Core drill sampling

Seen on Our Santa Fe River 20 March 2014. -jsq

Gas Pipeline Alert:

Core drill sampling: What happened and what DID NOT happen… Last week, OSFR, residents and Christopher Byrd (IREPHA lawyer) stopped Sabal Trails from drilling for core samples for the purpose of building a drilling platform on both sides of the Santa Fe River.

OSFR began receiving phone calls and emails last week about this drilling procedure. We were absolutely certain that this was a “cart before the horse” problem. There have been no completed Continue reading Core drill sampling

Pipelines, property values, and insurance

What happens to your property values or homeowners insurance a pipeline company takes your land to gouge a path for its fracked methane or oil? It affects the property values not just of your land, but of your neighbors’, and yours and their property insurance. It also opens the pipeline company and associated businesses to civil lawsuits. And FERC’s assertion that federal law supersedes state and local laws for eminent domain does nothing to stop such lawsuits; many such lawsuits are winning lately. Not even the federal government is immune from pipeline lawsuits.

Stop the Pipeline has a good article, mostly about land near fracking wells: LOSS OF PROPERTY VALUES, DIFFICULTY GETTING MORTGAGES AND HOME INSURANCE,

“Another illustration is the gentleman who has had 63 acres for sale now for several years. He purchased the property as an investment, and now has three pipelines and an above ground valve. He can not give this property away. As he reaches retirement age his retirement has been stolen from him. This is no different than Enron or any other scandal, only it has been made legal thievery. There are two other pieces of property that have been for sale for several years, one of which is a large parcel of about 70 acres and the other is about 10 acres.”

The insurance industry has been studying this issue for years, and wants to steer clear of it. Continue reading Pipelines, property values, and insurance

Spectra submitted EA to BC for 2 pipelines to LNG export

Not one, but up to two pipelines for LNG export in a single “transportation corridor” in British Columbia, for 8.4 billion cubic feet per day in a single right of way, twice as much as earlier Spectra PR about this same project. Does anybody still doubt Spectra CEO Greg Ebel’s assertion that “I would expect we’ll have some involvement in all of” the North American LNG export terminals that Spectra’s pipelines “go right by”? And if Spectra wants to put two pipelines in that right of way in BC, what do they expect to do in the right of way they propose through Alabama, Georgia, and Florida? Sure, they haven’t said they want to do that here, but they didn’t say it about BC at this stage, either. Spectra thanks the aborigines of BC for sharing their objections and plows ahead anyway. We are all Indians to Spectra’s cowboys, but this time there are more of us.

Dave Michaels wrote yesterday for energeticcity.ca (I added the links and images), Gas Pipeline Application

Spectra Energy has handed in an Environmental Assessment Certificate application to the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office for its Westcoast Connector Gas Transmission Project.

If approved, the project would ship as much as 4.2 (b) billion cubic feet per day through a pipeline from the Cypress area (southwest of Pink Mountain) to the Ridley Island Terminal, near Prince Rupert. The proposal now undergoes Continue reading Spectra submitted EA to BC for 2 pipelines to LNG export

TREPO allies with SpectraBusters and pipeline opponents

Received Monday 25 March 2014 as a PDF. -jsq

Three River Estates Property Owners, Inc.
P.O. Box 148
Fort White, FL 32038-0148
386-497-3320

Position Statement on Sabal Trail/Spectra Energy Methane Pipeline

The Three River Estates Property Owners (TREPO) Board of Directors joins with other homeowners and conservation groups in strongly opposing the placement of the Sabal Trail Methane gas pipeline, anywhere in the Ichetucknee Springs Basin & Ichetucknee Trace & surrounding areas. We specifically oppose Continue reading TREPO allies with SpectraBusters and pipeline opponents

No Pipeline in our Aquifer in north Florida and south Georgia

PDF

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Valdosta, 23 March 2014 — All of south Georgia and north Florida drinks out of the Floridan Aquifer, where the FERC Scoping meetings and a SpectraBusters community panel meet this week about Sabal Trail’s attempt to take our lands to gouge a 100-foot right of way for a 36-inch methane pipeline through our fragile karst limestone, risking turning our springs into sinkholes.

Continue reading No Pipeline in our Aquifer in north Florida and south Georgia

Less cost, more jobs, and better health with sun, wind, and water power for Florida, or a dirty destructive methane pipeline?

How about we recognize every place is the worst place for the water-risking land-taking hazardous methane pipeline, and get on with sun, wind, and water to power Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and all the other states?

