(crickets chirping) (birds chirping) (ominous instrumental music) - [Reporter] Oil.

Oil.

Oil.

A lot of it.

Possibly the biggest discovery in history.

- [Reporter] But how does one harvest and deliver a product so plentiful without transportation?

The answer was found, a giant pipeline.

- Two men are on a journey through Michigan Waters to bring attention to the threat of Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline.

- [Reporter] Four miles of 20-inch pipe must be towed across the Straits of Mackinac in Northern Michigan, underwater.

- This is the worst place that you could possibly have a pipeline.

it's over six decades old and some say it's another disaster waiting to happen.

Now, hold tight and watch for the explosion.

(dynamite exploding) (explosion rumbling) (water splashing) (debris crumbling into water) (ocean rumbling) (relaxing instrumental music) - [Chris] I think it's truly one of the most amazing places on Earth.

You can look out from the top of a 400-foot sand dune with pine trees surrounding you, to perfectly turquoise clear water that's fresh, not an ounce of salt, and realize that you're in the middle of the country, you're in Michigan.

(relaxing instrumental music) - [Alan] I look out on these waters and I go, my God, you know, we have 20% of the world's surface fresh water in our backyard.

That is freaking amazing.

(relaxing instrumental music) (birds chirping) - It is tough to say no to William.

William just gets these grand ideas in his head.

He was the one that came up with the idea to paddle 425 miles.

(relaxing guitar music) - The Great Lakes in Northern Michigan were kind of the first freedom I had.

I'm from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and grew up and actually started to love the water mostly where my father and his family used to go up in Minocqua, Wisconsin.

He was part of the Min-Aqua Bats when he was young.

They went off ski jumps, they barefooted, they made pyramids, all for a crowd.

(crowd cheering) So we all did that.

We all tried what he did, sometimes for better or the worse.

(boy screeching) (water splashing) - [Steve] William, you be nice to your sister out there when you're skiing double.

- Ok. (water splashing) - Go.

(water splashing) (people chuckling) (people clapping hands) - [Mom] That was a back smacker, yes.

- [William] We couldn't end up making that drive 11, 12 hours from where we were, so we started coming up to Northern Michigan.

And my dad's love for the water was kind of instilled in us in all the water sports and the activities he did.

I spent most of my childhood coming up here and then into high school and adulthood, and that was when I first got the freedom to go wherever to do the things that I loved.

So let's get stuff sacks full of food.

This is only a thousand calories.

(plastic rustling) So what are we trying to hit?

At least two and a half thousand?

- Yeah.

- [William] Oh, Nutty Bars.

- Dude, these nutty bars are gonna be nutty soup.

(William laughing) - They really are.

- I've known William for a really, really long time.

(upbeat instrumental music) We were always up in Michigan during the summer, so we spent the whole summers together.

- [William] We mountain bike, we wake surf, we ski, we play tennis, we do all these things and usually it's around each other.

- Yeah, we've kind of been a little sports adventure duo ever since probably like 1st, 2nd grade.

(water splashing) Michigan's just a super special place in our heart and it's been a really big part of our upbringing, and everything I love and everything that makes me me is definitely influenced by Lake Michigan.

(relaxing instrumental music) Michigan in general has a very complicated relationship with its freshwater.

It has more coastline than any state in the Lower 48, and the longest freshwater coastline in the world.

But yet, there's been a complicated history of protecting that freshwater, and a lot of the damage that has occurred in the Great Lakes has been caused by decisions that humans have made.

- Our family's plan is 100% to be coming up here forever.

And so if there's a place that we can't return back to that fulfills my expectations of the past and what I loved and I can't give that to my family in the future, that would devastate me.

That would be terrible.

And so that's why we kind of decided, well let's do something.

Let's not sit on our hands.

(upbeat instrumental music) - So I think we try to be on the water by 6:00 a.m.. - Okay, and what is that stretch again?

Is that four miles?

- Four miles.

- Okay.

We are about to embark on a 425-mile standup paddle journey down the coast of Lake Michigan and up the Grand River.

Our journey starts on Mackinac Island, a jewel of the Great Lakes and a place currently being threatened by an aging oil pipeline.

Our path then weaves its way through the Straits of Mackinac and down the east coast of Lake Michigan.

Along the way we'll navigate open water crossings, visit historical fishing villages, and pass national landmarks, such as the Sleeping Bear Dunes, the Manitou Islands, and hundreds of miles of untouched coastline.

Once we hit Grand Haven, we enter the Grand River and paddle upstream, through Grand Rapids and eventually land in Lansing, the state capitol and the epicenter of the administration that can enact policy to protect the Great Lakes.

(upbeat instrumental music) As crazy of an idea as this was, we wanted to do it in part because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could.

- 425 miles total.

- [William] To our knowledge, nobody has paddled this path before.

More importantly though, there was a growing feeling that these lakes wouldn't always be around, at least in the way we've grown up with them.

- [Interviewer] You ever done a paddle this long before?

- No, I've definitely never done a paddle this long before.

- [Interviewer] Are you anxious about the trip?

- Very, very anxious about the trip.

For one, the longest paddle we did was 50 miles and we were supposed to go 70.

(relaxing piano music) So here's the deal, even though we grew up in and around these Great Lakes, we've never really done anything like this before.

