Tag Archives: Dougherty County

Let’s stop Sabal Trail before it makes any more mistakes

Thanks to Julie Bowland for the picture of my VDT op-ed today. -jsq


jsq op-ed in VDT
The same day the Sabal Trail was quoted in the VDT August 5th as
saying it had done enough subsurface analysis on our fragile karst
limestone topography, a sinkhole opened up next to Shiloh Road.
Sabal Trail already had to move its Albany compressor station
because arrowheads had been found there. The pipeline itself is a
much bigger mistake: let’s stop it before it damages our property
values, forests, rivers, or our people.

Spectra Energy’s paid staff are continue to assert that Sabal
Trail’s proposed gouge through our fields, farms, and under our
rivers will proceed according their plan to profit executives and
investors in Houston, Texas.

Actually, Continue reading →

Videos: MAZ tabled, Naylor Boat Ramp and Sabal Trail CWTBH @ LCC 2015-07-28



The proposed MAZ changes were
tabled for 90 days,
they approved everything else, and

welcomed new Utilities Director Steve Stalvey again,
at the 5:30 PM Tuesday 28 July 2015 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission.
Valdosta City Council

Sandra Tooley
didn’t fill out a form and so didn’t get to speak,
but

another citizen asked about the
Naylor Boat Ramp (answer after the meeting: on schedule for this fall)
and about Sabal Trail (answer: none).

See also Continue reading →

Videos: MAZ again, Lake Alapaha, Emergencies, but no Sabal Trail @ LCC 2015-07-27


300x297 Parcel 0181 001, in Davidson Road, by John S. Quarterman, 27 July 2015
The proposed MAZ changes have “absolutely nothing to do with”
the 23 acres on Davidson Road that were proposed to be rezoned R-21 back in 2010,
after the county paved Davidson Road, said County Chairman Bill Slaughter at yesterday morning’s Lowndes County Commission Work Session.
County Planner Jason Davenport said he had hoped to get “on the same page with Moody”
before that same evening’s Planning Commission meeting
for the
MAZ ULDC Text Amendments,
but as yet he had nothing to report, and tabling was an option.
I don’t think that word “ultimately” means what he thinks it does.
See more
below about Davidson Road.

Not on the agenda were three, no four, reports:

Like the MAZ changes, also requiring a public hearing Tuesday evening is Continue reading →

MAZ again, Lake Alapaha, Emergency Management and Liability, but no Sabal Trail @ LCC 2015-07-27

While

Dougherty County, Albany, and their state and federal reps


plan a joint opposition meeting to the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline invader, there’s nothing about that pipeline
on
Monday’s
8:30 AM

agenda of the Lowndes County Commission.
Three items on

emergency response,

emergency planning,
and
911 operations,
plus one on
liability,
but nothing about the
invading pipeline soft target.

The highly controversial

Moody Activity Zoning Districts (MAZ)
are back, despite massive opposition.
The Planning Commission will hear MAZ again Monday evening,
and because there’s only one day from then until the County Commission
can vote on MAZ Tuesday, the County Planner says: 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 Frack Georgia –sing along



Alton Paul Burns
commented yesterday on

Fracking south Georgia and north Florida?

Mr Emmet Carlisle wrote a song about fracking Florida

“Don’t Frack Florida”.
So in support of that movement I wrote another verse:

The battle is on in Bama & Georgia too

Spectra wants to run a pipeline through,

They could care less ’bout me or you,

And they lie to FERC more than they have too,

More Solar energy, Yeah that’s the thing

To everyone this message we bring,

We don’t need Spectra’s pipeline, That’s a fact!

And we don’t have to Frack!

-apb

So this would be the chorus for that verse: Continue reading →

Fracking south Georgia and north Florida?

Potential fracking in north Georgia was too close,
but what about right here in south Georgia?
Florida has a snowballing anti-fracking movement.
Looks like Georgia needs one, too.


300x149 South Georgia and North Florida Basins Map, in Shale gas basins in South Georgia and north Florida, by USGS, 4 June 2012
Dan Chapman, AJC Online Athens, 10 March 2013,

Gas drillers turn to Georgia,

Jim Kennedy, the state’s geologist, says another company is
considering the shale gas fields of the Mesozoic Basin that covers
60 percent of the Coastal Plain in South Georgia.

Most of the story is about proposed fracking in north Georgia
that

we noted back in 2013,
plus fossil fuel industry propaganda about how great they say
that would be for the local economy, with very little
about the immense destruction, environmental hazards,
and invasions of private property that would ensue.
The AJC version of that Dan Chapman story didn’t seem to have Continue reading →

More military enlistments from Southwest Georgia


300x208 Military Enlistments, in Military Georgia, by John S. Quarterman, 30 December 2014
Yet another reason Atlanta doesn’t understand south Georgia:
military enlistment is 1 in 100 people in south Georgia from
Columbus to Valdosta, and less than a third of that in the Atlanta Metro area.
Enlistment is probably related to two other major features
of south Georgia that Atlanta doesn’t understand:
it’s agricultural (traditionally a bastion of military supporters),
and it’s poor (and enlisting is one way to a career).
A certain pipeline company may not have taken this factor
into account, either. Continue reading →

Sabal Trail uses VDT to threaten eminent domain

Andrea Grover’s response to being caught by the VDT
actually knowing about Sabal Trail threats of eminent domain
after she said were “hard to believe” is…
to use the VDT to threaten eminent domain!



The example

the VDT quoted Wednesday
of an eminent domain threatening letter from Sabal Trail’s
Atlanta law firm was dated 26 November 2013.
Yet a year later, today, 28 November 2014, Joe Adgie in
Sabal Trail to install taps in Georgia
quotes Ms. Grover in the VDT: Continue reading →

China, U.S., and Russia energy deals: bad news for Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline?

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?

The Deal

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 →