Brooks County asks FERC for five-foot top cover on pipeline

Colquitt, Brooks, next Lowndes?

Matthew Woody wrote for the VDT yesterday, Brooks urges deep-dug pipeline,

Brooks County commissioners unanimously passed a resolution earlier this month encouraging Sabal Trail to bury its proposed natural gas pipeline two feet deeper than the three-feet requirements.

“We do a lot of farming over here, and that was the loudest concern was making sure we try to encourage Sabal Trail to make sure they went the extra mile to make sure their investment, and our citizens were protected,” said Justin DeVane, Brooks County administrator. “The pipeline itself is only traversing three of our five districts and all five of our commissioners were receiving concerns about it. So we wanted to make sure that we were doing all that we could to ensure that it would not impact any particular landowner, or resident as much as possible. We wanted to try and prevent any type of disturbances, and that was the action by the commissioners.”

Two counties and counting:

Brooks is the second South Georgia county to adopt a resolution trying to lessen the impact of the pipeline on its landowners.

“What we did was similar to what Colquit County did. We passed a resolution that has some wording in there that we’re urging them to use a five-foot minimal cover, instead of the three foot,” DeVane said. “It’s not a resolution saying they have to do it. It’s just a strong recommendation.”

The article says Brooks County also submitted the resolution to FERC, but it hasn’t shown up yet on FERC’s ecomment system.

Lowndes County Chairman Bill Slaughter filed a comment with FERC 11 April 2014 with 14 items Sabal Trail would be expected to follow. That’s good, but when will the Lowndes County Commission pass a resolution or ordinance?

-jsq