A few years ago we attempted a shorter 70-mile paddle and only made it about 50 miles before we had to call it quits.

(stream gushing) - [Chris] We got horrible weather.

It was the worst June storm that people have seen in a really long time.

- The wind's picking up.

(waves gushing) - Along the way, we got a notification that the Line 5 pipeline had been damaged and that it was being forced to shut down temporarily.

It kind of struck us then and there that this is kind of a ticking time bomb and something that's really threatening our favorite place in the world.

(gravel clicking) (relaxing instrumental music) - Line 5 is an oil pipeline that originates from the tar sands of Canada and curves its way through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and then that's where it crosses the Straits of Mackinac, the piece of water where the Mackinac Bridge is between UP and the tip of the mitt of Michigan.

After it goes through there, it goes down the state of Michigan, back into Canada at Sarnia.

- It was a big surprise to all of us that there was a pipeline running through the Great Lakes.

It was largely forgotten.

When it was installed in 1953, it was a different time.

They didn't think like hey do today about environmental impacts.

about environmental impacts.

This is a pipeline that pushes 23 million gallons of oil a day, and it's run by Enbridge, the same company that dumped 1.1 million gallons the same company that dumped 1.1 million gallons into the Kalamazoo River.

- [Reporter] They've just declared a state of emergency.

This may be the worst oil spill ever in the Midwest.

- They had a six-foot gash in that pipeline that spilled a million gallons for 17 hours without Enbridge being aware of it.

And ultimately, 40 miles of the river system were completely destroyed.

- [Reporter] There is no escaping the oil.

You can smell it everywhere.

- [Reporter] I'm told that the chemicals in here are very, very dangerous and that folks in the area should be very careful.

- People were physically sick.

There were hundreds of people living along the river that were being exposed to really toxic chemicals and had not been evacuated.

The destruction was extremely emotional to witness.

It was devastating at all levels.

(somber instrumental music) It was also just shocking to learn that when there is a massive oil spill, Enbridge is the party in charge in calling all the shots.

- [Reporter] The NTSB report puts Enbridge squarely in the cross hairs.

A portion of pipe Enbridge identified as a potential problem five years earlier and didn't fix.

- We were in the middle of all of that when Enbridge actually announced publicly that they planned to increase pressure on Line 5, a pipeline that's 15 years older than the one that had just ruptured.

We were having so many red flags come up and we decided we had to write the Sunken Hazard Report and we had to raise attention to the fact that this pipeline really needs some strict scrutiny, because of its location, but also because of the age and the company operating the pipeline.

(ominous instrumental music) One of the requests that we were making to Enbridge is to show us the actual physical pipeline in the water.

That went unanswered, and so we decided we'll hire a dive team and go see what the pipelines look like.

(ominous instrumental music) There were huge sections of the pipeline that were not supported but they were raised off the bottom, which is a violation of the easement.

We also determined that there's huge aquatic growth in random large piles of debris that are just placed around the pipeline, possibly for some support.

And we learned that the protective coating has been peeling away and continues to peel away at a rate that Enbridge cannot maintain.

- The main issue around Line 5 is the four mile or so portion of it that flows through the Straits of Mackinac, which is where Lake Michigan flows into Lake Huron.

- There's not really another place like it in the world.

It's a five-mile-wide stretch of water and the currents change directions 180 degrees, roughly every one to three days.

- It's the largest exchange of fresh water anywhere in the world, far greater than even that of Niagara Falls.

- This is one of the busiest lanes of shipping traffic in the entire Great Lakes.

It's a commercial epicenter.

- Huge barges go through there, and twice now there have been discoveries of major anchor strikes that have damaged the pipeline or the infrastructure around the pipeline.

(ominous instrumental music) - There have been a lot of studies to kind of evaluate what an oil spill would look like in the Straits.

And modelers at the University of Michigan put together about 810 different simulations based on the currents.

When you look at the study, you see that over 700 miles of Huron and Michigan are vulnerable to an oil spill risk.

- According to many, many experts, it's probably the worst place, definitely in the Great Lakes, maybe even the world for an oil pipeline to burst.

Six months out of the year, there's a foot of ice that covers the entire Straits of Mackinac.

- They say during the winter, what they would like to do is to poke a big hole in the ice, hope all the oil gathers there, and then light it on fire.

If Line 5 were to break, Mackinac Island, which is kind of symbolic of the tourism industry in Michigan, would be pretty much gone.

- You think about Mackinac Island, people from all over the world love and treasure and talk about, it's right in the middle of the path of an oil spill.

If that pipeline were to spill, it would just devastate that island.

- There couldn't be more of a contrast between being on Mackinac Island which is kind of this idyllic, Pleasantville of a place, Victorian homes, no cars, beautiful horse-drawn carriages trotting down the street, tourist families loving life, and then just knowing offshore, not more than eight or so miles, there's these two pipelines that have the potential to really end the island if they were to break.

I don't think anybody would be champing at the bit to get out to Mackinac Island if there was oil washing up on shore.

(ship horn blowing in distance) (tense instrumental music) "Status as of 5:07 a.m., all clear, have a pleasant trip.

There are no significant weather conditions to report."

