The alleged “Project Need” in
Sabal Trail’s Friday FERC docket CP15-17 permit application
to get eminent domain for its 100-foot-wide gouge for a yard-wide hazardous fracked methane pipeline is: Sabal Trail claims it has contracts to sell the gas.
Let’s apply that logic to Sabal Trail co-owner FPL’s headquarters.
This is FPL headquarters at 700 Universe Blvd., Juno Beach, Florida, in the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser’s map: Continue reading
The U.S. and China made a historic deal on climate change this week.
Here’s the good (it’s real, it’s huge, and it’s positive economically
for both countries), the bad (nuclear is first on the list of those “clean energy” sources), and the ugly.
Also this week China made a second huge natural gas deal with Russia:
what does that mean to the current U.S. push for LNG exports,
including the proposed Sabal Trail pipeline gouge through Georgia?
Rebecca Leber, The New Republic, 12 November 2014, The World Has Waited for the U.S. and China to Take Action on Climate Change. They Just Did.
President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced on Wednesday commitments to reduce both countries’ greenhouse gas emissions. The surprise announcement, which came while Obama visits Beijing this week, is the clearest sign yet the two countries are serious on climate change.
After months of negotiations Continue reading
“Why do we have to kneel before their wishes? How is it that a single foreign corporation can have greater power and say than the hundreds of property owners and their supporters?” asked Jim Parker
in
the 11 November 2014 Lowndes County Commission Regular Session. Continue reading
The VDT’s page-long coverage wasn’t just fluff.
Spectra’s Andrea Grover admitted they need complete survey data,
and Sabal Trail admitted they have no Georgia customers, which means
they have no Georgia eminent domain, so every landowner who refuses is
indeed putting a crimp into Spectra’s fracked methane pipeline.
Plus Grover admitted trees don’t grow back fast, so her promise
“It’s restored to what it was before” is pretty hollow.
She admitted she knows the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Fuels
can approve LNG export, but she didn’t admit that it has already done
so for three companies right there Spectra’s Sabal Trail pipeline leads
on Florida’s Atlantic coast.
She still can’t seem to remember Spectra’s long list of safety violations.
And she’d already forgotten exactly when her posse of seven
rode into Leesburg, GA seeking an eminent domain court order,
and rode away without it.
Not a word, though, about Lowndes County Chairman Bill Slaughter’s fourteen points of Continue reading
Tim Carroll, District 5, has filed a request based on property
rights and water issues for the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission (FERC) to deny the Sabal Trail Transmission methane
pipeline that Spectra Energy wants to run through Lowndes County.
Here’s the letter:
Property rights and water: please deny the Sabal Trail methane
pipeline –Tim Carroll, Valdosta City Council,
5th District
Valdosta is the county seat of Lowndes County, Georgia, and at least one landowner with land in the path of that proposed pipeline lives in the City of Valdosta in Council Carroll’s district.
-jsq
The Commission’s designated first speaker
confused order with good.
Chairman Bill Slaughter
required a sitting judge to go to the podium to speak,
even though he had not required that for multiple Spectra pipeline reps
the previous morning.
Nottinghill is finally resolved,
after yet more probing questions by Commissioners; more than they
asked the Spectra reps.
A
VSU professor
and
a landowner
asked very good questions about the pipeline,
a
KLVB board member gave a report,
and
Gretchen asked the Commission to post Planning Commission minutes online.
Two people were appointed; one spoke. The two beer licenses, a liquor license, the decorative special tax lighting district for Windstone, the contracts, the resolution to ask the legislature for an additional judge, and the bids were all approved with little discussion. The settlement for back pay it turns out didn’t actually involve employees having to sue to get paid.
Here’s the amended agenda with the two added items, plus links to the videos and a few notes. See also the previous morning’s Work Session.
LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERSContinue reading
AMENDED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street — 2nd Floor
The Commission didn’t let citizens speak after
Spectra’s sales pitch for the Sabal Trail Pipeline Monday,
but some citizens spoke up in Citizens to Be Heard Tuesday
and WCTV covered that.
Winnie Anne Wright wrote for WCTV yesterday, Citizens Address Lowndes County Commission About Sabal Trail Pipeline,
Continue readingResidents covered topics such as the lack of economic impact on Lowndes County, the legality of the pipeline, and also the safety.
“As a mother of three, I don’t want to have to fear for my children as they sleep at night. And you hear a lot of people say that natural gas line explosions don’t happen, and for those that feel that they don’t, I really encourage them to go on the internet and google gas line explosions and then tell me that they don’t happen. As a mother, I feel like I have to step up and do what I can to protect my children”, says Mindy Bland, an impacted homeowner.
LTE in the VDT today. I added the images and the links. -jsq
Albert Einstein once said that “the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” This philosophy can be applied to countless social and political issues and speaks of the dangers of apathy. Add to this situation a lack of information and our society is truly in danger, as companies like SPECTRA Energy not only count on our apathy, but will also try to hoodwink us.
The Sabal Trail Pipeline currently discussed in our community is really part of a larger story, a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fracking allows companies like Halliburton to free oil and gas trapped in geologic formations, but in a fashion that is extremely dangerous to our environment (especially
groundwater aquifers) and human health. Exempt from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, fracking has created countless problems for communities from Pennsylvania to Texas, and may soon be coming to north Georgia.
The gas pipeline under discussion is literally a tentacle Continue reading
A Florida company selected a Texas company that can use eminent domain in Georgia to take your land. Does that seem right to you? Florida PSC has to review this pipeline. Where’s Georgia PSC on this?
FPL PR 26 July 2013, FPL selects Sabal Trail Transmission and Florida Southeast Connection to build new natural gas pipeline system into Florida,
Florida Power & Light Company today announced that its evaluation of proposals for additional natural gas transportation capacity determined that the best, most economical solution for ensuring Florida’s continued access to the clean, affordable, U.S.-produced fuel necessary to meet the growing electricity needs of the state’s residents and businesses is a combination of a natural gas pipeline and interconnection hub to be built by Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC, and a second natural gas pipeline to be built by Florida Southeast Connection, LLC….
Both Sabal Trail and Florida Southeast Connection will be interstate natural gas pipelines subject to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval and oversight.
In conjunction with today’s public announcement, FPL filed a petition for prudence review with the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC). Subject to PSC approval, Continue reading
Aaron Gould Sheinin wrote in the AJC Monday 2 May 2011, Deal signs bill allowing public-private reservoirs
Yes, but trumping up a fake budget crisis by giving tax breaks to people who don’t need them and then using it to privatize public infrastructure for corporate profit at taxpayer expense is not the way to do it.Partnerships between public authorities and private enterprise to build new reservoirs are now legal in Georgia under legislation Gov. Nathan Deal signed into law Monday.
Senate Bill 122 “is particularly useful at times such as these when budget cutbacks hinder our ability to invest in new infrastructure,” Deal said at a Georgia Chamber of Commerce luncheon in his honor. “This stretches public dollars by attracting partners to move forward with public works projects that will benefit the citizens of the state for generations.”
Lawmakers approved $46 million in bond money in the state budget that takes effect July 1 to help facilitate the construction of new reservoirs. Deal said he hopes to increase that to $300 million over the next several years.
“Increasing our water supply in terms of holding that supply is critical for meeting our future needs,” Deal said.
Wait, it gets even better: Continue reading