Sabal Trail is back on the agenda for the Hamilton County, Florida
Commissioners tomorrow evening.
Please go if you’re in the area.
When: 6PM Tuesday
March 15th 2016
Where:
Room 112, Courthouse,
207 Northeast First St.
Jasper, Florida
Here’s the agenda.
-jsq
Twice in five years a sinkhole big enough to risk rerouting a road
appears in Lowndes County, Georgia, in the same fragile karst limestone
Valdosta limesink terrain Sabal Trail proposes to gouge through
What if a sinkhole drops under that pipeline, and, like FGT in 2013,
Sabal Trail declares force majeure and doesn’t pay?
See On the LAKE Front, 2015-08-06, County and news media digging deeper on Shiloh sinkhole story, Continue reading New sinkhole in Lowndes County terrain Sabal Trail wants to gouge through
Citing the GDOT denial of KMI’s Palmetto Pipeline and numerous specific hazards of Spectra Energy’s proposed Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline (sinkholes in karst limestone and a compressor station next to Albany’s water wells, all for no benefit to Georgia, by a company with a poor safety record), U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop (GA-02) wrote to FERC (PDF):
I believe that FERC should deny STT’s application for a Certificate of Public Necessity.
And he told FERC to tell Sabal Trail to stop suing his constituents for eminent domain.
A year after
Rep. Bishop listened in Albany for two hours to complaints about Sabal Trail,
Dougherty County and
Albany, Georgia
filed followup letters to their resolutions against that pipeline.
Neither FERC nor Sabal Trail answered them,
so their Representative in the U.S. Congress forwarded their
letters with that sharp cover letter.
Three weeks later, FERC still hasn’t even filed his letter in their e-comment system,
much less responded to it.
Just how lawless is FERC, anyway? Doesn’t a member of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations give them pause? Continue reading Deny Sabal Trail, said U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, and FERC ignored him
The Suwannee River faces invasion by both Kinder Morgan’s Palmetto petroleum products pipeline and Spectra Energy’s Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline. Plus the Savannah, Ogeechee, Altamaha, Satilla, and St. Mary’s River are threatened by the Palmetto Project, Chattahoochee, Flint, Withlacoochee, and Santa Fe Rivers are threatened by Sabal Trail, plus most both projects is above the fragile Floridan Aquifer. All for no known local benefit; just to profit corporate greed.
Curtis and Norma Beaird, Poets Love Birds, 30 April 2015, Why Georgia Doesn’t Need the Palmetto Pipeline: Our Filing to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC),
We are writing this article because we are very concerned about the proposed Palmetto Pipeline to be built in the state of Georgia. Kinder Morgan plans to build 360-mile pipeline that will run from Belton, South Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida. According to the Savannah Riverkeeper, 218 miles of the pipeline will be in Georgia and 142 miles of the pipeline will be built in South Carolina. This pipeline would move refined petroleum products, to include denatured fuel ethanol. …
According to Push Back the Pipeline:
In the continental U.S., there are only 42 free-flowing rivers greater than 124 miles in length. Georgia contains five of these rivers, three of which are in the path of the proposed pipeline, Altamaha, Ogeechee, and Satilla Rivers. The Okefenokee Swamp is also the headwaters of the St. Marys and the Suwanee River, which flows to the Gulf of Mexico.
Georgia also contains most of the free-flowing 205-mile Alapaha River, which fortunately isn’t currently the target of any pipeline. However, Spectra Energy proposes to gouge its Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline under the 115-mile Withlacoochee River in Georgia. And Sabal Trail would cross the Suwannee River in Florida, so the Suwannee is a target of both pipelines: Palmetto in Georgia, and Sabal Trail in Florida.
Here’s Curtis Beaird’s FERC filing, which notes that Kinder Morgan has not proven any need Continue reading Why Georgia Doesn’t Need the Palmetto Pipeline –Poets Love Birds
Apparently the Florida Department of Environmental Protection complained to FERC that any drilling under our blackwater rivers would leak contaminants into the karst limestone that contains our drinking water Floridan Aquifer:
Update 2015-04-03: Additions now that FERC eLibrary is working, including third point below.
- Sabal Trail underestimated karst features—additional, more recent data available from agencies including LiDAR, potentiometric surface maps, and cave maps.
- Highest agency concern is associated with likely loss of drilling fluid associated with HDDs in limestone bedrock including at the Suwannee, Santa Fe, and Withlacoochee rivers.
- Drilling fluid loss would have an environmental impact; risk and magnitude of impact on groundwater, wells and springs should be based on updated, site-specific information.
Filed with FERC 1 April 2015 as Continue reading Likely loss of drilling fluid in limestone under rivers –FL DEP to FERC
John Peconom of FERC has told Sabal Trail to provide copious detailed information by 27 March 2015, including numerous items about karst limestone, such as:
Utilize publicly available LiDAR data and cave information to further characterize karst areas crossed by the Project facilities.
and
Provide summary assessments of the Direct Pipe, open cut, aerial, and intersect crossing methods as alternatives to the proposed HDD crossings of the Withlacoochee River in Brooks and Lowndes Counties, Georgia and the Suwannee River, Santa Fe River, and Withlacoochee Rivers in Florida. Also, summarize any modified HDD techniques/methods considered at these specific crossings.
Is this just FERC helping one of its funding organizations (FERC is 100% funded by the industries it “regulates”)? Or maybe even FERC is getting tired of Sabal Trail?
Filed with FERC 27 February 2015 as Accession Number: 20150227-3071, “Letter requesting Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC to file within 30 days the Environmental Information Request for the Sabal Trail Project under CP15-17.” Continue reading FERC tells Sabal Trail to fix 17 pages of errors
The state representative for
Valdosta and parts of
Lowndes County
cited their two resolutions and
enumerated lack of need for a pipeline, threatening letters from Sabal Trail, alternative routes
next to a school, ill effects on business
including on
forestry and agriculture
and
private property valuations,
potential sinkholes due to drilling under the
Withlacoochee River,
including on the
preferred route,
or
anywhere in the fragile karst limestone
containing the Floridan Aquifer,
plus Spectra Energy’s own
SEC filings
say it doesn’t have insurance to cover
the kinds of
safety problems in Spectra’s own history
nor those pointed out by
Southern Natural Gas Company.
Dexter Sharper noted local evidence that
solar power is cheaper and safer,
and echoed
the Lowndes County Democratic Party
in writing:
“…we have a moral obligation to leave our children and grandchildren with an earth as safe, beautiful, and majestic as the one bequeathed to us by our parents and grandparents.”
For all these reasons, on behalf of my constituents and the citizens of Lowndes County and the state of Georgia, I oppose the Sabal Trail pipeline anywhere in the County of Lowndes or the State of Georgia.
I urge that FERC reject any permit for the Sabal Trail pipeline, or at the very least move it entirely out of the State of Georgia.
Filed 7 January 2015 with FERC as Accession Number: 20150107-5100, “Comment of Dexter Sharper, Georgia State Representative, District 177, under CP15-17.” Continue reading No eminent domain for water-threatening unnecessary Sabal Trail pipeline –GA Rep. Dexter Sharper District 177
Email FERC Commissioners directly, and it still gets filed as an ecomment, as a Thomas County, Georgia resident demonstrated. And remember FERC could pick Alternative 3 which goes through Thomas County.
Filed with FERC 1 December 2014 as Accession Number: 20141201-4002,
From: Alton Burns
Date: November 27, 2014 at 10:55:20 PM EST
To: <cheryl.lafleur@ferc.gov>
Subject: Re: PF14-1-000 Sabal Trail Transmission LLCDear Chairman LaFleur,
Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC is seeking a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity for its 300 mile Florida natural gas pipeline and will submit its preferred pipeline route soon. This certificate should be denied. When determining the issue of ‘need’, Sabal Trail’s own Draft Resource Report states: Continue reading Sabal Trail is bullying its way –Alton Burns to FERC Chair
And checkered pipeline company safety records, says Nonami:
The Project is Not Necessary and Thus Fails to Satisfy FERC Requirement of Being Publicly Necessary and Convenient
I’ve added a few links and illustrations, but Nonami’s filing is so thorough it would take a long time to link to all the evidence.
Filed with FERC 13 November 2014, Comment filed on behalf of Nonami Oglethorpe, LLC by Davis, Pickren, Seydel & Sneed, LLP under PF14-1. Continue reading An unnecessary threat by an unsafe company –Ted Turner’s Nonami Plantation to FERC about Sabal Trail
Second day in a row,
the Albany Herald covered
the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline making the Georgia
Water Coalition Dirty Dozen list.
The Flint River would be affected just like the Withlacoochee River,
and in Florida the Suwannee River and the Santa Fe River are in the same
karst limestone that contains our drinking water in south Georgia and
Florida in the Floridan Aquifer.
These newspaper articles follow two previous Albany ones, a couple of
Valdosta ones, and local, state, and national TV and newspaper coverage
of protests and opposition to Spectra’s hazardous boondoggle.
Sabal Trail’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad PR week continues….
Jennifer Parks, Albany Herald, 22 October 2014, Proposed gas pipeline, Flint make Dirty Dozen list: Textile manufacturer pollution, state water policy issues cited as problems for Flint River, Continue reading Sabal Trail on Dirty Dozen and Flint River