- The Straits of Mackinac have been explained to us numerous times that they are turbulent and they have unpredictable movement of the water, winds, that you can't really plan ahead.

- [Chris] It's really the only section of the trip that we have to head directly west, and the prevailing winds on Lake Michigan usually come from the west.

- [William] If you're on a paddleboard, your body's a sail.

Whichever ways the wind blowing is really dictating most of your movement.

So, we have to make sure we're waking up early, that we're getting out there when there's no wind, when there's no movement of the water.

- [Chris] Unless we get lucky weather-wise, it's gonna be a lot of picking and choosing our times, early morning, late evenings, whatever it may be.

(tense instrumental music) (birds chirping) We got down to the harbor at Mackinac, literally couldn't see more than maybe a hundred feet.

- [William] See the fog's rolling in.

- I don't think we can go if we can't see the bridge from here, or even see that island from here.

- [William] I could go.

- No.

- It's gonna be hard to figure out where.

(ship horn blowing) And all of a sudden a huge horn honks and then we're seeing a ghost ship come out of the fog right outside the harbor of Mackinac.

- Better safe than hit by a freighter.

- That is common vernacular.

(relaxing instrumental music) - [Chris] Eventually the fog did clear and we could see our heading, which was the Mackinac Bridge and everything lined up as we planned it to.

(water trickling) (relaxing instrumental music) - [William] I cannot believe that after a year, and planning, figuring out the logistics, that we are here with good friends and somehow trying to make this journey.

Never done anything like this.

(relaxing instrumental music) If we look this way, we've got probably another three to four miles until we get to the bridge.

But we couldn't ask for better weather once the fog cleared.

- When you're up close and personal with that water, you can feel something tangibly different.

The water kind of has an odd movement to it.

There is some feeling up there that this is a special place and a really powerful place.

Knowing that Line 5 exists there, coupling the threat of Line 5 with the powerful feeling of nature we had, just really drove home that this is a horrible place for an oil spill to happen.

- As we worked our way through the Straits and you cross underneath the Mackinac Bridge, you see this thing that is ungodly high, that spans about five miles of the Straits of Mackinac.

And then you think about these pipelines that are growing old underneath the water and the land and could rupture at any moment.

When we're paddling across it, you can't help but think that there's this ticking time bomb.

- If Line 5 were to break, I don't think it would just be crystal clear blue waters or fisheries that'd be gone, I think personally it'd be part of me that's also gone.

So much of who I am and what makes me me is memories and experiences that I have on the Great Lakes.

People don't properly understand the spiritual and emotional connection and value that people have when it comes to natural resources.

(upbeat instrumental music) - Okay, we are recording and this is my first video journal.

We did about 23 miles.

That's the longest one-day paddle I have ever had.

- All in all, a hugely experiential day, a hugely awesome day, a day that makes you appreciate the Lakes.

We met up with Nathan Wright and his friend, Dusty, who are leaders in the Native American community.

And we had been in discussions with Nathan for a while, but this wasn't planned at all.

We just both happened to meet him at McGulpin Point.

He was doing a traditional water ceremony.

(ceremonial whistle blowing) - So the reason why this is important to us, the waters, especially the Straits of Mackinac, is because this is where our beginning began.

(relaxing instrumental music) Mackinac Island, which we call Michilimackinac, is where the first land came into existence.

So this area is extremely sacred to us.

- I have been fishing on the Straits of Mackinac my whole life and I was taught by my great uncles and they were taught by their great uncles, right here in the Straits of Mackinac.

- We obviously have a responsibility to protect this.

I'm a wild forager for herbal medicines that I make that are traditions that have been passed down to me.

And if these lakes were affected by an oil spill, I would not be able to do that.

- Nathan jumped in the water and said, "Water is life."

and kind of projected.

- Water is life.

- And held his hand up and it's true, water is the basis of life.

And being out here and looking out at this water, it's really inspiring how it plays such a large role in their culture and their identity.

(waves trickling) - [Nathan] To me, nature changes you.

The more you're out in it, it actually changes the course of your life.

I mean, I used to make six figures in Minneapolis 'cause I worked for corporate America, everything.

I left it all to come back here.

(relaxing instrumental music) (birds chirping) I own my own business, Herbal Lodge, and I do wild foraging with that.

And because I do that, I have a lot more time to think about Indigenous rights and to understand them better because I'm practicing them.

- The 12 recognized Native American tribes in Michigan each have treaty rights that guarantee their right to hunt, fish and gather throughout the ceded territory, which they ceded in order for Michigan to become a state.

It's almost like we have to do the things that are in the treaty rights to maintain our sovereignty with the federal government.

We say we have a responsibility to be out here.

So while we're out here we gotta care for things.

We have to be careful.

We have to not pollute.

We have to be respectful.

We have to put our tobacco down when we take something.

To us, it's common sense.

Logically, we don't want anything polluted, but if things get polluted for us as a people, this could be a threat to our sovereignty, a threat to our existence.

So if we see something wrong such as a pipeline that's underneath the Straits that shouldn't be there because it could leak, it's our responsibility to say something about it.

Enbridge is going from Canada to Canada and we're getting very little of that, and they were smart enough to figure out, we don't want this on our land 'cause it might leak.

We'll talk to those Americans.

They'll let us put a pipeline through, and we did.

