In the same coastal plain that contains the Floridan Aquifer with our drinking water, a commission just rejected a natural gas pipeline that would have gone through a pine fire forest with blueberries and bobcats much like ours. FERC should reject the Sabal Trail pipeline.
Wayne Parry wrote for AP 10 January 2014, Natural gas pipeline for N.J. Pinelands rejected,
Pemberton Township, N.J. — A New Jersey agency tasked with protecting the ecologically fragile Pinelands region narrowly defeated a proposal Friday to run a 22-mile natural gas pipeline through it….
“This is a great victory for the Pinelands and the environment of the region,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “Today the commissioners said the Pinelands are not for sale.”
“The Pinelands is host to one of the last wildernesses in New Jersey,” added Dan DeRosa of Environment New Jersey. “We’re a tiny state packed with 8 million people, yet we still have wild spaces like the Pinelands.”
One of the pine species in the NJ Pinelands is also down here: shortleaf pine, Pinus echinata.
The New Jersey Pinelands Commission rejected the proposal by South Jersey Gas, which had partnered with the state Board of Public Utilities, to connect a pipeline to the BL England power plant in Cape May County. The plant is switching from coal to natural gas.
Switching from coal to methane is also
one of FPL’s excuses for piping methane,
down here
in the same coastal plain
with the same kind of fragile limestone underground.
But the commission deadlocked 7-7 on the proposal, meaning the measure didn’t pass.
NJPC made the right decision.
And that was for a
24-inch pipeline.
Sabal Trail proposes a 36-inch pipeline,
for 2 1/4 more methane and
more hazard.
The AP story tries to spin it as about jobs, but we would get hardly any jobs from the Sabal Trail pipeline through Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, and we would get jobs from local distributed solar power. So the Sabal Trail pipeline is profit for executives in Houston, Texas and Juno Beach, Florida versus clean environment and jobs from solar power. No pipeline. Yes solar.
-jsq
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