Tag Archives: Sabal Trail Transmission

Videos: Sabal Trail and no-bid private Carter Way, no-bid Old US 41 N, Animals, VLMPO, Bemiss Road * 2, sewer, safety, and incarceration @ LCC 2016-04-12

In these LAKE videos you can see the Commissioners and staff didn’t mention the contractor for the emergency no-bid $67,822 to fix the Carter Way Culverts owns property on Carter Way. They never said how much the no-bid Old US 41N paving project would cost. Citizen Judy Havercamp thanked the Commission for the recent animal ordinance. She clapped, but did not get shouted down by the deputy; I guess his instructions only apply to people not complimenting the Commission. Citizen John S. Quarterman, president of WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc., asked for wastewater spills to be posted on the county’s website and sent out by their alert system, and with a written letter updated the Commission on many recent pipeline developments and asked them to rescind their recent Sabal Trail easement or to help in other ways to stop that boondoggle.

See also Continue reading →

Wind and Solar are winning by 2 to 1 over gas and coal

Guess what’s really inevitable, pipeline companies? Solar and wind power.

Utility scare tactics that no coal means pipelines are so much hot air. Scare tactics that no pipelines would mean LNG trains are burnt up by solar power. Stop pipelnes or fracking and stop the other and LNG export along with it. And we’re winning!

Tom Randall, Bloomberg, 6 April 2016, Wind and Solar Are Crushing Fossil Fuels: Record clean energy investment outpaces gas and coal 2 to 1. Continue reading →

Moratorium on Palmetto Pipeline goes to GA Gov. for signature on HB 1036

We all won twice against invading pipelines this week in the Georgia legislature. Yes, pipeline companies, advocates of water, air, and property rights work together, too A smashing 34-128 defeat of Spectra Energy’s invading Sabal “Sinkhole” Trail natural gas pipeline, by WWALS, Flint Riverkeeper, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Georgia Sierra Club, Georgia Water Coalition, SpectraBusters, and many others, wasn’t the only win for landowners, environmentalists, and the people in the Georgia legislature this week. Push Back the Pipeline‘s petroleum products moratorium passed the final legislative hurdle in the House and is on its way to Gov. Nathan Deal to sign. You know, if Deal had stood up for the people against Sabal Trail, too, its easements to drill under Georgia rivers including our Withlacoochee River and Okapilco Creek, would have been defeated in the State Land Commission of which he is chair before they ever got to the legislature. But we all won, and won again! Spectra, Kinder Morgan, and even ALEC lost this time.

Walter C. Jones, jacksonville.com, 23 March 2016, Bill to stall pipeline from Belton, S.C., to Jacksonville awaits Georgia governor’s signature: Georgia House adopted moratorium that would impose moratorium on licensing and permitting until July 2017, Continue reading →

Videos: Rivers and Pipeline, Rehab homes, LAMP Lease, Rezonings, Alcohol, public defender, paving Stafford Wright Road @ LCC 2016-02-09

Gretchen thanked them for putting most of the response to her open records request on CDs, shortly after they had said at their recent planning session that they wanted to promote interaction with the community. Still nothing from the county attorney about the Sabal Trail documents, and it’s been well over three days. I invited them on behalf of WWALS to a workshop and a movie; there’s more below. See also the contested rezoning 5.d. REZ-2016-05 Union Rd Subdivision, E-A to R-A, ~114 acres for more water issues.

Three citizens spoke explicitly about the pipeline, Jim Parker, Michael Noll, and Dr. Mario Bartoletti, as also noted in Jason Stewart, VDT, 11 February 2016, Sabal protests continue. As I noted in another post,

I go to a lot of county commission meetings in Georgia and Florida. Nowhere but Lowndes County do I see Continue reading →

Videos: Sold out to Sabal Trail @ LCC 2016-01-26

Thank you Commissioner Demarcus Marshall for voting no. Calling it “a good business decision”, the CEO of Waller Heating and Air lauded the others for voting to sell county land for a pittance to a company from Houston, Texas, nevermind their resolution of a year ago. We thought we elected them to represent the people of Lowndes County, and we thought they did back in December 2014 when they unanimously voted “the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners opposes the construction of the Sabal Trail pipeline in any portion of Lowndes County.” But at least one of them (“Wisenbaker) didn’t even remember that the county voted to oppose Sabal Trail. Apparently most of them concur with what the County Engineer said about landowners who have not taken Sabal Trail’s money, “I don’t know who they are.”

Update 2016-01-28: WCTV report, plus Gret chen’s question: “Is less than 50 cents per person in Lowndes County enough to risk drinking water for all?”

Landowners who did take the money mostly did not have Continue reading →

The hazardous waste Lowndes County Clyattville landfill is not just another Sabal Trail easement @ LCC 2016-01-26

There is no reason our only county-wide elected government should rush to take a pittance from a company from Houston, Texas for an easement through the closed landfill toxic waste site that would risk our drinking water and enable more easement takings from local landowners. On the front page of today’s VDT the County Clerk contradicted what Lowndes County Chairman Bill Slaughter has written repeatedly to FERC, that he and the Commission represent “Citizens of Lowndes County”. She also didn’t mention the GA-EPD permit for any work within that landfill that the Chairman previously demanded from Sabal Trail, nor the multiple state other and federal permits Sabal Trail does not have. Although it’s still not on the published agenda, the Commissioners have an opportunity tonight to vote to support their own unanimous resolution of December 2014 against Sabal Trail.

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The County Clerk tried to roll back the clock to Continue reading →

Videos: Board appointments + Sabal Trail easement! @ LCC 2016-01-25

The main Work Session took six minutes this morning, followed by an executive session, which turned out to be about easements for the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline, which they’re adding to the agenda to vote on tomorrow evening at 5:30 PM.

See also the agenda. Below are links to each video, followed by a video playlist.

Continue reading →

Is Porter Ranch the natural gas industry’s Three Mile Island?

Thirty-six years ago, Three Mile Island turned public opinion against nuclear power. The worst in history, right now still spewing after three months and Los Angeles County and the state of California have declared emergencies at Porter Ranch, is the “natural” gas industry’s Three Mile Island.

Nuclear, too was touted as safe, clean, and infamously “too cheap to meter”. It turned out to be none of those things, and neither is fracked methane. Three Mile Island alone didn’t stop the thousands of nukes President Nixon promised, but it sure helped. The Porter Ranch disaster has already lasted far longer, had worse direct effects, and is in the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area.

Plus TMI was the first U.S. civilian nuclear accident. The “natural” gas industry has leaks, corrosion, fires, explosions, and now earthquakes monthly and sometimes daily. Sure, the shadow of nuclear war hung over the nuclear power industry, but the monthly fireballs from methane explosions hangs over the natural gas industry. The 2010 San Bruno, California explosion is back in the news because, says AP 13 January 2015: PROSECUTORS: PG&E RESISTED RECORD-KEEPING CHANGE AFTER SAN BRUNO BLAST.

It’s time for a complete moratorium on all new natural gas projects, like the moratorium on all new nuclear projects after Three Mile Island. Instead, let’s get on with what we didn’t have back then: solar and wind power already less expensive than any other sources of power, far cleaner and safer, much faster to deploy, using no water, and requiring no eminent domain.

In 1962 President John F. Kennedy famously said: Continue reading →

Natural gas leak so bad VDT notices it

Sempra Energy’s California leak stinks so bad the VDT smelled it from 3,000 miles away. But GA Gov. Nathan Deal still can’t smell Sabal Trail over campaign contributions from Sempra and from Spectra Energy.

Brian Melley, AP, 25 November 2015, Utility plans to mask awful odor from uncontrolled gas leak,

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A utility trying to stop a monthlong leak at a massive natural gas storage facility near a Los Angeles neighborhood said it planned to use a mist to mask the sickening stench as work continues — possibly for three more months — to plug the well.

Even the 9-inch pipeline to Berrien County Continue reading →

Solar prices will drop much further below fossil fuels

High-placed utility executives have told me solar panels can’t get any cheaper. Here’s why economies of scale will continue to drive solar prices down, just like for Henry Ford’s Model T. There’s no excuse for new pipelines or nukes. Let the sun rise!

tl;dr: If current rates of improvement hold, solar will be incredibly cheap by the time it’s a substantial fraction of the world’s electricity supply.

Ramez Naam, on his blog, 10 August 2015, What’s the future price of solar?, Continue reading →