(relaxing instrumental music) - This pipeline was put into place back in the '50s, before there were EPA standards and without consultation from the tribes whose land they crossed by treaty.

- [William] At construction, Line 5 was built to last about 50 years.

It is now 70 years old.

- Folks started researching and looking into Line 5 and that's really how the Oil and Water Don't Mix coalition started, with the goal of organizing groups from across the state of Michigan, including the Indigenous tribes.

(Native Americans chanting) Their opposition has really fueled the fire for the rest of us.

- The organizations that signed on all agreed.

We are activist organizations that are gonna take this to the people.

We're gonna hold our elected officials accountable.

We're gonna do the legal work and figure out how this can possibly be shut down.

- Can't drink oil.

- Can't drink oil.

- Keep it in the soil.

Pipelines are not shut down in this country.

That's not a thing that happens.

The idea that we were gonna take on a fight to shut down Line 5 was kind of the impossible dream.

(waves swishing) - As we made our way down the northwest coast of Michigan, we've already passed Wilderness State Park and crossed Little Traverse Bay.

So far it's been smooth sailing with warm, sunny days.

And as we arrived in Charlevoix, we've covered nearly 75 miles.

I love the fact that you can get up here to Michigan, you can have fun on the water and kind of get taken back in time, especially in these kind of remote places.

Another 13 miles, baby.

I think we're getting a little bit spoiled with some of the winds we've had.

The only thing I have to say there is the back's a little tight.

- Today was an awesome day.

It was a little choppy coming outta Charlevoix, but then as soon as we turned the corner by the cement factory, the wind was really with us and started to die down and it was just a really scenic paddle.

(relaxing instrumental music) (fire crackling) And this is by far the best beach we have been to.

Tomorrow, we plan to head for Grand Traverse Bay and head for the Leelanau Peninsula, specifically.

(relaxing instrumental music) (relaxing guitar music) My connection to Michigan comes all through my mom's side.

My great-grandpa built a fishing cabin up on Lake Skegemog in Northern Michigan in the 1940s, and my YaYa or my Grandma still lives there now.

My family's been going up to the Lakes in Northern Michigan the first day we can in the summer till the last day we have to leave in the summer.

I think the first time I stand up paddled was when I was probably 10 or 12.

It was kind of like you're walking on water and fighting the waves and being in the wind.

I just loved it.

And so probably when I was 19, my mom saw an ad in the paper for a local paddleboard race.

Kind of just blind I went into it and ended up getting 10th or 12th in that race.

I was kind of hooked and so I looked up the schedule for the Midwest paddle tour and seeing what the next events were that were kind of around me, and there was one called the Traverse City Waterman.

So I kind of put it down in my mind, like, all right, I'm gonna win it.

And so every single day I paddled five miles and ran three miles.

And so I ended up entering the surf division, just 'cause of the board I had at the time, and did end up winning it which was awesome.

And so that kind of just ignited my love for paddling even more.

- He not only is a far stronger paddler than me, but he'll be somebody that will be pushing our pace, will be keeping us on track.

But he's also somebody who's probably gonna outrun me and not look back.

(William chuckling) (relaxing guitar music) Today was a huge day.

I'm feeling a bit worked but in a good way.

I mean, it was an awesome to be able to get 28 miles and get all the way down to Leland.

- [William] This is just an entire town that was kind of built on the fisheries there.

- Fishtown is a historic fishing village.

Fishing has always been a mainstay of Leland, and Fishtown is one of the few fishing villages still existing today.

(sea birds squawking) - [Chris] The next day we met with Nels Carlson, to learn more about commercial fishing and invasive species in Lake Michigan.

- Carlson's is a, we call it a commercial fishery, but it's really a commercial fish processing facility.

We've certainly seen the rise in some species, the decline in others.

(relaxing instrumental music) - [Chris] For most of our existence, the interconnected Great Lakes were closed off from the ocean and invasive species.

But the construction of shipping canals in the 1800s opened the door.

Of all the invasive species in the Great Lakes, it's a zebra and quagga mussels that have had thebiggest impact.

(pensive instrumental music) - What didn't appear to me in the beginning of this trip was that these waters and the clarity that we hold dear and that we love are not a sign of a healthy ecosystem.

These invasive species, the zebra and the quagga have been filtering out the plankton and the bottom level of the food system that is needed to support the rest.

So now we're sitting at beautiful, clean, filtered water that can't support a healthy fishery.

- The estimate from USGS is 300 trillion, trillion with a T, quagga mussels in Lake Michigan, and they are affecting the water quality.

And so our fisheries are in danger right now because the lake's becoming too clean.

- I think the fishing industry in the Great Lakes is probably in trouble.

What really saddens me about it is that it really doesn't have anything to do with overfishing.

Everything that's happened has been from other industry creating these problems in the lake.

That's difficult for me, yeah, 'cause that's what we've done for a long time and it should still be a viable industry.

(relaxing guitar music) - [William] Learning more about the impact of invasive species on the fishing industry seemed to strike a similar chord with the struggle around the Line 5 pipeline.

Globalization, industry, the economy, these are all things that need to happen, need to be prioritized.

But how do you balance that with protecting the places you love, these amazing natural resources?

