Tag Archives: Ethics

Sabal Trail meeting leaves questions unanswered –VDT

Looks like we have a theme here, of Spectra and Sabal Trail not answering questions, often accompanied by mentions of threatening letters, on WALB (Spectra reps not familiar with fines against their own company), from Shale Property Rights (“your statement is incorrect and misleading”), on WCTV (“tonight’s meeting didn’t ease everyone’s fears”), in the Moultrie Observer (“Sabal began sending letters to landowners”), on Chris Beckham’s radio show (“veiled threats” and no response to a landowner attorney’s letter of denial of access), and spelled out in the headline of yesterday’s VDT article.

Matthew Woody wrote for the VDT yesterday, Sabal Trail meeting leaves questions unanswered,

The formats for both the Wiregrass and Clyattville meetings were perceived by area residents as unfriendly and intimidating.

“It’s the same set up as the meeting at Wiregrass,” said affected landowner Carol Singletary. “I am disappointed.”

Brooks County landowner, Tracy Ryder, said the hardest part about the layout of the meeting was that residents had to come with the right questions to ask because Sabal Trail did not easily provide the information.

“Overall, the meeting has good presentations, but not good information. It seems to be designed to win admiration without providing value. Some of the representatives have been courteous, but they aren’t straightforward with residents,” said James Ryder. “After this meeting, I feel kind of let down. I didn’t get the information that I wanted.”

Many residents expressed concern about safety issues, property values, paying property taxes on land that cannot be developed, reselling their property, and proper compensation for the use of their land.

Here’s a report by the Ryders about the 16 October 2013 meeting by Spectra:

We attended an open house meeting conducted by Sabal Trail in Valdosta, GA, last October at which time people were able to view charts and map and ask questions regarding the proposed pipeline and corridors. Sabal Trail representatives were not releasing information about the corridors and specific properties that were to be impacted because they said they were still in the planning and research stages. They did state they wanted to lay their pipeline next to the SONAT line, and that they were no longer considering utilizing the corridor affecting Tifton, Georgia because “there were too many people involved”. My reply to that was that property owners in Brooks County are people, too, and that we are already negatively impacted by the pre-existing SONAT pipe line.

Most importantly, we did note that there was no representation of Brooks County people at that meeting, or at any of the following meetings in Lowndes County. Lowndes County citizens are quite organized in their resistance to this new pipe line. We are contacting you with a questionnaire to learn what your concerns are. If Brooks County property owners organize and form a united front, we should be able to have our concerns addressed. By organizing we will have greater leverage to if not to change the course of the new gas line, to demand and negotiate better compensation for our losses. As I fear they will be significant.

And according to the VDT, the Ryders remain disappointed in the pipeline company for not supplying information. They’re not the only ones.

-jsq

Take a stand against the the pipeline –Karen Noll

Received today on Spectra reps unfamiliar with Spectra fines @ LCC 2013-12-09. -jsq

Take a stand against the the pipeline by sending in your comment to FERC.gov. At the website you eRegister and they send you an email. Once registered you can submit a comment on docket # PF14-1. Find below an example of a comment, feel free to copy any or all as you please:

Sabal Trail pipeline proposal poses a significant safety threat to our community through accidents. Leaks from such pipelines in the US have caused explosions and have destroyed homes and killed people 29 times this year alone. Since the proposed pipeline is much larger than any of these recent explosions, a pipeline of 36 inch radius could do extreme damage if such an accident should occur in the Lowndes county area where it is proposed. Not only those living near the pipeline but Continue reading →

Spectra reps unfamiliar with Spectra fines @ LCC 2013-12-09

Both of Spectra’s principal representatives to the Lowndes County Commission and the Dougherty County Commission claim not to be familiar with Spectra’s well-known public record of safety violations, and some of what they say contradicts the public record, so how can we believe any of their safety assertions about Spectra’s proposed Sabal Trail Transmission pipeline?

