{"id":6099,"date":"2013-10-16T13:57:52","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T17:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=6099"},"modified":"2013-10-16T13:59:38","modified_gmt":"2013-10-16T17:59:38","slug":"pipeline-dog-and-pony-in-albany-monday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/pipeline-dog-and-pony-in-albany-monday.html","title":{"rendered":"Pipeline dog and pony in Albany Monday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nMonday in Albany, Tuesday \r\nin Moultrie<\/a>,\r\nand\r\n\r\ntonight in Valdosta<\/a>,\r\nthe pipeline roadshow is rolling through Georgia towards Florida.\r\nThese are not<\/em> public hearings or town halls:\r\nthe pipeline company seems to be trying to get landowners in the path\r\nto show up, but anybody can attend.\r\n

\r\nBrad McEwen wrote for the Albany Herald yesterday,\r\n\r\nResidents attend pipeline forum<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSabal Trail Transmission LLC, which is a joint venture between\r\nenergy giants Spectra Energy Corp. and NextEra Energy Inc., hosted\r\nthe event to give citizens an opportunity to ask questions and learn\r\nmore about the proposed project.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nSet up like an open house, the forum had 15 Sabal Trail subject\r\nmatter experts on hand to greet residents and walk them through a\r\nvariety of information stations covering different subjects related\r\nto the pipeline.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nEach station contained general information about building and\r\nmaintaining a pipeline, as well as information about the Sabal Trail\r\nproject, which came about in response to Florida Power and Light\r\nannouncing its intent to use natural gas for its power generation\r\nneeds.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe project, with an estimated construction cost of nearly $3\r\nbillion, will carry natural gas from western Alabama to southern\r\nFlorida through 465 miles of pipeline. Approximately 19 miles of the\r\npipeline are slated to run through western Dougherty County.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnd probably about 19 miles through\r\n\r\neach of Brooks and Lowndes Counties<\/a>, too.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nSome of those in attendance, however, felt the open house was not\r\nwhat they expected, saying it offered little information on impact\r\nspecific to Dougherty County and those residents closest to the\r\nproposed route.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nDinorah Hall, who has been a spokesperson for residents who will be\r\ndirectly impacted if the pipeline crosses on or near their property,\r\nsaid she found the format confusing and not conducive to residents\r\nlooking for specific answers to tough questions.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“I think it was a good P.R. event,” said Hall. “I\r\nfelt they were selling the company. There was no real opportunity\r\nfor hard-core questions.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nHall said she — along with many others who are concerned about\r\nthe project — was hoping for a more formal event where\r\ncitizens could ask questions to which the answers would be given\r\nmore publicly.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“How’s this really going to benefit the people of Dougherty\r\nCounty?” asked Hall. “This thing caught everybody by\r\nsurprise.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThese are not<\/em> the town halls Spectra has been promising.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nMonday’s forum was the first of many area events Sabal Transmission\r\nplans to host, as the project moves toward a projected May 2017\r\ncompletion date.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAlthough dates have not been set, Grover said the company will host\r\na meeting in November to discuss the building of a compressor\r\nstation in Dougherty County. The station, which would sit on\r\napproximately 60 acres that have not been chosen, would help move\r\nnearly 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas through the pipeline\r\ndaily.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nGrover also said a second general public information meeting will be\r\nheld in Albany given residents another opportunity to gather\r\ninformation. Grover said representatives from the Federal Energy\r\nRegulatory Commission (FERC) will also be in attendance at the\r\nDecember event.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAndrea Grover told me last night Moultrie that there would a meeting\r\nwith FERC in attendance in Valdosta, as well.\r\nShe didn’t know exactly when.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monday in Albany, Tuesday in Moultrie, and tonight in Valdosta, the pipeline roadshow is rolling through Georgia towards Florida. These are not public hearings or town halls: the pipeline company seems to be trying to get landowners in the path to show up, but anybody can attend. Brad McEwen wrote for the Albany Herald yesterday, […]","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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,15,16,6124,6687,73,3,55],"tags":[7072,205,6967,6965,206,8704,8705,8706,1764,8701,548,8702,12,7,562,6076,7070,7069,6597,8731,6966,8700,6,8727,8774],"class_list":["post-6099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-education","category-environment","category-natural-gas-2","category-pipeline-2","category-safety","category-transparency","category-water","tag-14-october-2013","tag-albany","tag-andrea-grover","tag-brian-fahrenthold","tag-dougherty-county","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-florida-power-and-light","tag-georgia","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-pipeline","tag-pipeline-meeting","tag-sabal-trail-pipeline","tag-sabal-trail-transmission","tag-safety","tag-spectra-energy","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta","tag-water","tag-wiregrass-tech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1An","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6099","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=6099"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6101,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6099\/revisions\/6101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}