(waves swishing) (relaxing instrumental music) - [Chris] That entire coastline is just beautiful, beautiful dunes and very open beaches and probably looks very similar to what it did 500 years ago.

But you don't really have an appreciation for how big and sustained those kind of awesome vertical features are until you experience it from the water, 'cause you can really see every section of the coastline.

(relaxing instrumental music) We spent about eight to nine hours today paddling.

The back's tight but we've got this sick campground.

(wind howling) (tent rustling in wind) Holy cow, we're not paddling.

- [William] No way we're paddling.

It was the first day of summer and we were getting our first real dose of a Great Lake storm.

The wind was blowing 30 to 40 miles per hour, so we were forced to take a break from paddling and do some media duties in Traverse City.

- [Interviewer] Tell me more about William, what's William like?

- I don't know, words, I don't know how to put William into words.

(playful instrumental music) (William screeching) - Fun for the whole family.

- William has an energy for just general life.

- That's the best (bleep) I've ever felt in my life.

- [Chris] It's really contagious and sometimes gets us into bad situations.

- Chris's family jokes that they don't like it when he hangs out with me.

- [Chris] I tore my ACL skiing with William, and I broke my ankle skateboarding with William.

- I have ran him into bleachers, into electrical outlets.

(medical machine beeping) I have been responsible for most of Chris's injuries in his life.

- Are we skiing?

- No.

(Chris chuckling) - The major driver of that is we're both just incredibly competitive people and there's nothing in the world I hate more than losing to William.

His laugh whenever he beats you at anything.

(William laughing cheerfully) It sounds like a four-year-old girl just got like a pony or something.

(William laughing cheerfully) (rain trickling) - [William] We're back at it.

We came back to Point Betsie and now we're in full second phase it feels like.

- While we're looking good and ahead of schedule now, that could easily change.

(waves swishing) - And the next few days look like rain, rain, partly sunny, rain.

- That's the most daunting thing is just what is mother nature gonna throw at us for the next however many weeks this is gonna take?

- [William] All right.

I'm going.

There's a lot of south winds.

That's really surprising.

I thought this was gonna be a point where we could really make up some really good time and put in some long days thanks to a wind at our back, but it's seeming like we're gonna have some trouble.

- Paddling's like suffering kind of.

(Matt laughing) It's like running, but slower.

If I was gonna do a long distance paddle, the only thing I would look at it is the wind forecast 'cause everything would be based on the wind.

Paddling into the wind is not an option, ever.

(Matt laughing) - [William] The past three days have been nothing but wind in our face, every day.

- People that live on the ocean maybe kind of just laugh at it, but the Great Lakes are intense and they're big bodies of water.

You don't see across the other side and it feels at times like the ocean, because you do get hundreds of miles of fetch and big rolling waves.

Sinks ships, right?

(seagulls squawking) - [William] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It feels like somebody puts like a pin in your gas tank and it never gets as full and you never wake up as rested, and all that kind of stuff.

- [Chris] You know, you're checking the winds, you're worrying about just getting your miles paddling, and then when you're done, you're setting up camp, you're building a fire.

And you wake up and you're doing logistical routes, packing up tents and packing up the boards.

- I think I'm just tired.

I think I'm just beat.

It's that point where you close your eyes and it feels so good but it also stings.

(hand thudding on leg) Ow!

- It's been raining all night.

I'm exhausted from 24 miles yesterday.

It's interesting how weather really plays with and influences the emotions and the head state on this trip.

- We have no visibility, absolutely none.

It's just the worst day, it's gloomy.

(waves swishing) I don't know the day.

I don't know what day it is on the journey.

All I know is that today sucked.

I'm a person that when it sucks, I want to joke about it.

I want to complain and commiserate and Chris does not like to do that.

Chris just guns it.

That man just puts his head down, I think talks to himself and just goes.

(tense violin music) What happens is I end up being behind him and I play the game of, okay, well now I need to catch up to him.

(tense violin music) So I'm paddling hard just to get on his tail and once I get there I'm exhausted and I would like to rest for five to ten seconds.

But if I do that then he just pulls away again.

Whenever there's a little bit of adversity, I think we handle it in a different way.

(tense violin music) - [Chris] I was saying, the fog makes these paddling days worse because you can't see and appreciate anything.

- And Chris shuts up and William paddles alone, looking for a friend.

(upbeat instrumental music) We have weather that has changed.

It used to be cloudy, rain, and now we've got the sun.

So things in the next two to three days could really change around.

- There is no wind out here.

- I know, it's awesome.

And so I don't wanna jinx it, but that portion really could've been one of the last portions with a ton of wind in our face.

(upbeat instrumental music) (vehicle engine humming) (people cheering) (upbeat instrumental music) (gas flame lighting) (waves swishing) - [Chris] We woke up that day and we knew we finally had some good weather and some good wind at our back.

So we thought maybe we could do 20, 25 miles.

We're gonna have a big day.

We're gonna go far and we're gonna go fast.

- Well go so fast well be surfing waves.

(upbeat instrumental music) (camera gushing under water) The day started out great and it got way better.

- [Chris] The wind picked up and it was blowing like 30 to 40 miles per hour at our back.

The waves were so big that our support boat couldn't even make it out of the harbor to come meet up with us.

- [William] It was incredibly fun just surfing the waves.

