Here are a few things you get with a pipeline easement:
no right to grow trees on it, limited right to put up fences,
and if you do, you have to have gates in them that the pipeline
company can put their own lock on.
But you do get to continue to pay taxes on land you can no longer
fully use; land that now contains a potentially corrosive, leaky,
explosive hazard that you can’t tap for your own use.
And you do get pipeline company contractors coming through at their
convenience to mow or otherwise clear the right of way.
Contractors who may be somewhat unclear on where the right of way
ends and your trees, for example, start.
Without ever having to notify you then or tell you later what happened.
And it’s even worse than that: you may get another pipeline, and meanwhile the pipeline company will claim rights over local governments and developments.
All while the world has changed and the sun has risen on a better way.
Tag Archives: Jon Wellinghoff
Norman Bay new FERC Chair?
The fossil fuel industries that fund FERC also control enough Senate seats to make approving a non-fracking FERC chair very difficult. Did they just do so?
Michael Coleman wrote for the Albequerque Journal 18 June 2014, Senate committee approves NM’s Norman Bay to lead FERC,
Norman Bay, a former U.S. Attorney in New Mexico and University of New Mexico School of Law professor, won support from a key Senate panel today in his bid to become head the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but not without some significant objections from committee members.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 13-9 to approve President Obama’s nomination of Bay to the powerful regulatory post.
That article has various verbiage about how well Bay knows energy. But why did it take so long to find a replacement after former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff resigned last November? Wellinghoff resigned after allegations Continue reading Norman Bay new FERC Chair?
FPL’s own projections don’t support need for a new pipeline
How does a 13% projected power increase justify a 33% 50% increase
in fracked methane delivered by a third new pipeline?
And why isn’t FPL doing more with solar power in the Sunshine State?
Updated 12 August 2014: Fixed 50% increase, which was so absurdly high that I didn’t believe it when I first wrote this. Yet 3/2 is a 50% increase.
FPL’s 10-Year Site Plan web page says:
FPL submitted its 10-Year Power Plant Site Plan 2014-2023 to the Florida Public Service Commission in April 2014.
The document includes on page 37
FPL’s own Schedule 2.1 History and Forecast of Energy Consumption
And Number of Customers by Customer Class (Projected),
which shows 55,739 GWh for 2014 and 62,870 GWh projected for 2023.
That’s an increase of 13% over a decade.
How does that (very aggressive) forecasted increase
justify a natural gas increase of 33% 50% by adding a third pipeline?
(And by the way, those numbers are significantly less than
the numbers in FPL’s 2011 plan of Continue reading FPL’s own projections don’t support need for a new pipeline