Kornheiser.

In the video, the first of two parts, interviewees discuss the spill and how it impacted the area, and how Enbridge immediately handled the cleanup process.

Schauer said, following the spill, he met with EPA officials and talked about the spill, including Enbridge's response.

"Enbridge didn't address it as the true disaster with unimaginable implications including oil reaching Lake Michigan," Schauer said.

Shannon Gustafson, spokeswoman for Enbridge, sent the following statement in response to the video:

"Immediately following the Line 6B release in July 2010, Enbridge made a promise to the people of south-central Michigan to restore the area, including the Kalamazoo River and Talmadge Creek, as close as possible to its pre-spill condition. We continue to honor that promise. As a company, we have memorialized the Marshall release--to guide our decisions, and strengthen our resolve to prevent such an event from ever happening again."

National Wildlife Federation Great Lakes Regional Center said part two of the video, which focuses more on long-term impacts of the spill, will come out this week or next week.

Bell, whose brewery's production facility is in a business park in Comstock Township near the Kalamazoo River, has been a vocal critic of Enbridge since the spill.

In 2013, he successfully fought to prevent Enbridge from using space in the business park as a dredge pad as part of the river cleanup. In January 2017, Bell announced he was a group of business leaders pushing to have the government shutdown Enbridge Line 5 that runs under the Straits of Mackinac.

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