Would it or wouldn’t it cross the Withlacoochee River in Florida? (It certainly would in Georgia by 4 out of 5 proposed paths.) And Sabal Trail poo-poohed all four of Greenlaw’s suggested Alternatives, but FERC could still require any one of them. Here are Sabal Trail’s own maps of Greenlaw Alternatives 1-4:
Continue reading Sabal Trail Response to FERC directive of 26 August 2014
Dr. Michael Noll posted in a facebook event:
Join us at the corner of Park Avenue and Patterson Street for a protest against Sabal Trail Pipeline this Tuesday, September 9, 4-5 pm! (You can find parking in the back of the building.)
He added: Continue reading Protest at Sabal Trail Pipeline Valdosta office
FERC just directed Sabal Trail to actually address problems raised
by citizens and local government agencies, plus numerous discrepencies
FERC itself detected.
Opposition to this unnecessary and hazardous fracked methane
pipeline is having effects, even with rubberstamping FERC.
But watch out Tifton, Valdosta, Thomasville, and The Villages!
You’re now on possible routes.
Sabal Trail is to provide details for Greenlaw’s route-around-Albany proposals on behalf of Sierra Club and others Valdosta, you’re back in two proposed routes, the the one you saw last summer, plus one down I-75 that would go right past Lowndes High School and also past The Villages in sinkhole-prone Sumter County, Florida. Tifton, you’re not safe; look at that Hillabee route. Thomasville watch out: you’re on a new proposed route.
Sabal Trail is to provide alternatives to minimize effects on or
completely avoid the
Withlacoochee River,
and this is even before the Hamilton County Commission’s resolution
against the pipeline gets to FERC.
FERC’s letter is peppered with requirements to cooperate with federal, state, and local agencies especially including about land use and environmental requirements and land approvals.
It explicitly says that
all surveys Continue reading Explain karst, sinkholes, discrepencies, and routes around Albany and the Withlacoochee River –FERC to Sabal Trail
Spectra’s Andrea Grover admitted trees don’t grow back fast,
a “need to draw that line in the sand” and “we’re now moving forward”.
This is the kind of “working with the landowners and the communities”
that the Valdosta Daily Times found when it went to the local Sabal Trail office.
STT plans to file with FERC at the end of October.
But Spectra’s Andrea Grover admitted they need complete survey data,
and Sabal Trail admitted they have no Georgia customers,
which means they have no Georgia eminent domain,
so every landowner who refuses is indeed putting a crimp into Spectra’s
fracked methane pipeline.
Matthew Woody wrote for the VDT 27 July 2014, Sabal Trail explains its position, Continue reading Sabal Trail admits environmental destruction to Valdosta newspaper
What company prints its sustainability report on wind-powered paper,
yet pipes a greenhouse gas
20 times worse than CO2?
Yep, it’s Spectra Energy, also bragging about how
respectful they are to Sabal Trail “stakeholders”.
Selling fracked methane through a 36-inch pipe in a hundred-foot gash
through forests and wetlands with a thousand-foot explosive radius
is like selling cigarettes and claiming you’re for good health.
Tobacco companies can’t get away with that any more,
and why should fossil fuel companies?
On the very last page of a 16-page report, 2013 Sustainability Highlights Report, Spectra Energy says:
This paper is manufactured using clean, renewable wind-power energy and carbon offsets for additional savings.
That’s the only mention of wind or renewable energy in the document, while solar power is not mentioned even once.
And look at Spectra’s Purpose on page 2: Continue reading Sustainable Spectra? Like healthy cigarettes?
You’ve
heard the song,
now see the FERC rubberstamp machine in action in videos of
Sabal Trail interrogated in Gilchrist County, Florida @ GCC 2014-02-20,
of
the
Valdosta FERC Scoping Meeting @ FERC 2014-03-04,
and
of the
Moultrie FERC Scoping Meeting @ FERC 2014-03-05.
See FERC
refuse to release a tax-paid RFP and tax-paid-staff-reviewed proposals
for an environmental contractor,
and then see that very same contractor
admit that
the Sabal Trail pipeline would take twice the acreage to produce as much power as solar PV, while FERC refuses to consider that
the pipeline would be far more environmentally damaging,
more expensive, and would take much longer.
Nevermind landowners get only a one-time payment from the pipeline company, not rent and FERC has no Continue reading See the FERC rubberstamp machine in action
Stop the Sabal Trail Pipeline, says the billboard on Bemiss Road in Valdosta,
reports Michael G. Noll.
This billboard was organized by
WACE. Continue reading Stop the Sabal Trail Pipeline –Billboard in Valdosta
Similar to the coverage in the Moultrie Observer (it even mentions the closed Lowndes County landfill), plus some local observations and some quotes by Beth Gordon.
Bill Thompson wrote for the Ocala StarBanner yesterday, EPA questions gas pipeline planned through North Central Florida,
Continue reading EPA questions about Sabal Trail in Ocala newspaper
Finally, the EPA wants the report to incorporate the project’s compliance with the federal Clean Air Act. That would be a concern for residents near Dunnellon.
The company intends to build a compressor station south of the town, near State Road 200.
Environmental regulators seek to learn how much greenhouse gases and potentially hazardous pollutants will be emitted at such sites.
Williams Co.’s excuse: “an insufficient level of firm customer commitment”
for its Marcellus shale to Gulf of Mexico gas pipe.
That’s corporate-ese for it got to be too expensive; it’s the same thing
a company that wanted to put a biomass plant in Lowndes County said.
Couldn’t have had anything to do with massive public resistance, oh no.
This is the same Williams Co. that owns Transco, first in the chain
of the Transco -> Sabal Trail -> Florida Southeast Connection
pipeline through Alabama and Georgia to Florida’s Atlantic
and Gulf coasts, where there are already several companies
authorized for LNG export.
That one could get too expensive, too.
Tim Rudell wrote for WKSU 29 April 2014, Bluegrass pipeline project through Ohio and beyond is cancelled, Continue reading Bluegrass fracked methane pipeline cancelled
In
the April-May-June 2004 2014 issue
of
Georgia Sierran
Georgia Sierra Club‘s
Chapter newsletter.
The same issue has an excellent article on Georgia’s aquifers,
including the Floridan Aquifer that is a drinking water source
for all of Florida, through which the Sabal Trail pipeline proposes to bulldoze.
Proposed Sabal Trail Pipeline Threatens
Southwest Georgia CommunitiesBy John Quarterman
Why should a shell corporation owned by two companies in Houston, Texas and Juno Beach, Florida get to take Georgians’ property to pipe fracked methane to Florida through our fragile karst limestone drinking water aquifer?
Yet that’s what Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC, proposes to do, Continue reading Proposed Sabal Trail Pipeline Threatens Southwest Georgia Communities –in Georgia Sierran