{"id":16101,"date":"2016-03-23T10:28:30","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T14:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=16101"},"modified":"2016-03-23T10:28:30","modified_gmt":"2016-03-23T14:28:30","slug":"moratorium-on-palmetto-pipeline-goes-to-ga-gov-for-signature-on-hb-1036","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2016\/03\/moratorium-on-palmetto-pipeline-goes-to-ga-gov-for-signature-on-hb-1036.html","title":{"rendered":"Moratorium on Palmetto Pipeline goes to GA Gov. for signature on HB 1036"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nWe all won twice against invading pipelines this week in the Georgia legislature.\r\n\r\n\"Yes,<\/a>\r\nA smashing 34-128\r\ndefeat of Spectra Energy’s invading Sabal “Sinkhole” Trail natural gas pipeline<\/a>,\r\nby WWALS, Flint Riverkeeper, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Georgia Sierra Club, Georgia Water Coalition, SpectraBusters, and many others,\r\nwasn’t the only win for landowners, environmentalists, and the people\r\nin the Georgia legislature this week.\r\n\r\nPush Back the Pipeline<\/a>‘s petroleum products moratorium<\/a> passed the final legislative hurdle in the House and is on its way to Gov. Nathan Deal to sign.\r\nYou know, if Deal had stood up for the people against Sabal Trail, too,\r\nits easements to drill under Georgia rivers including our Withlacoochee River\r\nand Okapilco Creek, would have been defeated in the State Land Commission\r\nof which he is chair before they ever got to the legislature.\r\nBut we all won, and won again!\r\nSpectra, Kinder Morgan, and even ALEC lost this time.\r\n

\r\nWalter C. Jones, jacksonville.com, 23 March 2016,\r\n\r\nBill to stall pipeline from Belton, S.C., to Jacksonville awaits Georgia governor’s signature:\r\nGeorgia House adopted moratorium that would impose moratorium on licensing and permitting until July 2017<\/a>,\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\nATLANTA | The House beat back an amendment to weaken a pipeline\r\nmoratorium bill late Monday night and sent the measure to the\r\ngovernor for his signature.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBy a vote of 116-48, House Bill 1036 passed to prohibit the state\r\nfrom issuing any permits or licenses until July, 2017, for the\r\nconstruction of a petroleum pipeline. It is aimed at Texas-based\r\nKinder Morgan which has plans to build the $1-billion Palmetto\r\nPipeline across East Georgia linking Belton, S.C., and Jacksonville,\r\nFla., with a terminal in Savannah.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd look who tried to stop it: Don “Mr. ALEC” Parsons.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nHouse Energy, Utilities & Telecommunications Chairman Don Parsons\r\noffered an amendment to allow the company to apply for needed\r\nenvironmental permits during the moratorium. It might have allowed\r\nthe company to argue its application would be subject to existing\r\nlaw.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nNone of those permits are needed by the people of Georgia (or Florida, or South Carolina),\r\njust like the pipeline isn’t needed.\r\n

\r\nParsons isn’t just an ALEC member, he\r\nreceived an ALEC scholarship of $7,639, according to Atlanta unfiltered<\/a>.\r\nALEC is the super-lobbying group American Legislative Exchange\r\nwhich has corporate representative vote alongside state legislators \r\n(who often attend using those “scholarships”)\r\non draft bills that the legislators attempt to pass back at their statehouses.\r\nSee\r\n\r\nAtlanta TV station exposes ALEC lobbyists in Savannah<\/a>.\r\nParsons is a member of the Task Force meeting the reporter tries to get into,\r\nbefore the reporter is ejected from the hotel he’s staying in.\r\n

\r\nBack to jacksonville.com:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“The reality is we have to have highways, bridges and\r\npipelines and water lines. All kinds of things have to be done, so\r\nwe have to be very careful with this,” said Parsons,\r\nR-Marietta.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nNo we don’t need any new pipelines now that\r\nsolar power is doubling every two years<\/a>\r\nand we know\r\n how to power everything on sun, wind, and water<\/a>.\r\nParsons’ attempt to lump dying 20th century pipeline land grabs in with things that might actually benefit the people is pathetic.\r\n

