Tag Archives: Lee County

Bell Brothers v. Sabal Trail Attorney Fees

You can help prevent this happening to you or your neighbors. Sabal Trail will use this to intimidate anyone who opposes them, just like they’ve been using previous court cases to scare people all along. Fortunately, the Bells have already provided a way everyone can help and thereby demonstrate we the people do not want Sabal Trail. The Bell brothers have set up a gofundme campaign. If you can’t contribute, you can help publicize it.

In the same case that people travelled to Leesburg, GA to attend twice, from Dougherty County and Lowndes County, GA and from places in Florida as far south as the Everglades, the Bell Brothers lost Continue reading

Condemnor bears the burden of proof –GA 2006 Constitutional Amendment

Sabal Trail can’t just assert public use for its pipeline: it has to prove it, according to the Georgia Constitution.

The Constitutional Amendment referred to by the landowners Attorney Jonathan P. Waters at yesterday’s eminent domain hearing in Leesburg, GA passed 7 November 2006 by 1,622,403 to 338,876, or 82.7% to 17.3%. Here’s then-Governor Sonny Perdue’s press release when he signed the law to put it on the ballot, which includes this sentence:

Public benefit from economic development shall not constitute a public use.

So it would appear vague claims of tax revenue or illusory jobs are not enough, Sabal Trail.

Here’s the “neutral summary and explanation” required by Georgia state law: Continue reading

Sabal Trail is claiming customers that do not want its gas, and city and county resolutions are relevant, it seems

Sabal Trail asked the judge to throw out my letter to the court yesterday, but the judge said the contents were public record anyway.

300x400 Letter, in Sabal Trail is claiming customers that do not want its gas, and city and county resolutions are relevant, it seems, by John S. Quarterman, 24 March 2015 Six minutes before yesterday’s eminent domain hearing in Leesburg, GA was scheduled to start I submitted the letter you see below, noting that Sabal Trail was claiming customers in counties and cities that had passed resolutions and otherwise said they didn’t want Spectra’s fracked methane pipeline. Naturally Sabal Trail’s attorneys didn’t like that, and asked the judge to disregard and strike from the record “the Quarterman letter” because they said I didn’t have standing, and you can’t just submit materials a few minutes before a hearing. The judge said he would entertain that motion, but he proceeded to leaf through the attachments, noting resoutions by Lowndes County, by Valdosta, a letter from Spencer Lee (Dougherty County attorney), a resolution by Terrell County, one by Albany, and one by Colquitt County. The judge remarked that all this was public record anyway, so striking the letter wouldn’t have much effect.

And it was pretty clear, at least to me (and remember I am not an attorney), that attorneys for both sides and the judge did Continue reading

Don’t let Sabal Trail get eminent domain judgment in Leesburg they could claim applies in Lowndes County

Sabal Trail is already sending “final request” eminent domain threatening letters to Lowndes County landowners saying it is “imperative” for that invading company from Houston, Texas to survey local land for its fracked methane 36-inch pipeline in a hundred-foot right of way. Tomorrow morning at 11:30 AM in Leesburg, Georgia, Sabal Trail demands a judge provide a summary judgment for eminent domain surveying against some Mitchell County landowners. If they get that judgment, they will very likely claim it applies to Lowndes County landowners. There’s still time to write a letter to the Clerk of Superior Court in Leesburg against such a judgment. And you can come to Leesburg yourself to protest.

An eminent domain survey “final request” Sabal Trail sent a Lowndes County landowner this month cited Continue reading

Sabal Trail Pipeline Context maps –Spectra Energy and FPL

Where does Spectra Energy’s natural gas come from, and where does it go? These maps from the Moultrie meeting help explain. Spoiler: from fracking to FPL.

In “Our Portfolio of Assets”, Spectra Energy shows pipelines running from shale gas formations in and around Pennsylvania and down the Appalachians into Tennessee, through north Georgia, and into Alabama, as well as from gas storage facilities in Louisiana and shale fields in Texas.

Our Portfolio of Assets --Spectra Energy

So that’s where it comes from: the Marcellus Shale and its relatives down through (soon) the Conasauga Shale in north Georgia and Alabama and into Louisiana and Texas. Fracking, in other words.

That was not a word that was used by any of the Sabal Trail reps nor a word that appeared on any of their maps or in any of their handouts. But fracking is how natural gas is extracted from the Marcellus Shale, as Andrea Grover presumably knows, since she was sent to Pennsylvania in April to explain a Spectra Energy gas release from a compressor in Marcellus Shale country.

Where is the gas through the Sabal Trail pipeline supposed to go? Orlando, to the Sabal Trail Central Florida Hub. Why? Well, according to Andrea Grover, Florida Power and Light is “modernizing”. She explained that FPL has shut down some coal plants, and is converting to natural gas. She this map of the Florida Southeast Connection:

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Spectra Energy in Moultrie about Sabal Trail Pipeline

I went to the Spectra Pipeline meeting in Moultrie tonight, where many people in blue shirts saying Sabal Trail, including Brian Fahrenthold (who volunteered that I could take pictures of maps) and Andrea Grover (who will be in Valdosta tomorrow), were happy to answer questions from a landowner such as myself.

Here’s just part of the display:

Part of the Moultrie display

The Making of a Pipeline:

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Lee County has its agenda packets online

Lee County has 28,575 people; Lowndes has 111,885 (July 2011). Yet tiny Lee does what mighty Lowndes doesn’t: it puts its agenda packets online. I’d bet it doesn’t even waste county resources putting them into a fancy printed binder. When will Lowndes County move into the 21st century?

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Georgia EPD to suspend consideration of some new farm water permit applications 07/30/2012

In case you had any doubt we’re in serious drought conditions, here’s a PR from GA EPD of 30 July 2012 suspending new agricultural water permits in numerous southwest Georgia counties, as close as Colquitt County, which adjoins Lowndes County.

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The Director of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) has announced that consideration of new applications for agricultural water withdrawal permits in a 24­county area ofsouthwest Georgia will be suspended. The suspension takes effect immediately, but does not apply to applications EPD has already received as of this date.

Map of SW GA suspended water permit regions

Map of SW GA suspended water permit regions

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