When: Saturday, 16 January 2016 – 11 AM with hike at 1 PM
Where: Suwannee River State Park
3621 201st Path, Live Oak, FL
15 miles west of Live Oak on US 90 Continue reading Hike to the Suwannee River with Sierra Club against Sabal Trail – Jan. 16, 2016
Wouldn’t it be convenient for fossil fuel profits if the Sabal Trail pipeline was already in place and they started fracking? Received today as a comment on Strom LNG Processing & Export In The Public Interest? What About Solar & Other Clean Energy Alternatives?; the content is the opinion of the author undersigned below. -jsq
The health of the people and the water of the state of Florida
are being auctioned off by a block of elected politicians backed by big oil company lobbyists. And our House representative is one of them.
September 17, the Florida League of Women voters called a town hall in the Orlando area to address public concerns over industry plans to practice hydraulic acid fracturing on our fragile limestone aquifers. Not coincidentally, HB 191, and SB 318, bills that call for preempting Home Rule laws, for the express purpose of greasing the skids for fracking in Florida, were quietly introduced that same day by Rep Ray Wesley Rodrigues, Ft. Myers and Senator Garrett Richter, Naples.
The bill is backed by Continue reading No Fracked Gas Florida –Harriet Heywood
If you’re a Houston fossil fuel company and you can’t get FERC approval fast enough, try FE, or MARAD!
If that doesn’t work, ship it by land through Canada or Mexico!
Local property rights, they laugh at those! Rio Grande, Suwannee River, or Hudson River: just minor obstacles to greed!
If the people are tired of profit being more important than their land, water, air, or safety, it’s time to stop this fossil fuel shell game.
Where does this KMI natural gas project start, and where would it connect to Sabal Trail?
Back in March 2015,
FERC gave Kinder Morgan docket CP15-144 for its Jacksonville Expansion Project, to ship “natural” gas from Suwannee County to Jacksonville, where Jaxport is gearing up for liquid natural gas (LNG) export.
KMI’s FERC application explicitly says Sabal Trail can connect if it wants to,
and it turns out Sabal Trail’s own Suwannee County map gives us the answer, once we interpret it: Continue reading Where in Suwannee County is the KMI JAX Expansion Project?
Does it seem like FPL is the sucker in these fossil fuel deals by its parent NextEra? While the people of Florida fall far behind even New Jersey and Massachusetts in deploying solar power in the much more populous Sunshine State? You can call your local, state, and federal officials and ask them to stop the fossil fuel boondoggles and get on with solar power.
As we’ve seen,
NextEra is unloading its Oklahoma fracking operation onto FPL.
“Positive” effects of fracking in Oklahoma have included
earthquakes.
Meanwhile, NextEra subsidiary Nextera Energy Resources has solar operations in California, Nevada, New Mexico, and even New Jersey, but not in Florida. NextEra’s Yieldco NextEra Energy Partners (NEP) is even Continue reading NextEra invests in solar while its subsidiary FPL promotes fracked methane Sabal Trail
Please sign this petition for an independent investigation of FERC by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Or call or write your own members of Congress and ask them to investigate FERC and rein in its rubberstamping of new fossil fuel projects.
FERC has actually
denied two pipelines out of a huge number of applications.
Both were part of LNG import projects.
One of them was about hardship to mineral interest donors, and a fair FERC would conclude hardship
to everyone who depends on the Floridan Aquifer for their sole source of drinking water would be more than sufficient reason to deny Sabal Trail.
The other`was a Spectra pipeline,
so even mighty Spectra can lose at FERC.
But it’s hard for any new fossil fuel project to lose at FERC because FERC brags about “Full Cost Recovery” meaning 100% of FERC’s annual Congressional allocation is paid back out of fees and charges from the very industries FERC supposedly “regulates”. This is what Investopedia defines as regulatory capture: Continue reading Petition for GAO to rein in FERC
A local citizen asks her County Commission to represent its citizens, not a pipeline company from somewhere else, in an op-ed in the Suwannee County newspaper today.
Lori McCraney, Suwannee Democrat, 24 December 2015, Opinion: Suwannee County commissioners lack resolve against Sabal Trail,
Proponents have touted the safety of the Sabal Trail pipeline. This belies the fact that Spectra Energy, the parent of Sabal Trail, has one of the worst safety records in the industry. See www.spectrabusters.org/hazards/spectra-safety-violations for links to numerous articles regarding Spectra’s safety record.
According to Alan Lambeth, director of engineering design for Spectra Energy, Sabal Trail will use the thinnest pipe allowed Continue reading The fracked methane bridge isn’t short enough or safe enough: go renewable energy –Lori McCraney in Suwannee Democrat
Just before Christmas, when the fewest people will be paying attention,
FERC just issued for Sabal Trail, FSC, and Transco Hillabee the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS),
aiming at March to rubberstamp a permit.
You can still ecomment to FERC,
or
to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or
to GA-EPD or
ask
your local, state, and federal elected and appointed officials
to oppose this unnecessary, destructive, and hazardous boondoggle.
Curious how EPA changed its tune just before the FEIS.
Accession Number: 20151218-4001, “Final Environmental Impact Statement Volume I re the Southeast Market Pipelines Project under CP14-554 et al. Dated December”, with an announcement, Continue reading FERC rubberstamped FEIS for Sabal Trail today 2015-12-18
Three weeks after the date on the letter, I got this schedule notice from FERC,
saying they plan to issue the final Environmental Impact Statement 18 December 2015, and they plan to rubberstamp the permit 17 March 2016,
for Sabal Trail, Transco, and Florida Southeast Connection.
So the opposition has made FERC slip the schedule a month.
This letter does mention a move for the Albany Compressor Station, but it looks to me like it’s referring to the previous site relocation.
-jsq
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSIONCP14-554-000
CP15-16-000
CP15-17-000Florida Southeast Connection, LLC
Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company, LLC
Sabal Trail Transmission, LLCNOTICE OF REVISED SCHEDULE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW OF THE
SOUTHEAST MARKET PIPELINES PROJECT(November 19, 2015) Continue reading SMP Schedule
Who is Sabal Trail, anyway? Counties resolving against Sabal Trail might want to make their resolutions against any new pipeline, since there’s already another one proposed for Suwannee County (see below).
Reviving a pipeline idea that failed in the Florida PSC in 2009, FPL put out a request for proposals that was won by Sabal Trail in 2013. Note the original proposed Sabal Trail path in the map below did not go through Georgia; why that changed is a long story apparently only known in full to Spectra, FPL, and Williams Co.
Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC was formed by Continue reading What companies are in Sabal Trail and related?