Tonight, Tuesday March 15, 2016, Hamilton County unanimously voted to request that the Army Corps of Engineers perform an independent study on site concerning the ommisions and discrepancies contained in the final environmental study that FERC and Florida DEP used to issue the permit for the Sabal Trail pipeline.
These ommisions in the EIS were discovered by Mr Chris Mericle when comparing a geological study by local geologist Dennis Price with the final EIS Sabal Trail study submitted to FERC on which FERC based the permit for the Sabal Trail pipeline.
Hamilton County was prompted to write this letter after attending the Suwannee BOCC workshop a few weeks ago where members of both boards hiked the Suwannee River crossing and saw for themselves the numerous sinkholes in and around the pipeline route. A route that Sabal Trail claimed the closet sinkhole was 750′ from the pipeline route.
One Hamilton County commissioner asked if Suwannee County was still taking an unheard of neutral stance on this for export fracked gas pipeline.
Thank you to all of the commissioners of Hamilton County for taking action to protect their constituents and our sole source of water – the Floridan Aquifer.
Debra J.
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I’m not sure why it is assumed that just because an editorial states that in their opinion Sabal Trail has passed all regulatory requirements that it is a fact. It isn’t. There are laws-especially federal ones that can still stop this ridiculous grab for profit at the expense of the planet and the people. A Health Impact Assessment is the minimum requirement for an operation that plans to affect the drinking water, the air and the soil in their placement of a new, unneeded pipeline. Forgetting that the fracking process which extracted the gas is damaging enough, there is evidence from the EPA itself that health benefits recoup $7.00 in avoided costs alone for every $1.00 spent in reducing carbon emissions. So how can we possibly justify the naural gas plants without FIRST conserving and reducing need by promotion of the truly clean solar and wind.