Tag Archives: Law

Video of Spectra answering a question about Sabal Trail in Madison, FL @ Sabal 2013-12-17

When someone took Susan Waller up on her offer
to answer questions about the Sabal Trail pipeline, she seemed to find the truth as reported by her own company to a
federal pipeline oversight agency to be “disruptive”.




Disable Sabal – Sabal Trail (Spectra Energy) Open House Madison, FL,

We are a very genuine, safe, law-abiding company.

So said Spectra VP or Shareholder Outreach Susan Waller.
She then complained that “your group”
was “disruptive” and “you don’t want to hear the truth”.

So Ben Vieth showed Waller

lists of incidents of corrosion reported by Spectra to PHMSA.
To which another Sabal Trail rep. said,
“We have a safe operation”.

Here’s

the video:



Video of Spectra answering a question about Sabal Trail in Madison, FL

Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline,

FERC-required Open House, Sabal Trail Transmission and Spectra Energy (Sabal),

Video by Blake Clark, Madison, Madison County, Florida, 17 December 2013.

It’s interesting that even after Continue reading →

Coal tax and a gas pipeline for Christmas?



This was an op-ed submission to the VDT, which didn’t respond.
Today’s the GA PSC vote, so I’m blogging it now.

On Tuesday, the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) wants to do
for coal what

the Florida PSC already did for that gas pipeline
Sabal Trail wants to gash through here: raise utility customer
rates!



Who wants a Christmas present of higher electricity rates and
continued coal smoke, plus increased guaranteed profit for Georgia
Power of 11.5%? They

already raised rates each of the last three
years for gas and nuclear plants not yet even built; why should we
permit more rate hikes when the PSC votes December 17th? Last week’s
Public Policy poll

found 69% of Georgia voters oppose that rate hike.

Is a one-time payment enough to let a huge 36 inch fracked methane
pipeline gash through our communities while Spectra Energy of


Houston and FPL of Juno Beach, Florida profit forever, and your
property values go down and your hazards go up?

Those FPL profits come from rate hikes on your cousins the Florida
ratepayers.

AARP opposes that, saying: Continue reading →

Take a stand against the the pipeline –Karen Noll



Received today on

Spectra reps unfamiliar with Spectra fines @ LCC 2013-12-09. -jsq

Take a stand against the the pipeline by sending in your comment to

FERC.gov. At the website you eRegister and they send you an email.
Once registered you can submit a comment on docket # PF14-1. Find
below an example of a comment, feel free to copy any or all as you
please:

Sabal Trail pipeline proposal poses a significant safety threat to
our community through accidents. Leaks from such pipelines in the US


have caused explosions and have destroyed homes and killed people 29
times this year alone. Since the proposed pipeline is much larger
than any of these recent explosions, a pipeline of 36 inch radius
could do extreme damage if such an accident should occur in the


Lowndes county area where it is proposed. Not only those living near
the pipeline but Continue reading →

Spectra reps unfamiliar with Spectra fines @ LCC 2013-12-09



Both of Spectra’s principal representatives to the Lowndes County Commission
and the Dougherty County Commission claim not to be familiar
with Spectra’s well-known public record of safety violations,
and some of what they say contradicts the public record,
so how can we believe any of their safety assertions about
Spectra’s proposed Sabal Trail Transmission pipeline?

Update 3PM: more evidence from Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

As I’ve mentioned
before,
Spectra’s Andrea Grover told us that
everyone in Pennsylvania was happy now, after I asked her
about

the Steckman Ridge compressor station leak
in front of reporter Matthew Woody,
at the

16 October 2013 Spectra meeting at Wiregrass Tech in Valdosta.
There’s more beyond
the article about pipeline fines and incidents

Woody wrote 24 November 2013 for the Valdosta Daily Times (VDT), the local
newspaper of record.

Her excuse for the compressor leak, if I recall correctly,
was that Continue reading →

ADS included household trash in their recyclded items –Tim Carroll

Personal recollection from Valdosta City Council Tim Carroll received today on

ADS fails to recycle, appeals DSS ruling anyway,
adding detail that wasn’t in the VDT article.



The main problem the City was having with ADS was they included
household trash in their recycled items. Used diapers and other
household products mixed in with recycle materials is not allowed.
The City advised ADS back to this past October of the issue and no
improvements were made. Eventually the city had no choice but to cut
them off. The City is a regional hub for recycle material and proud
to offer the service.



OK, so is that a violation of the county’s

“exclusive franchise”
with ADS?

