Injury to workers or local people, limited local resources, property rights, and more concerns all bubbling to the top in central Florida like methane from a deep well.

Briana Harper reported for GTN 29 January 2014, Natural Gas Pipeline Cause Concern for Property Owners,

The Sabal Trail Gas Pipeline is a project more than 400 miles long spanning across three different states. The purpose is to provide domestically-produced natural gas for the southeast region. But this pipeline comes at a cost to property owners. Eminent Domain Attorney Brian Bolves says, “It’s a big scale project that’s coming through the community. It will change the character of a lot of people’s property,there have been a lot of surveyors assessing people’s property and so people have a lot of concerns about the nature of this facility.”

The project will affect 12 Florida counties including Alachua, Levy, and Gilchrist. And while this natural gas pipeline has its benefits…. “It reduces dependence on foreign oil, so that’s an important factor it’s cleaner burning than coal or oil as a fossil fuel so there’s a lot reasons to have natural gas.”

Sure, if you ignore that solar and wind are cheaper, need no fuel, use no water for cooling, generate jobs right where they’re needed, and don’t require a five-hundred-mile gouge through the countryside.

But some local towns like Gilchrist are concerned about the gas pipeline’s safety. Gilchrist County Administrator Bobby Crosby says, “Small county with limited resources we are concerned with what area it goes in as well as an explosion or just simply an injury to a worker with the type of equipment they will be working with that we will have a quick response.”

Local citizens can ask Sabal Trail questions at the Gilchrist County Commission 5PM 20 February 2014 in Trenton, Florida.

See also GTN’s facebook page, which links to Gas Line Land Take. Here’s the video:

GTN – Gainesville Television Network

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