\r\nBut this is even more rich:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nHe warned his colleagues against passing laws targeting individual\r\ncircumstances or companies. He also said the state shouldn’t take an\r\nanti-business stance.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nGeorgia is now the fastest-growing U.S. solar market<\/a>,\r\nin an industry that has more jobs than oil and gas extraction<\/a>,\r\nbut that’s no thanks to Parsons.\r\nThe one time I met him, in 2011, he was paying lip service to solar while backing coal and claiming there was no way to tell if a Renewable Energy Portfolio was being met<\/a> shortly after a presentation in the same conference about how North Carolina passed a law that requires power companies to provide the data.\r\nBack in 2009,\r\n\r\nParsons voted for SB 31<\/a>, the infamous super-CWIP (Construction Work in Progress) “Energy Rate Increases to Finance Nuclear Power Plant Construction” bill that lets Georgia Power crank up charges to ratepayers every year to keep funding its billions-over-budget and way-late dual-nuke boondoggle on the Savannah River.\r\nParsons is the Chair of the House Energy, Utilities, a& Telecommunciations Committee that\r\n\r\nHB267 from reining in super-CWIP in 2013<\/a>.\r\nCould that be related to his top campaign contributors being from the industries his committee supposedly regulates?\r\nAnd look\r\n\r\nwho’s his top contributor now<\/a>:\r\nAGL Resources, a pipeline company, one now owned by Georgia Power,\r\nwhich also weighs in farther down the list as Georgia Power Company State Employee PAC.\r\nAs you might guess from the name of his committee, Parsons was also behind\r\ntwo bad telecommunications bills in 2013 (both fortunately failed)<\/a>,\r\nand other ALEC members were behind other corporate power grabs,\r\nincluding the charter school referendum and the multi-year contract referendum<\/a>.\r\nOne of ALEC’s main focuses remains attacking clean solar and wind energy on behalf of fossil fuel companies<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nExpect Parsons to be for Sabal Trail easements, too.\r\nIn 2015 \r\nhe took $500 from Spectra Energy PAC<\/a>, and\r\n\r\n“Friends of Don Parsons”\r\ncollected $1,000 plus $500 from Spectra Energy PAC<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nAnd let’s not forget that\r\n\r\n“Nathan Deal for Governor” took $3,700 + $6,300 = $10,000 from Spectra Energy PAC<\/a>.\r\nAlong with contributions from a bunch of other pipeline companies<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nKeep an eye peeled: the pipeline companies aren’t going to like what just happened.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We all won twice against invading pipelines this week in the Georgia legislature. A smashing 34-128 defeat of Spectra Energy’s invading Sabal “Sinkhole” Trail natural gas pipeline, by WWALS, Flint Riverkeeper, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Georgia Sierra Club, Georgia Water Coalition, SpectraBusters, and many others, wasn’t the only win for landowners, environmentalists, and the people in the […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[140,16,20,6124,559,6687,22],"tags":[8744,9173,161,4615,8706,9174,8701,973,7622,9154,8702,5520,8710,12,7,5390,562,8782,8381,6076,8712,7357,6597,34,6966,7122,6,8740],"class_list":["post-16101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alec","category-environment","category-law","category-natural-gas-2","category-oil","category-pipeline-2","category-politics","tag-alec","tag-chattahoochee-riverkeeper","tag-don-parsons","tag-eminent-domain","tag-environment","tag-flint-riverkeeper","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-water-coalition","tag-kinder-morgan","tag-kmi","tag-lake","tag-land-use","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-moratorium","tag-natural-gas","tag-oil","tag-palmetto-pipeline","tag-pipeline","tag-politics","tag-property-rights","tag-sabal-trail-transmission","tag-sierra-club","tag-spectra-energy","tag-spectrabusters","tag-valdosta","tag-wwals"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-4bH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16101"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16103,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16101\/revisions\/16103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}