I probably fell off the board, I don't know, 10-plus times.

(upbeat instrumental music) By the end we paddled 36 miles, our longest and best day by far.

We made three days worth of progress on the final day on the Big Lake.

It was the best feeling we could've possibly had.

(waves gushing) - That was the most fun I've ever had on a paddleboard.

(William chuckling) (hands slapping) Yes, baby.

- 36 miles Done with the big water.

- And I lost my phone and my walkie.

As we wrapped up our section on the Big Lake and began our final push towards the state capitol, it was really hard not to think about what was currently going on in the fight to shut down Line 5.

At this point we had paddled about 300 miles of coastline.

But it's estimated that an oil spill from Line 5 would affect 700 miles of coastline, over two times more than we have paddled so far.

- History will remember you for the choices that you make right now and the choices that you make today.

I'm Sean McBrearty and I'm the legislative and policy director for Clean Water Action in Michigan, and I'm the campaign coordinator for Oil and Water Don't Mix.

I spend a majority of my day working on Line 5 issues and working on this campaign.

The more we educated people and the more they found out about Line 5, really made a lot of people indignant towards this company that had already destroyed the Kalamazoo River, and that remains perhaps the largest threat to the waters of the Great Lakes.

- In any of these battles, it's always a David, Goliath fight.

You will be outspent.

You'll be outgunned.

- This foreign oil corporation has aging infrastructure all throughout the Great Lakes.

Their model is to operate pipelines to failure.

They fight transparency at every turn.

- They started putting out full-page ads in local papers, up north especially, about how they were great stewards of the Great Lakes.

- They talk about how this is critical infrastructure for Michigan, when in fact it's just a pass-through from Alberta to Sarnia.

- They keep making up reasons why we need Line 5, which are not accurate, and then it's like playing whack-a-mole.

As soon as we debunk one of the reasons that Enbridge says they need to keep the pipeline for, they come up with another one.

First they claimed that the Upper Peninsula gets 85% of their propane from Line 5.

They never substantiated that number and they quickly backed it down from 85% to 65%.

65% is actually an accurate number.

But, what that doesn't take into account is the fact that there's only about 123,000 households in the UP, and of those, around 22,000 of them use propane for a heating source.

And out of those 22,000, about 12,000 households rely on propane from Line 5.

The largest provider to those 12,000 households actually sent out letters to all their customers last year, saying that regardless of whether or not Line 5 is in operation, they already have alternate sources ready to go.

And just like Enbridge likes to move the goalposts on their claims about the impact of shutting down Line 5, they also like to move the goalposts on their claims about Line 5 itself.

When we narrowly avoided catastrophe when a tugboat anchor struck Line 5, Enbridge dropped a lot of their previous arguments about how safe the line is and they started talking about their plan to replace Line 5 with an oil tunnel underneath the Straits of Mackinac.

All these people are volunteers from all across the state.

We have people from Detroit, to folks from the Upper Peninsula.

We're here asking Governor Whitmer to shut down Line 5, letting her know that an oil tunnel is not an acceptable answer.

- We've heard the promises before, oh, this one will be safe, this one won't leak, this one will cause no problems, and in the end they always do time after time.

- [Nathan] I wish we could just live in peace and not have to worry about these things, but we always have to watch our back.

- So much of the argument on both sides is economic or political, but I think at the same time there's such an impact that's not monetarily valuable.

There's such an impact of people that every single day go There's such an impact of people that every single day go on a walk on the beach or go for a swim or whatever it may be and that water and those lakes are something that gives them emotional peace or mental comfort, and taking that away is just an additional cost.

It's not quantifiable but it's massive.

It's really for many people taking away part of who they are and part of their souls.

- We're in a world of climate change and we're trying to reduce our uses of fossil fuels.

It makes perfect sense to take out the fossil fuel infrastructure that puts our natural resources at risk.

Even if we need fossil fuels as we transition, let's take out the lines, let's take out the fossil fuel usage that risks our world the most.

- Okay, how many miles from Grand Haven to Grand Rapids?

- 37.

- We're done with the Big Water.

No more Lake Michigan.

No more Great Lakes.

Now we are heading into the Grand River, (relaxing instrumental music) (water trickling) - [William] I think the river's gonna have almost more scenery than the Big Lake in a sense that you will see different things.

We don't have to worry about the wind.

We don't have to worry about the waves.

We do now have to consider the flow of the river because we're paddling upstream.

- I'm going in with the anticipation that it's gonna really, really suck.

And so hopefully when I get there it might be a little better and we can have a brighter outlook, but I definitely think that's gonna be the worst part.

- [Chris] You think we can cut through right here?

- I don't know.

Your question is, is does this little harbor come back out on the other side?

- Yeah.

- Yep it does.

Probably calmer waters.

- [Chris] Yeah, let's go right.

(relaxing instrumental music) (water trickling) - Its not terrible to go upstream.

The river kind of came to a more steady width and I really started to enjoy it.

- [Chris] And so far it has surpassed expectations.

Our goal was 19 miles, but we only made it 15 here to the campsite.

But all in all, a pretty successful day, I think.

It's definitely gonna be a little bit of a hot and sweaty few days, but it'll just make it that much better when we're done.