Update 3PM: more evidence from Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

As I’ve mentioned before, Spectra’s Andrea Grover told us that everyone in Pennsylvania was happy now, after I asked her about the Steckman Ridge compressor station leak in front of reporter Matthew Woody, at the 16 October 2013 Spectra meeting at Wiregrass Tech in Valdosta. There’s more beyond the article about pipeline fines and incidents Woody wrote 24 November 2013 for the Valdosta Daily Times (VDT), the local newspaper of record.

Her excuse for the compressor leak, if I recall correctly, was that Continue reading →

Duke spokesman for closed nuke rate hikes touts new plant for Sabal Trail gas

Would you trust a salesman of failed nukes to sell you a gas plant? Is eminent domain on your property and your community “reasonable and prudent” so Duke can make another bad bet, this time on methane, after Citi GPS and Edison Electric Institute and former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff all warned them that solar is going to overtake every other power source within only a few years?

That’s the same Sterling Ivey who announced 2 August 2013 that Duke’s Levy County nuclear plants were cancelled ( Duke Energy Cancels $24.7B Florida Nuke Plant Project, ENRSoutheast, 08/02/2013, by Scott Judy). A few days later, Florida PSC approved a rate hike to pay for Duke’s forever-closed Crystal River nuclear plant. Dave Heller wrote for WTSP 5 August 2013, Florida regulators OK Duke Energy nuclear rate hike,

“These are reasonable and prudent costs as Continue reading →

ADS fails to recycle, appeals DSS ruling anyway

Why is Lowndes County leaving the City of Valdosta to subsidize the county’s failed “exclusive franchise”? And is ADS’ failure to recycle recyling a breach of its contract with the county?

Adam Floyd wrote on the front page of the VDT today, Advanced Disposal appeals Deep South decision,

Requests made to Advanced Disposal Service’s corporate office and Robert Norman, the lawyer who filed the appeal, to learn the company’s reasoning behind the appeal were not returned by press time.

Meanwhile, the City of Valdosta’s recycling center has denied Advanced Disposal further access to its facilities, citing concerns about volume.

John Whitehead III, deputy city manager for operations, said that the center could not process the company’s deliveries fast enough, and material was beginning to pile up. The suspension is temporary, Whitehead said, and was done to ensure that the city could process its recycling which increases during the holidays.

“We had been taking our recycling to the City of Valdosta, and Monday they cut us off without any notice,” said Greg Walk, local general manager for Advanced Disposal. “We’ve constructed a bunker at the landfill, and the material that is being collected in that bunker will be taken to a processing plant in Milledgeville.”

The company had to dispose of recycled materials collected Monday and Tuesday but continued recycling service Wednesday.

“It was the last thing we wanted to do to our recyclables, but we responded as quickly as possible,” said Walk.

Does that mean the city of Valdosta sent the recycling to the landfill? And is that a violation of the county’s contract with ADS?

-jsq

All 4 Commissioner questions about the pipeline –VDT @ LCC 2013-12-09

The VDT let local citizens speak, unlike the Lowndes County Commission. Perhaps the VDT, like many local citizens, does not think transparency means what the County Commission thinks it means.

Matthew Woody wrote across the top of the front page of the Valdosta Daily Times today, Sabal Trail presents at County Commission work session,

Protesters stood outside of the Lowndes County Judicial and Administrative Complex at 8:30 a.m. in opposition to the Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline project as representatives from the company made a presentation at the Commission Work Session.

That’s Matthew Woody across the street taking that picture, and here are more pictures of the protesters.

“We strive everyday for zero incidences,” Fahrenthold said “All of our meetings, company wide, starts with a safety update.”

Really? So why afterwards did both Brian Fahrenthold and Andra Grover Continue reading →

Spectra Sales Pitch, Nothing about Nottinghill, etc. @ LCC 2013-12-09

Given dozens of questions submitted by citizens and every opportunity, Commissioners asked only four perfunctory questions after Spectra Energy’s Sabal Trail pipeline sales pitch. Chairman Bill Slaughter repeatedly let multiple Spectra reps speak from the audience without having them come to the podium, or even identify themselves before they spoke. They were pointed at by the chief Spectra speaker when he named them, but they did not stand up or raise their hand at the time, so it was quite hard to tell which was which. The Chairman never allows that sort of behavior from local citizens. Why is he granting extra courtesies to a company from Houston that wants to exercise eminent domain on local citizens’ lands? Who does the Lowndes County Commission represent?