According to Stanford University researchers, we can do that, and we can do it 100% by 2050, using technology that’s already available. For Florida, that’s 20% rooftop solar PV (half residential and half commercial and governmental), 47.9% solar PV plants, 10% concentrating solar plants, 5% onshore wind, 15% offshore wind, 1% each wave and tide, 0.1% hydroelectric. So that’s 77.9% sun, 20% wind, 1% wave, 1% tide, and 0.1% hydro.

Requiring 0% nuclear, 0% coal, and 0% natural gas. That’s right, Florida doesn’t need methane to shut down coal and nukes. All the Sunshine State needs is sun, wind, and water.

With 355,500 construction jobs and 149,000 operation jobs, $20.1 billion or 3% of Florida’s GDP saved in avoided health costs, 2,210 Floridans not dead from air pollution.

Oh, and 42.9% less energy used over all, plus energy costs to customers cut more than in half.

Who are you going to believe? Researchers at Stanford who have no financial stake in the outcome? Or pipeline companies and utility companies that stand to profit from taking Continue reading Less cost, more jobs, and better health with sun, wind, and water power for Florida, or a dirty destructive methane pipeline?

Sabal Trail at worst spot –expert in Gainesville Sun

Florida newspaper reporters are not buying the pipeline company’s spin. Instead they write about the fragile limestone that holds our drinking water in the Floridan Aquifer, damage to which can easily turn a spring into a sinkhole. Wednesday, the Orlando Sentinel about Spectra’s safety record, and today Morgan Watkins wrote for the Gainesville Sun, Expert: Pipeline would cross Santa Fe at the worst spot,

Standing along the bank of the Santa Fe River near the riverside house in southern Suwannee County his family has owned since 1967, Kevin Brown pointed to the spot where a natural gas pipeline is expected to cross underneath the ground.

But Brown’s brother David, a geologist, and other concerned folks hope to persuade the company leading the project to select what they consider a safer crossing point….

The river and the surrounding area is pockmarked with springs and sinkholes. Exposed limestone — a crumbly, fractured rock — Continue reading Sabal Trail at worst spot –expert in Gainesville Sun

Methane pipeline safety record questioned –Lauren Ritchie

A reporter for a major newspaper is calling Spectra on its safety record, and calling Spectra’s responses “not good enough”! After thirty years of Spectra safety promises, that’s putting it mildly. A Maine resident put it this way after the Spectra’s Searsmont compressor blowout: “we were clearly lied to”.

Lauren Ritchie wrote for the Orlando Sentinel today, Safety record of natural-gas pipeline partner raises concerns,

Spectra Energy Corp. along with FPL’s parent, NextEra Energy, would bury the 473-mile Sabal Trail pipeline expected to carry 1 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas to just south of Orlando in Osceola County, where it would connect to another line for eventual delivery to FPL in Martin County.

Spectra’s safety record, however, leaves something to be desired.

Take, for example, the company’s Texas Eastern pipeline, a 9,200-mile Spectra project connecting Texas with the markets in the Northeast.

Between 2006 and 2013, the company had 21 “incidents” along the line, causing Continue reading Methane pipeline safety record questioned –Lauren Ritchie

Thirty years after Spectra’s Beaumont, KY explosion little has changed

Spectra is related to this from 13 February 2014 MASSIVE BLAST in KY-60 foot crater-3 houses two barns destroyed, 30 foot section of 30″ pipe thrown 300 feet. It was partly about Spectra Energy’s Texas Eastern pipeline, almost 30 years and about 30 miles from a very similar Texas Eastern explosion in 1985.

Mark Boxley, wrote for The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal 13 February 2014, Ky. gas line explosion injures 2; homes evacuated,

Two homes were destroyed, 20 residences were evacuated and two people received non-life threatening injuries early Thursday in Adair County after a natural gas transportation line exploded, leaving a 60-foot crater near Highway 76 in Knifley.

The first call came in at about 2:04 a.m. EST when residents heard and felt rumbling under their feet, said Adair County Emergency Management Agency director Greg Thomas. Then came the explosion and a ball of fire, he said.

Continue reading Thirty years after Spectra’s Beaumont, KY explosion little has changed

Fight the Fracking Pipeline in Florida

PDF

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Valdosta, 16 March 2014 — Florida forms the field for the pipeline fight this week, at a Suwannee County Commissioners meeting and three FERC Scoping Meetings. Plus later a SpectraBusters panel on the issues.

FERC Scoping Meetings*:
This week’s calendar:
SpectraBusters Panel:
In Conjunction with:

FERC Scoping Meetings*:

Continue reading Fight the Fracking Pipeline in Florida