Tag Archives: Sabal Trail Transmission

On the behalf of the Commission and Citizens of Lowndes County –Lowndes County Chairman Bill Slaughter to FERC about the Sabal Trail methane pipeline



These are the fourteen items he promised

two weeks ago
at the SpectraBusters panel at VSU:

Sabal Trail will be expected to adhere and honor all Lowndes County Ordinances –Bill E Slaughter, JR to FERC
, 10 April 2014.
I thank Chairman Slaughter for making that statement to FERC.

Despite his apparent refusal to speak on behalf of all the citizens
of the county

after the 24 February 2014 Commission meeting
,
he did actually say his ecomment to FERC was
“on the behalf of the Commission and Citizens of Lowndes County”,
and that he expects Sabal Trail to follow all Lowndes County ordinances,
plus 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

How to invite toxic industries to your county



Maybe we should stop inviting toxic industries to Lowndes County.
We’ve been doing that with coal ash, PCBs, superfund wastewater,
used diapers in recycling, and suing local businesses while not terminating
an exclusive franchise with a company that is involved in all of that.
Not to mention Sterling Chemical.



Here in Lowndes County we have

TVA coal ash and Florida coal ash

in our landfill,
and the landfill operator spreads the coal ash on roads on the site,
which is just uphill from the Withlacoochee River.

GA EPD
fined that landfill operator $27,500 in January 2013

for accepting PCBs
into that same Pecan Row Landfill.
The same landfill that accepted

196,500 gallons of wastewater
from the
Seven Out Superfund site in Waycross, GA.

A landfill that is

in an aquifer recharge zone
. Continue reading

Renewables Report from Southern Company forthcoming

Nonprofit As You Sow got mighty Southern Company to agree to report
on renewable energy, which is the first step towards widespread adoption
of solar power.
How about taking on FPL next, about that Sabal Trail methane pipeline?
And that green bond idea, how about our Industrial Authority take that up?

Dave Williams wrote for the Atlanta Business Chronicle yesterday,

Southern Co. to report renewable energy spending
,



Atlanta-based Southern Co. has agreed to produce a comprehensive
report on its current renewable energy projects and plans for future
development of renewables, an environmental organization reported
Thursday.

The company’s decision prompted Oakland, Calif.-based nonprofit As
You Sow to withdraw a shareholder resolution asking Southern to
consider President Barack Obama’s goal of reducing carbon emissions
by 80 percent by 2050, the group said in a news release.



“To achieve that goal, utilities need to immediately shift Continue reading

Can we get pipeline update and citizen input? –Carolyn Singletary @ LCC 2014-03-11



A directly affected landowner wanted to know what happened
with the talks

among several local county attorneys
about the
proposed Sabal Trail pipeline, and was there any way citizens
could provide input,
at the

11 March 2014 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission
.

Here’s

the video:



Can we get pipeline update and citizen input? –Carolyn Singletary

Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),

Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 March 2014.

Also she wondered if she could hear Continue reading

There are things you can do about the Sabal Trail Pipeline –Mario Bartoletti @ LCC 2014-03-11



Apparently the community believes the Commission thinks

there’s nothing they can do
,
but Mario Bartoletti, speaking for himself and for

WACE
,
said he thought there were things the Commission could do
about that 36-inch methane pipeline, and he listed some things,
at the

11 March 2014 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission
.

Here’s

the video:



There are things you can do about the Sabal Trail Pipeline –Mario Bartoletti

Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),

Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 March 2014.

His list included:

Continue reading

Sierra Club Chapters Oppose Sabal Trail Gas Pipeline –read by Danielle Jordan @ FERC 2014-03-04



Danielle Jordan, VSU student and president of Students Against
Violating the Environment, stood up for local landowners and
the environment against Spectra’s Sabal Trail pipeline
at the

Valdosta FERC Scoping Meeting 4 March 2014
,
by reading a statement against the pipeline by the
Sierra Club chapters of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia.



Here’s the text she was reading:

TRI-STATE SIERRA CLUB CHAPTERS OPPOSE GAS PIPELINE:
Statement of the Georgia, Florida, and Alabama Sierra Club
Chapters Opposing the Sabal Trail Pipeline
.

Here’s

the video:



Sierra Club Chapters Oppose Sabal Trail Gas Pipeline –read by Danielle Jordan

Sabal Trail Methane Pipeline,

Scoping Meeting, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC),

Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 4 March 2014.

-jsq

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

VDT redacted Sabal Trail pipeline FERC Scoping Meeting story @ FERC 2014-03-04



Amusingly, when the VDT fixed the typos in their online story,
they redacted me and Gretchen right out of it.
I’m flattered!
Still, congratulations to the VDT on quoting a lot of landowners
(and a few others who remained unredacted),
and on putting this story on the front page.

Here’s an extract from the online version showing changes from the
printed version (pictured) as if the newspaper had used standard
blogging markup for changes after posting.
Starting with the pullquote in the printed version,
which they edited heavily in the online version:

Affected Land owner
Landowner Larry Rodgers
said he has been trying to sell his property
for a long time, and once he
He had an interested buyer
and they found out about,
but upon learning of
the pipeline running through his property

they dropped their
, the interested party withdrew the offer.

“Where do I go to file that complaint!?
And whose who’s responsible for value lost due
to property damage?” Rodgers asked.
Peconom replied, “I don’t have an answer
for you tonight, but well we’ll look into it.”


Concerned citizens Gretchen Quarterman said she was concerned about the
pipeline moving Natural Gas that has
been fracked, and the taking of property
from private land owners to benefit a company
that does not do business in Georgia.
She also brought up safety concerns regarding sink holes,
and proposed Florida use an alternate way of producing energy,
such as solar “because as we all know
Florida is the sunshine state.”
Continue reading

All against, except County Commissioners @ FERC 2014-03-04



At FERC’s Scoping Meeting for Spectra’s proposed Sabal Trail methane pipeline,
about 100 people, not counting FERC or Spectra. Lots of good
questions. Not many answers. John Peconom of FERC
said afterwards the comments were
mostly about the big picture.
Except questions from local government officials: there were none.
Video to come.


WALB was there for a
long time, so they’ll probably cover it (they did). Matthew Woody of the VDT had
heaps of material and went off to file by 10PM (here’s his story).

Three Lowndes County Commissioners were there:
Chairman Bill Slaughter, Joyce Evans, and Crawford Powell,
and County Engineer Mike Fletcher and Utilities Director Mike Allen.
Not one of them spoke.

In

Gilchrist County, Florida
, all five County Commissioners,
plus Continue reading