BATTLE CREEK, Mich. — 15 years have passed since Canadian energy delivery company Enbridge’s “Pipeline 6-B” ruptured, spilling over 800,000 gallons of oil into nearly 40 miles of the Kalamazoo River.

The 2010 incident remains one of the most costly inland oil spills in U.S. history, with Enbridge spending more than $1 billion on cleanup efforts.

Dozens gathered at the Historic Bridge Park in Battle Creek, one of the impacted sections of the river, for an event commemorating the anniversary of the spill, and “exposing Enbridge’s false tunnel solution”, also known as the “Great Lakes Tunnel Project”, which Enbridge claims will eliminate the possibility of another pipeline incident.

The Great Lakes Tunnel Project, a private investment by Enbridge, looks to protect the existing Line 5 pipeline with a tunnel built 100 feet below the lakebed in the Straits of Mackinac,

“It is incredibly dangerous,” Erica Bouldin with the Michigan Climate Action Network said, “We are environmentalists, so, we look to our solutions to be transitional solutions. And so, we’re not looking to further perpetuate fossil fuel use, which is exactly what this tunnel would do.”

“We made a commitment to the people who live in communities along the Kalamazoo River to return the river as close as possible to its pre-spill condition. We have fulfilled that promise – the river is clean,” an Enbridge spokesperson said to News Channel 3 in a statement.

“We were part of the Michigan community decades before this incident occurred, and we will continue to be part of this community going forward. We are, and will continue to be, a good neighbor and contributor to our Michigan communities.”

“We are here today to learn from our past and to not let Enbridge continue to steal from our future,” Dr. Denise Keele, Executive Director at Michigan Climate Action Network said.

Environmentalists like Keele and Bouldin argue that more than a tunnel is needed to rectify the damage done to the river’s ecosystem.

“Restoration is not a linear process,” Bouldin said, “There’s a whole ecosystem that was changed, and that takes sometimes generations to heal.”

“Enbridge wants us to trust them to build a tunnel in one of the most ecologically sensitive areas in the world. A tunnel project that, mind you, also will lead to a net increase of 27 million metric tons of greenhouse gasses annually,” Dr. Keele said.