(birds chirping) - There's something to waking up alone in the forest with nothing but you and your thoughts.

And then there's days like these where we wake up in an absolutely packed campground.

(upbeat instrumental music) Thanks to a very large rain event about the week to two weeks before we started the river at Grand Haven, the flow of the river was two times as high as it was according to the general standards.

So that just meant that more was coming down the river and that also meant that there was a stronger current that we were paddling against.

Bye-bye, buddy.

We're only going about 2.7 miles per hour.

When you're going upstream, your paddle just goes with the current and it's like a soft paddle every time, no oomph behind it.

- [Chris] That, coupled with like 90-degree heat, super high humidity, pretty mucky, gross water.

- The Grand River is a real problem after rain events.

I mean, because you have all of this runoff from this huge area, watershed coming in.

It's one of the largest nutrient loads to Lake Michigan.

So when people say, how do I fix Lake Michigan?

I go, you wanna focus on those sources that have a high load.

It's a great example of why we need to be managing water by watersheds and looking at these problems from a holistic perspective.

- Hey, happy birthday.

- Thank you.

(Chris chuckling) (William laughing) - All those skeeters are just wishing me a happy birthday.

My leg literally looks like I have chickenpox.

Boom, boom, boom, boom.

Five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11.

Boom, boom, boom.

- [William] That's the one I see, this guy right here.

- Bugs had not been yet a problem on the river and I don't know what made it switch.

(water trickling) Jesus.

The most mosquitoes I have ever seen in my entire life.

Paddling up the river might've been your worst idea ever.

They're everywhere.

(water trickling) - Swarms of mosquitoes around us and for some stupid reason, we had one day where we kind of were in the heart of the river and somehow we didn't have bug spray on our boards.

(water trickling) (Chris exclaiming) And I could pretty much know where Chris was, just based on the sound he was putting out.

(Chris groaning loudly) (hand slapping arm) (Chris grunting) (water trickling) Jesus, It looks like it's pouring rain, but it's just bugs.

Dude!

(water trickling) There's a dead deer floating in the water.

(birds chirping) I think that was definitely a breaking point, but not, you know, it wasn't enough to stop us.

(somber instrumental music) - [William] As we approached Grand Rapids, we'd already paddled for a month and covered nearly 350 miles.

- I think I was so pumped that yesterday was the last seemingly hard day, I was like, oh, we're pretty much done.

Oh my God.

(river flowing) (birds chirping) (relaxing guitar music) (Chris coughing) (William groaning) - Oh my God, dude.

(cicadas screeching) -Going in with the stereotype that the Grand River is really, really gross, I kind of didn't expect to see any interesting wildlife.

But in reality, we saw far more wildlife on the Grand River we saw far more wildlife on the Grand River on a day-to-day basis than we did on Lake Michigan.

Countless blue herons, countless turtles, snakes, like just the whole gamut of river animals we saw.

And that is a really valuable resource to all these little communities, and now I can see that it is an important asset and something that should be prioritized.

(upbeat instrumental music) (rain trickling on river) - July 13th.

Day 35.

We have about 10 miles to go before we embark on our last mile.

- Sorry were late!

(vehicle door closing) - All good, man.

- How are we?

- [William] For our last day, Mike and Ella joined us on the river.

They're two friends we made along the way who are also passionate about these lakes.

- I am really going to miss the freedom that we've had on this trip, just the total, very much like nomadic free spirit that this trip has induced and exposed us to.

While I am super excited for this to be over, just 'cause of the toll it takes, I think that's something that I'm quickly gonna learn to miss is that there's been limitless potential on a daily basis for the good and for the bad, for being beat down, tired, for being eaten alive by bugs, for being blown around by the wind, poured on by the rain, but also limits of potential for amazing things like creating awesome new relationships with people you never would've met before or seeing the most beautiful shoreline you've ever seen in your life, or having the most fun on a paddleboard on a huge downwind day you've ever had.

But I think that's a lesson that I'm gonna take is try to apply that thinking to my daily life because I think it really is a super special thing and it's been amazing.

- [Interviewer] How would you feel if Line 5 were to rupture?

- It would be horrible.

I mean, it would be... Everything that we've experienced on this trip, everything that we experienced growing up, all the amazing memories that we've made, all of the amazing people we've met, all of the portions of who we are that were created because of these waters, it wouldn't just be for us that taken away and the future of that taken away, but it would be for so many kids, so many future generations wouldn't be able to make those memories, wouldn't be able to develop those parts of themselves.

And so if the oil pipeline were to break, it would be a irreparable situation, it would be a stain on our history - On November 13th, 2020, the most extraordinary thing happened.

- Governor Whitmer is moving to shut down the controversial Line 5 pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac.

- Governor Whitmer and the Department of Natural Resources both revoked and terminated the 1953 easement, saying that Line 5 could no longer operate, and they gave Enbridge six months to shut down operations.

- The DNR found that Enbridge had been in violation of different major clauses of the easement, dating all the way back to 1968.

- When Governor Whitmer revoked the easement, we felt a bit of a vindication, a huge vindication that the work that we put in, every single organization involved in Oil and Water and others, everybody did their part.

(TV static hissing) (dramatic thudding music) - Enbridge came out and said that they would disregard Governor Whitmer's order.

