Governmental eminent domain powers have been growing for more than
115 years, to the point where courts have upheld the taking of
property from one private owner for the purpose of transferring it
to another, as long as it benefits the public. The
Natural Gas Act
delegates
eminent domain powers
to the pipeline companies,
subject to court approval.
However there’s no mechanism in place to dispute
the taking. Things to consider:
How does this benefit the public by taking land from the public?
Is there an irrefutable study that
shows this act of taking of private land is justifiable by needs
other than capitalistic greed?
Also, what about the mineral rights of the property?
How many “pipes” or infrastructures can
the Pipeline Company sell or lease access to other entities without
any future benefits paid to the original land owners?
Colquitt County landowner Irvin Allegood came to
the do-over Sabal Trail Open House in Moultrie 27 January 2014
so he could tell FERC he wasn’t going to allow another pipeline.
He wasn’t the only one, but he especially wanted video,
so here he is, talking to John Peconom of FERC.
…the existing pipeline comes through the front corner.
I just don’t think that they should be allowed to, basically, to deface
my property.
…losing that road, if they put two pipelines on my property.
Their first suggestion, was they would destroy…
as far as my property was concerned.
all of the wooded area.
There’s old growth pines in there, the run of a creek.
We’re just not going to allow that to happen.
If they put it on the other side of the existing pipeline.
I’ve been planning to put my shop out there when I retire in a couple of years.
I just don’t think they should be allowed to deface my property –Irvin Allegood to FERC
Video by John S. Quarterman for SpectraBusters.org,
Moultrie, Colquitt County GA, 27 January 2014.
FERC rep. John Peconom then wanted to be sure to get the spelling
of Irvin Allegood’s name, and where his property was.
It wasn’t on the map hanging right there, so they looked at the
maps on Peconom’s laptop.
Peconom had no direct response to the basic point of the pipeline
defacing property, or tearing down trees.
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.
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.”
Its name is the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,
but lately it’s been sounding more like a marketing firm for pipeline companies.
You can help fix that.
About 50 people attended an open house meeting held by Sabal Trail
Transmission LLC, the energy firm that will construct the roughly
465-mile line for two of America’s biggest energy companies. The
line will go through Alachua and Marion counties, among others….
John Peconom, project manager for the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission, which will have final approval over the pipeline,
described Sabal Trails efforts at this point as “shaking the
bushes.”
The company, he said, is attempting to identify — and
mitigate, if necessary — as many issues as possible before
filing its application with the government, which should come in
about a year.
$5.5 trillion or $800 for each human on this Earth has been dumped into the fossil fuel money pit.
Will most of that money never come back out, now that
solar stocks are skyrocketing
and
foundations are banding together to dump fossil fuel stocks?
Why should we let Spectra Energy and NextEra gouge a methane pipeline
through our lands for their bad investment?
By keeping their money in coal and oil companies, investors are
betting a vast amount of wealth, including the pensions and savings
of millions of people, on high future demand for dirty fuels. The
investment has enabled fossil fuel companies to massively raise
their spending on expanding extractable reserves, with oil and gas
companies alone (state-owned ones included) spending the combined
GDP of Netherlands and Belgium a year, in belief that there will be
demand for ever more dirty fuel.
This assumption is being challenged by recent developments, which is
good news for climate but bad news for anyone who thought investing
in fossil fuel industries was a safe bet. Frantic growth in coal
consumption seems to be coming to an end much sooner than predicted
just a few years ago, with China’s aggressive clean air policies,
rapidly dropping coal consumption in the U.S. and upcoming closures
of many coal plants in Europe. At the same time the oil industry is
also facing slowing demand growth and the financial and share
performance of oil majors is disappointing for shareholders.
Nevertheless, even faced with weakening demand prospects, outdated
investment patterns are driving fossil fuel companies to waste
trillions of dollars in developing reserves and infrastructure that
will be stranded as the world moves beyond 20th century energy.
