Enbridge misses oil cleanup deadline

MARSHALL, Mich. (WOOD) - Enbridge Energy has missed a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deadline to finish cleaning up oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River last summer.

24 Hour News 8 spoke with an EPA spokesman who said the company notified them on Monday that they would miss the deadline.

In July 2010, a broken pipeline poured more than 800,000 gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River and a nearby creek in Calhoun and Kalamazoo counties. The Enbridge pipeline stretches from Griffith, Ind., to Sarnia, Ontario.

Enbridge still has about 800 workers cleaning up oil along the river bottom and on the banks near Ceresco Dam in Calhoun County.

A company spokesman told 24 Hour News 8 the deadline was set in June, and since then an area where they have found submerged oil has grown.

Enbridge has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the cleanup effort.

Both Enbridge and EPA officials told 24 Hour News 8 they are working together to get the river back open, but Enbridge says it wants to do the job right, and that is taking longer than expected.