- The governor set a deadline of yesterday to shut it down, but at this hour, oil is still running through Line 5.

No signs of that changing.

- The first thing Enbridge did was say, we're not gonna listen to you.

We're gonna break the law.

- We have no intention of shutting the pipeline down.

- And then they sued the state of Michigan in federal court and said this is not a state issue.

- If the state of Michigan had the legal authority to put the pipeline in the lake in the first place, in the public waters, it must have the legal authority to take it out.

How could it be otherwise?

- What's going on right now is that case is before a federal judge, and the federal judge is going to decide whether or not to remand the case back to state court.

The state can't really do anything to enforce Enbridge's easement violation until that legal process plays out.

- No active pipeline has ever been forcibly shut down by any sort of governing body.

Setting this precedent would be really important for any future dealings with dangerous pipelines or dangerous corporations.

- This would be one of the first times in US history that a pipeline is shut down before it ruptures.

- That is the fossil fuel industry's worst nightmare.

If we can shut down Line 5, then other places can look and say, wait a minute, they did it.

Let's do it over here.

- Boots, boots.

- Boots, boots.

- Boots are on the ground.

- Boots are on the ground.

- We're here.

We're here.

- We're here.

We're here.

- To shut this (bleep) down.

- To shut this (bleep) down.

- It would show and set precedent that these grassroots movements would have a flag to raise, would have an example for, some people did do the right thing and did stand up for the right thing and stand up for sustainability.

So I think if this were to go forward, it would be a really keystone moment in the history of not only conservation, but the way that business is done in the US.

- The Great Lakes are worth protecting at every cost, and so I believe that we will prevail in this situation.

And if it's having to wait a few more years, we'll continue that fight.

- Out!

- Out!.

(indistinct) (water trickling) - Before this trip and everything we had planned, I would've given you the answer to why do all the Great Lakes need to be preserved is more generic it's something I love.

It's something I, I, I, right.

It's all to me and something I've used in my life or I've enjoyed.

But on this trip, I've been able to experience more and more about what it means to the community around Michigan.

It's hard to think in one sentence about how many people it touches, because it's so vast and it's all fresh water.

And so people use it for their livelihood.

People use it for their recreation.

People have a spiritual connection to it, and that's not stuff that I would've known before this trip.

It's stuff I was introduced to along our path.

And that's only emboldened me to say that this is a place that's unbelievable and needs to be protected.

(relaxing instrumental music) - [Chris] Once we got to Lansing, just after portaging a fish ladder there, we met up with Nathan Wright.

He brought a lot of really awesome people from the Native community to come down and support, people from the Climate Stick, an organization that we had run into along the way.

So we had a bit of a "Forest Gump" style congregation going down the river for the last mile.

(relaxing instrumental music) (motivational instrumental music) - It made it feel like an accomplishment, like we built a community along the way, or at least joined one.

And that's probably what it was, that we joined a community of people who cared about Michigan and its waters.

(people cheering) And they opened up their arms to show their support for us.

It was immensely powerful and we can't thank them enough.

(people cheering) (people applauding) - Are you good?

- I'll take a hand.

(people chuckling) - Oh, you need a hand too.

(William laughing cheerfully) (indistinct) (people laughing) - Bring it in, dude.

(hands slapping) That was awesome.

- Good (bleep.

Good (bleep).

(William exhaling happily) I've been dreaming about this trip for a year.

It took us about 36 days, which is far and beyond the longest I've ever spent on an adventure in my life.

- We started at Mackinac City and we actually accidentally ran into each other.

We did a ceremony, and now here we are down in Lansing doing another ceremony.

- Pray with us.

Pray with our Governor Gretchen and our President Biden and our chiefs, our councils.

We need help to protect this water.

(pensive instrumental music) - When I left California after being there for 20 years, I looked around and said, where in the world can I live and have the absolute best chance of riding out a climate crisis?

And that is Michigan.

We are surrounded by 21% of the world's fresh surface water.

And the pressure on this region to become a place for climate refugees is something that people are not grasping right now but they should.

If we wreck it now, we're gonna wreck every chance that we have of surviving.

- Knowing that the Great Lakes have all these threats that face them, it's worrying, it's troublesome.

But I think what is really inspiring and hope-inducing from this trip is that there's so many people invested in making a positive change happen.

I'm hopeful that the power and the movement of these people will eventually be the thing to prevail.

- To know that Line 5 was discovered by a Michigan Native, and then there was a movement built by the people who loved the water to shut it down, and it was just some people in Michigan who cared.

Yes, I'm scared but I'm also impressed by the people who are fighting for these issues.

- The future of the Northern Great Lakes is a real question mark.

There are lots of threats.

There's climate, there are invasive species, and yet there's a powerful sense of community that is committed to the Great Lakes, committed to water, committed to this landscape.

There are answers, and what you need is everyone pulling together to find them.

- We have these incredible inland seas, pretty much.

It's this unbelievable natural resource that people unite behind.

- The Great Lakes are bigger and greater than any one human.

They're gonna be around longer than any one human and what would it say about humans if we were the ones to wreck it?

I mean, I'm biased, but I think it's one of the most amazing places in the world.

- Water is life.

- Water is life.

- Water is life.

- Water is life.

(motivational instrumental music (ominous instrumental music)