-jsq

ADS fails to recycle, appeals DSS ruling anyway

Why is Lowndes County leaving the City of

Valdosta to subsidize the county’s
failed
“exclusive franchise”?
And is ADS’ failure to recycle recyling a breach of its contract with the county?


Adam Floyd wrote on the front page of the VDT today,

Advanced Disposal appeals Deep South decision,



Requests made to Advanced Disposal Service’s corporate office and
Robert Norman, the lawyer who filed the appeal, to learn the
company’s reasoning behind the appeal were not returned by press
time.


Meanwhile, the City of Valdosta’s recycling center has denied
Advanced Disposal further access to its facilities, citing concerns
about volume.




John Whitehead III, deputy city manager for operations, said that
the center could not process the company’s deliveries fast enough,
and material was beginning to pile up. The suspension is temporary,
Whitehead said, and was done to ensure that the city could process
its recycling which increases during the holidays.


“We had been taking our recycling to the City of Valdosta, and
Monday they cut us off without any notice,” said Greg Walk,
local general manager for Advanced Disposal. “We’ve
constructed a bunker at the landfill, and the material that is being
collected in that bunker will be taken to a processing plant in
Milledgeville.”

The company had to dispose of recycled materials collected Monday
and Tuesday but continued recycling service Wednesday.

“It was the last thing we wanted to do to our recyclables, but
we responded as quickly as possible,” said Walk.

Does that mean the city of Valdosta sent the recycling to the landfill?
And is that a violation of the county’s contract with ADS?

-jsq

I don’t want to have to fear for my children as they sleep at night –Mindy Bland on WCTV @ LCC 2013-12-10



The Commission didn’t let citizens speak after

Spectra’s sales pitch for the Sabal Trail Pipeline Monday,
but some citizens spoke up in Citizens to Be Heard Tuesday
and WCTV covered that.

Winnie Anne Wright wrote for WCTV yesterday,

Citizens Address Lowndes County Commission About Sabal Trail Pipeline,

Residents covered topics such as the lack of economic impact on
Lowndes County, the legality of the pipeline, and also the safety.

“As a mother of three, I don’t want to have to fear for my children
as they sleep at night. And you hear a lot of people say that
natural gas line explosions don’t happen, and for those that feel
that they don’t, I really encourage them to go on the internet and
google gas line explosions and then tell me that they don’t happen.
As a mother, I feel like I have to step up and do what I can to
protect my children”, says Mindy Bland, an impacted homeowner.

Continue reading →

U.S. EPA, GA DNR, GA Health Dept., and landfill in Lowndes County @ EPA 2013-11-14



At the

EPA meeting in Waycross about the Seven Out Superfund site,
EPA, GA EPD, and state health officials also had information about
crossover contamination in Lowndes County.




Matthew J. Huyser, On-Scene Coordinator for U.S. EPA,
told me that before

EPA shipped those 196,500 gallons of wastewater from Seven Out to the Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County
they had applied procedures that were supposed to ensure those liquids
were no longer toxic and had tested them to be sure.
He said he would send me the specifics on that.
I didn’t ask him whether

CSX toxic wastes were shipped to Lowndes County.



Huyser also said EPA had checked the record of that receiving landfill
before sending anything there, and it had a good record.
He seemed surprised to learn Continue reading →

EPA, GA EPD, and Southeast Health in Waycross about Seven Out Superfund @ EPA 2013-11-14



Now

EPA is convinced that the public wants answers, after dozens of citizens
turned out to ask questions at

Waycross City Hall 14 November 2013.
A study of contamination sampling is in peer review,
and

GA EPD and

GA Health Dept. are also involved.
Citizens and

silentdisaster.org and

Satilla Riverkeeper and

WWALS Watershed Coalition are watching.





Matthew J. Huyser, EPA (l. standing blue shirt),

Jim Brown, GA EPD (c. standing white shirt),

Ashby Nix, Satilla Riverkeeper (facing Brown, paper in hand),

Joan Martin McNeal, silentdisaster.org (r. in group)





Roger Naylor, Public Relations Director for Southeast Health District,
is quite familiar with

Janet McMahan’s discovery of arsenic in groundwater
and says Continue reading →

80 years ago alcohol prohibition ended: time to end drug prohibition



The twenty-first amendment to the U.S. Constitution

was ratified eighty years ago today, repealing the eighteenth amendment,
ending alcohol prohibition, and along with it the alcohol mobs
it had bred.
It’s time to do the same with drug prohibition,
and along with it not only drug gangs
but also

the epidemic of incarceration in this country.


Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her newspaper column My Day, 14 July 1939,

Prohibition, Continue reading →