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
“I ask you and FERC to stop Sabal
Trail from telling newspapers things that Spectra
Energy’s own corporate documents refute, and to start
paying attention to multiple requests by county commissions
and other affected parties.”
Back in December, Spectra’s Andrea Grover and Brian Fahrenthold were “not familiar” with Spectra’s lengthy safety rap sheet (see above picture). Yesterday’s VDT had Sabal Trail: Eminent domain accusation ‘hard to believe’ by Joe Adgie. Meanwhile, the Moultrie Observer has picked up the VDT story. Maybe some newspapers will also publish better information than what trained pipeline PR people seem not to remember or believe, despite copious evidence of the actual facts.
Filed with FERC 19 November 2014 accession Number: 20141119-5232. The attachments are in the PDF, and they’re all in the links in the HTML version below. -jsq Continue reading
Update 2014-11-21: Brad Shealy from the District Attorney’s office called back. The reason there was no decision at day before yesterday’s Grand Jury meeting was there were no applicants. He said qualifications include you must be 18, a high school graduate, and a property owner, presumably meaning real estate. Plus you have to go to Tifton or Athens for a 40 hour course. Which he said is better than it used to be when the only location for the course was Athens: Tifton is close enough to drive up and back daily. If you want to serve, please contact the Clerk of Court (see below for her number).
When will new members be appointed to the Board of Equalization, who are the candidates, and how are people to know? Maybe you’d like to volunteer. If so, send your resume to the Clerk of Court (not the County Clerk). Apparently you have about two weeks.
As public comment on facebook by Becky Vaughn Herndon today:
Lowndes County is looking for volunteers to be members of the Board of Equalization (BOE). The purpose of the BOE is to hear property tax disputes between the Lowndes County Board of Assessors (BOA) and property owners. The board must not be biased towards the Lowndes County Assessor’s office or the taxpayer. It hears evidence from both sides and decides, based on the evidence presented, what the value of the contested property should be. The board may:
- Find the Continue reading
“The SONAT pipeline that broke in
Berrien County, Georgia was only a 9- or 10-inch line,
I’m told at 800PSI. Sabal Trail proposes a 36-inch
line, at much higher pressure. I’m no expert, but that
seems like at least twenty times the explosive capacity. I
don’t want that risk for any of my neighbors anywhere.”
Filed with FERC 15 November 2014 (PDF), posted by FERC 17 November 2014 as Accession Number: 20141117-5040. Continue reading
We are all Indians to the fossil fuel cowboys, but this time the Indians won. The U.S. Senate yesterday rejected the Keystone XL pipeline. It won’t end there, but it should, because solar power is cheaper, faster, cleaner, and actually does bring jobs to the U.S.
Picture from US Uncut
Of course, TransCanada has a backup plan for getting its dirty Alberta tar sands oil to overseas market: a pipeline entirely through Canada to New Brunswick. Which means the past several years of TransCanada insistence that Keystone XL was necessary was just so much bs. Which indicates how much we should believe other Keystone XL claims, such as those about jobs the pipeline would supposedly create.
Source: Reuters
Angelo Young, International Business Times, 8 October 2014, No Keystone XL Pipeline? No Problem, Says Canadian Firm Planning To Send Crude East Instead Of South, Continue reading
In a year solar jobs increased more than 20% to 142,000,
according to the
National Solar Jobs Census 2013.
Let’s remember Politifact Rhode Island rated as true Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s claim that there are already more solar jobs than coal mining jobs. And already last year there were more solar jobs than in production and nonsupervisory oil and gas extraction. That was 119,000 solar jobs according to the National Solar Jobs Census 2012 by the Solar Foundation; thus the 20% increase.
Meanwhile, “production and nonsupervisory employees” in the oil and gas extraction industry increased 4% from 106,400 in September 2013 to 110,600 in September 2014, according to Oil and Gas Extraction: NAICS 211 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Total oil and gas industry employment increased 8% from 197,500 to 213,100 in the same period.
Of course, we really should be using the 2013 (not 2014) oil and gas figures to compare Continue reading
Looks like some of them have been (or are thinking of) going to
an
Area Development Conference & Forum,
about Best Practices for Economic Development.
Here’s the agenda.
Valdosta-Lowndes Development AuthorityContinue reading
Tuesday, November 18, 2014 5:30 p.m.
Development Authority Conference Room
103 Roosevelt Drive Monthly Meeting Agenda
Here is the board packet for the 11 November 2014 Regular Session and 10 November 2014 Work Session of the Lowndes County Commission.
Although the County Clerk once again provided this packet only on paper
and only in black and white, we got via CD-ROM color maps for
REZ-2014-17 Grand Bay Estates
and
REZ-2014-18 White
from County Planner Jason Davenport in response to a separate Open Records Request.
The request to the County Clerk also asked for
electronic copy, but once again she chose not to honor that part of the request.
But who can say? Perhaps things will be different after the Open Government Symposium this Friday, 21 November 2014.
Meanwhile, I have already filed an Open Records Request for the board packet for the next County Commission meeting, which is in December.
-jsq
Not the Onion: VDT front page Saturday 15 November 2014, County plans open government meeting Friday,
VALDOSTA — An Open Government Symposium this Friday in Valdosta will be hosted by the Lowndes County Board of Commissioners.
Valdosta Daily Times Editor Jim Zachary, director of the Transparency Project of Georgia, will be joined by Hollie Manheimer, executive director of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, for the open government training event.
Lowndes County leaders approached Zachary and Manheimer about bringing the symposium to Valdosta after they attended the first in a statewide series of open government training sessions held in Macon at the Center for Collaborative Journalism Oct. 17.
The article noted that Commissioner Clay Griner was among the attendees at the previous symposium in Macon and had asked for this local meeting.
All the events are 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