At least WALB and WCTV let a landowner speak: that’s more than the County Commission did.

Nottinghill is back yet again. A Commissioner did ask staff whether it was really ready, and it isn’t, but no Commissioners asked any such probing questions of the Spectra reps.

The three beer licenses, a liquor license, the contracts, and the bids were glossed over in almost as perfunctory a manner. There were some questions from Commissioners about costs to the county government. But there were none from Commissioners about costs to landowners from gashing a pipeline through their property.

Given that there’s a settlement for back pay for some county employees, it appears that the employees maybe had to sue to get paid.

Staff did express concern about “customer service” for a decorative special tax lighting district, but none about service to the landowners of the county whose land Spectra proposes to run through, or for that matter to the taxpayers of the county to whom the Commission and staff cannot be bothered to show what they’re voting on before they vote.

Here’s the agenda plus links to the videos and a few notes.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

PROPOSED-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

Continue reading →

80 years ago alcohol prohibition ended: time to end drug prohibition

The twenty-first amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified eighty years ago today, repealing the eighteenth amendment, ending alcohol prohibition, and along with it the alcohol mobs it had bred. It’s time to do the same with drug prohibition, and along with it not only drug gangs but also the epidemic of incarceration in this country.

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her newspaper column My Day, 14 July 1939, Prohibition, Continue reading →

Lowndes County can’t make a monopoly –Judge Harry J. Altman on DSS in VDT

Maybe filing the lawsuit in the first place was “premature”, to use Chairman Bill Slaughter’s word in the VDT yesterday about a possible appeal. Commissioner Demarcus Marshall had the common courtesy on WCTV to apologize to DSS for the unnecessary lawsuit. How much did the Commission spend on that waste of time and effort?

Editor Kay Harris wrote on the front page of the Valdosta Daily Times yesterday, Company wins fight to stay in business: Deep South wins case brought by County,

Southern Circuit Judge Harry J. Altman issued a ruling Monday in the civil action filed by Lowndes County against Deep South Sanitation, LLC to enjoin Deep South from continuing its garbage business. Advanced Disposal Services was later added as an intervenor plaintiff in the case against Deep South as well.

In the ruling, Altman denied the County’s request for an injunction to put Deep South out of business. The order addresses the County’s ordinance passed in 2012, saying that to “simultaneously invoke an exclusive franchise agreement with one company would, in effect … permit Lowndes County to construct a monopoly while simultaneously putting pre-existing companies out of business.”

Well, it appears the judge thought it was about right or wrong.

The county Chairman’s view now? Continue reading →

DSS on WCTV

The WCTV reporter interviewed Lowndes County Commissioner Demarcus Marshall at yesterday’s Chamber of Commerce Legislative Lunch because Chairman Bill Slaughter was not there.

Winnie Anne Wright wrote yesterday for WCTV, Deep South Sanitation Will Continue Work In Lowndes County, quoted Cary Scarborough about winning the lawsuit the Lowndes County Commission brought against his company, and then:

He has invested quite a bit of money in his only truck that you can see here. Despite all of the litigation, he is proud to be born and raised in Lowndes County.

One of the Commision’s newest representatives, Demarcus Marshall, says he hopes the County and private businesses will be able to negotiate out of court, if an issue like this comes about again.

“I commend him for his efforts. Commend his family. And I just really apologize to them that they had to undergo this. And I hope that in the future, don’t be afraid to do any business here in Lowndes County”, says Marshall.

Residents of Lowndes County will now be able to choose between Deep South Sanitation and Advanced Disposal, as well as any other sanitation service for their trash collection.

-jsq