Tag Archives: SpectraBusters

Climate Rally and EPA Hearings next week in Atlanta

High noon rally Tuesday and 9AM to 8PM hearings Monday and Tuesday 29-30 July 2014 at the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center, Main Tower Bridge Conference Area, Conference Room B, 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Atlanta, GA. Plus you can comment online, maybe about mercury from coal Plant Scherer in the Alapaha River and how shifting to “natural” gas just promotes more fracked methane pipelines like that Sabal Trail boondoggle. EPA could take a second step on methane, and we can get on with faster, cheaper, cleaner, and far more environmentally beneficial solar power in the sunny southeast. For details see the Sierra Club or WWALS or SpectraBusters postings.

-jsq

VDT has selective smell

To the VDT the county government always smells like azaleas and the city of Valdosta government always smells like sewage. The local newspaper of record doesn’t seem to smell sewage or landfill problems from Lowndes County. Today’s VDT editorial complains about environmental groups paying attention to “theoretical disasters” (presumably referring to the Sabal Trail pipeline), yet the VDT has never covered the group that has most consistently followed the watershed-wide flooding issues that cause Valdosta’s flooding problems: WWALS Watershed Coalition. The VDT recommends citizens get more involved in sniffing out Valdosta’s sewage problems, yet it doesn’t seem to cover Citizens Wishing To Be Heard anymore, nor has the VDT called for the citizen participation sessions promised by the local governments for the Army Corps of Engineers flooding studies. Maybe the VDT could encourage citizen participation, rather than ignore it.

VDT editorial today, It just plain stinks, Continue reading →

Videos: Candidates, Landowners, Methane and Solar Power @ SpectraBusters 2014-03-29

Candidates for Lowndes County Commission went on the record ( Mark Wisenbaker and Tom Hochschild both running for District 3, and Norman Bennett and Gretchen Quarterman both running for District 5), plus a statement by County Chairman Bill Slaughter, in addition to essential background information from directly affected landowners in the audience and from the panelists on why the proposed Sabal Trail methane pipeline is bad for property values, is hazardous here and elsewhere, and will be obsolete in a few decades, all at a SpectraBusters panel on the Sabal Trail pipeline at VSU, Saturday 29 March 2014.

The panelists were Continue reading →

Corporate power comes home –Jim Parker

Letter to the Editor in the Valdosta Daily Times yesterday. -jsq

How is it that one foreign corporation, that has just come into existence to do this project, can have greater power than all of the thousands of citizens affected, and their elected governments?

No, I’m not talking about the Keystone XL pipeline, but he issues are the same. This one wants to run a 36-inch gas pipeline through a number of states and counties, including Lowndes, affecting thousands of landowners. It’s known as Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC, and is the unholy offspring of Spectra Energy Corp. and NextEra Energy.

How can one foreign corporation (they’re from out of state), have so much power vis-avis the thousands of landowners and citizens of Lowndes County, that the citizens must give up a hundred-foot-wide swath of their land, along with the depreciation of their property values, not to mention their personal safety, and allow this pipeline to come through? The gas is not even for use in Lowndes County, or even the State of Georgia. However, the general feeling is we have to give in to the corporation’s demands. County Commission Chairman Bill Slaughter is quoted as saying, “There’s nothing we can do.”

Does anyone else see the problem here? Continue reading →

FERC pipeline Scoping Meeting tonight in Valdosta: testify for your community

A local affected landowner and the chair of a local political party ask you to come tonight at 6PM at the Holiday Inn on West Hill Avenue to testify to the federal agency that decides on a permit for the proposed yard-wide hundred-foot right of way methane pipeline that a company from Houston wants to gash through here. First a presentation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), then citizens can stand up and be recorded by a court reporter.

As directly affected local landowner Carol Singletary pointed out on WALB Sunday,

“When you have it within 100 feet of your home, you cannot have any sense of security there. There are alternate routes that aren’t being considered. So I want to get those on the table and some strong considerations given to those.”

As Gretchen Quarterman pointed out for the Lowndes County Democratic Party on WCTV yesterday,

“The Georgia Democrats feel that there’s a moral obligation to leave the world as beautiful and majestic as we found it and the pipeline, it does not do that”, says Gretchen Quarterman, Chairman of the Lowndes County Democratic Committee.

More from the LCDP Press Release yesterday, plus more meetings and more ways to testify, Continue reading →

America’s Dangerous Pipelines –Center for Biological Diversity

7,978 fatalities by in 2013 – 4,199 by 2001 = 3,779, which is more than the 2,977 killed by the hijackers on 9/11. If the fossil fuel industry was a foreign country, we would have invaded it by now. Why should we let that industry invade our lands for their profit? Let’s not permit a fossil fuel disaster here.

Center for Biological Diversity wrote on YouTube 31 July 2013 America’s Dangerous Pipelines: Continue reading →

Sabal Trail answers: Commissioners did forward questions @ LCC 2013-12-09

Nobody said last Monday that Commissioners had asked for a written response from Sabal Trail. All we knew was the four questions Commissioners asked. Maybe the county should hire a public information officer; I see they no longer have one listed on their website front page, and the last website public notice is from April. Fortunately, Commissioner Demarcus Marshall forwarded Spectra’s answers yesterday. He also copied the Valdosta Daily Times, with attached PDF. -jsq

From: Demarcus Marshall
Date: December 13, 2013, 3:01:32 PM CST
Subject: FW: Sabal Trail/Lowndes County Commissioner response FINAL 12122013.pdf

Concerned Citizens,

These are the responses from Sabal Trail regarding the questions forwarded to me. Please forward to those in opposition of the surveys and those that have agreed to them.

Commissioner Demarcus Marshall, M.P.A.

From: Fahrenthold, Brian C
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2013 9:46 PM
To: Demarcus Marshall
Cc: Bill Slaughter; Joyce Evans; Richard Raines; Crawford Powell; John Page; County Manager; Belinda Lovern
Subject: Sabal Trail/Lowndes County Commissioner response FINAL 12122013.pdf

Commissioner Marshall, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners and County Manager Pritchard:

Attached is a more detailed summation to the questions posed to the Commission by Ms. Singletary.

Should you need Continue reading →

90 percent approval? Larry Rodgers doubts that @ LCC 2013-12-09

WCTV isn’t just publishing Spectra press releases or sales pitches, unlike the Lowndes County Commission.

Winnie Anne Wright for WCTV today, Sabal Trail Addresses Lowndes County Commission,

“Gas needed to come from one point and end up at another. We looked for those existing corridors that are already in place, to be able to run adjacent and parallel to those so we are lessening the impact on stake holders and the environment and this path that we are currently on, is over 80% adjacent or parallel to those types of things”, says Andrea Grover, Director of Stakeholder Outreach for Sabal Trail.

Well, no it doesn’t need to. Some fat cats in Houston and Juno Beach, Florida want to pump methane through here for their profit and our hazard, but that’s not the same as “needed to”.

But not everyone believes Sabal Trail has Lowndes County’s best interest at heart.

The proposed pipeline would run through Larry Rodgers’ property. He says he gave Sabal Trail access Continue reading →

Hear Sabal Trail Transmission answer questions from the Lowndes County Commission

PDF

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Valdosta, December 5, 2013 —Representatives from Spectra Energy or its LLC Sabal Trail Transmission will speak at the Monday morning Lowndes County Commission Work Session and answer questions from Commissioners.

When:  8:30 AM
Monday, December 9th, 2013

Where: Commission Chambers
327 North Ashley Street, 2nd Floor
Valdosta, GA 31601
229-671-2442

Questions:
commissioner@lowndescounty.com

Why: Spectra Energy proposes a hundred-foot-wide gash through our lands for their huge 36 inch Sabal Trail gas pipeline from Alabama through Georgia to feed Florida Power and Light (FPL) for no benefit to local citizens. A one-time payment is nowhere near adequate for permanent destruction and hazards when FPL and Spectra would continue to profit forever.

Property values: A pipeline through your property isn’t Continue reading →

SpectraBusters Informational Meeting 2013-11-16

Standing room only while Ellis Black (GA Dist. 174), Bill Slaughter (Lowndes County Chairman), and Tim Carroll (Valdosta City Council) spoke after Gretchen Quarterman gave an introduction at the first SpectraBusters Informational Meeting last Saturday. A second meeting is scheduled for this Saturday morning at 10AM at the Valdosta City Hall Annex.

Video. Gretchen asked if there were any representatives from the pipeline company present. Nobody spoke up. Several affected landowners did speak: Beth Gordon from Levy County, Florida and Larry Rodgers and Carol Singletary from Lowndes County, Georgia.

Video. Elected officials spoke. Bill Slaughter (Lowndes County Chairman) said Continue reading →