From: John S. Quarterman <jsqferc@quarterman.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 17:29:54 -0500
cc: John S. Quarterman <jsqferc@quarterman.org>
To: John Peconom <john.peconom@ferc.gov>
Subject: Re: Contact and the Big Picture
Howdy, and it was good to meet you in Moultrie.
I look forward to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
taking into account the whole big picture, and not just
believing assertions by applicant companies without critical review.
Thanks for sending me this boilerplate, which I see appears
in many FERC documents:
Any state or local permits issued with respect to the jurisdictional
facilities authorized herein must be consistent with the conditions of this
certificate. The Commission encourages cooperation between interstate
pipelines and local authorities. However, this does not mean that state
and local agencies, through application of state or local laws, may
prohibit or unreasonably delay the construction of facilities approved by
this Commission.
If it’s so safe, why is it so hard to find out how safe it is?
And why did injecting toxic chemicals into ground water ever get approved?
Since methane leaks out of pipelines and compressor stations, as well as wells,
it’s time to stop fracking and pipelines and get on with solar and wind power.
PITTSBURGH (AP) — In at least four states that have nurtured
the nation’s energy boom, hundreds of complaints have been made
about well-water contamination from oil or gas drilling, and
pollution was confirmed in a number of them, according to a review
that casts doubt on industry suggestions that such problems rarely
happen.
The pipeline Sabal Trail wants to connect to,
Williams Transco in Alabama,
blew up in 2011, flaming a hundred feet up,
heard more than 30 miles away,
left a crater more than 50 feet wide,
destroyed 65 acres of trees,
fried five acres of soil into pottery,
and launched a 43-foot pipe section as a missile
that landed 190 feet away.
The cause was never announced.
There was no construction going on, so
could it be corrosion?
Do we want another pipeline like that?
Williams did some pigging just before this pipeline rupture but they
didn’t receive the pigging results until after the explosion. The
word from the locals in Alabama is that Williams is now frantically
digging up parts of this same pipeline in several different
locations which could indicate the problem is not isolated.Williams
does not have a good track record of pipeline safety.
A Transco natural gas pipeline ruptured at approximately 3:07 p.m.
Saturday with an explosion that could be heard for more than 30
miles while shooting flames nearly 100 feet in the air for over an
hour….
A shell company lasted only weeks before filing bankruptcy
after polluting a West Virginia river and drinking water for 300,000 people.
No assets, no insurance, as near as I can tell.
Sabal Trail Transmission is a shell company owned by Spectra Energy
and NextEra and managed by Spectra:
what assets does it have, and what insurance has it offered
in case its pipeline corrodes and leaks
like Spectra has been fined for
or one of its compressor stations
leaks like in Pennsylvania or Maine
or
residents have to evacuate
as Spectra’s Susan Waller said would happen in case of a “true emergency”?
Who will pay for the local first responders,
or property damage,
or a polluted aquifer?
The company behind the
massive chemical spill that made
tap water unsafe for more than 300,000 West Virginians
has filed for bankruptcy, according to
documents obtained by The Huffington Post.
According to bankruptcy filings, Freedom Industries, wholly
owned by Chemstream Holdings Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
on Friday. Freedom Industries owns the storage facility responsible
for leaking up to 7,500 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (a
coal-cleaning chemical also known as crude MCHM) into West Virginia’s
Elk River.
It took just one week for Pennsylvania coal mining executive Cliff
Forrest, the new owner of Freedom Industries, to discover that one
of the six-decade-old storage tanks he had acquired Dec. 31 was
leaking a toxic chemical into the Elk River that supplies water to
about 300,000 West Virginians….
Governmental eminent domain powers have been growing for more than 115 years, to the point where courts have upheld the taking of property from one private owner for the purpose of transferring it to another, as long as it benefits the public. The Natural Gas Act delegates eminent domain powers to the pipeline companies, subject to court approval. However there’s no mechanism in place to dispute the taking. Things to consider:
