After Dawson and Albany, new Georgia cities Sylvester, Tifton, Adel, Hahira, Valdosta in Georgia (right past Lowndes High School), and Jennings, Lake City, Alachua, Gainesville, Ocala, Wildwood, and Ferndale in Florida. If you thought this pipeline wouldn’t affect you, think again. Or some later pipeline if we let this one through. See also Alternative 2 (watch out, Albany!), Alternative 3 Camilla, Thomasville, Monticello, Capps and a row of north Florida counties), and Alternative 4 (Richland, Preston, Americus, Cordele, Ashburn and yet again down I-75 as in Alternative 1).

Update 2014-09-15: Added first paragraph and fixed typos.

FERC’s recent instructions direct Sabal Trail to “include analyses” of

Alternative 1 Alternative 1 extending from near MP 0 to MP 460.6 (the proposed endpoint) following the Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC (Sabal Trail) proposed Sabal Trail Project (Project) route until reaching Highway 82 near Dawson, Georgia; then following Highway 82 to Interstate 75 (I-75); then following I-75 to Highway 91 near The Villages, Florida; then following Highway 91 to Highway 27 near Ferndale, Florida; and then following a Florida Gas Transmission (FGT) pipeline to the proposed endpoint.

Here’s a very rough map of that route, and then let’s name some cities and towns thus targetted by the yard-wide fracked methane pipeline:

As you can see, it goes through Dawson and Albany, and then through the previously-untargetted Georgia cities of Sylvester in Worth County, Tifton in Tift County, Adel in Cook County, Hahira and Valdosta in Lowndes County (and right by Lowndes High School), continuing into Florida through Jennings in Hamilton County, Lake City in Columbia County, Alachua and Gainesville in Alachua County, Ocala in Marion County, Wildwood in Sumter County, and Ferndale in Lake County, and probably some other cities and counties you can find on the map.

What say we call the pipeline off, put solar panels on top of every high school, business roof, and housetop, and get clean, safe, affordable power and jobs right where we need them?

The Lowndes County Commission could pass a land use ordinance to stop this thing, as could the Valdosta City Council or any of the other commissions or councils along that route.

And the Lowndes County Board of Education may want to weigh in on this, unless it wants to risk a pipeline blowing up on I-75 like that 18-inch FGT pipeline did in 2009 between I-95 and the Florida Turnpike, flinging an 104-foot section of pipe through the air that could easily have hit the nearby Foxwood High School if it had flown in a different direction. And Sabal Trail wants to gouge a 36-inch pipeline. A little arithmetic shows 18 * 18 = 324 while 36 * 36 = 1296, and 1296/324 is four times as much area, so four times as much explosive fracked methane right next to Lowndes High School.

-jsq

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