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Water And Property Rights More Important Than Methane Pipeline Profits

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7664100194 87543844c7 m In: Water And Property Rights More Important Than Methane Pipeline Profits | Our Santa Fe River, Inc. (OSFR) | Protecting the Santa Fe River
On July 30, 2014 at 01:54PM, jsq at WWALS Watershed Coalition published the following article:

This is a long version of the op-ed sent to many newspapers in WWALS’ watersheds; there is also a short version. -jsq


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Protesters drove as far as nine hours to Leesburg, GA July 10th, where Spectra Energy lost its eminent domain demand for its Sabal Trail 36-inch, hundred-foot right-of-way natural gas pipeline, and local landowners countersued.

Spectra hobbled back to Houston, Texas bound by strict conditions for surveying that one Mitchell County property, and bound to haunt south Georgia again for a trespass jury trial.

The ensuing flurry of newspaper op-eds by Spectra’s Andrea Grover plus a page-long Sabal Trail interview in the Valdosta Daily Times (VDT), didn’t mention numerous Sabal Trail downsides.   Sabal Trail’s air quality permit application with Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division  met immediate objections by Greenlaw and
Ted Turner’s Nonami Plantation.

default In: Water And Property Rights More Important Than Methane Pipeline Profits | Our Santa Fe River, Inc. (OSFR) | Protecting the Santa Fe River
Spectra wants 100,000 gallons of water from his pond for pressure tests
, a Colquitt County landowner told the pipeline-permitting Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
last March in Moultrie.

Florida’s Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) told FERC in April
 that massive water extraction for pipeline testing could cause sinkholes; asked where that testing water would go after dirtied by use;
and pointed out permits would be needed.

erp graphic In: Water And Property Rights More Important Than Methane Pipeline Profits | Our Santa Fe River, Inc. (OSFR) | Protecting the Santa Fe River

Sabal Trail applied July 21st for an Environmental Resource Permit exemption
with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FL-DEP) for our Withlacoochee River and for the Santa Fe River. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
asked FERC in April how that hydrostatic testing would conform with state water quality standards and how it would affect downstream water users.


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Sabal Trail also asked FL DEP July 21st for an injection well permit for Suwannee County, Florida. What if testing water or drilling wastewater spills, like it did in North Dakota, where a pipeline locals were told contained only water actually spilled a million gallons of oily-smelling brine?   Unlike North Dakota, our fragile karst limestone is highly susceptible to sinkholes that affect property and can  drain into our drinking water source, the Floridan Aquifer.

Spectra doesn’t have adequate insurance if that fracked
methane pipeline leaks or explodes, as Our Santa
Fe River, representing the other big tributary of the
Suwannee, has pointed out, and as Spectra’s own
SEC Form 10-K says
.


Ms. Grover still seems unfamiliar with  Spectra Energy’s four-decade record
of corrosion, leaks, and explosions,
including a record $15 million EPA fine for leaking PCBs
at 89 sites along a pipeline, and an even bigger fine from
Pennsylvania for the same incident. That was the same
Texas Eastern Pipeline that would carry fracked methane
from the Marcellus Shale through Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.  How do we
know PCBs won’t come with the methane?



65 acres of trees were incinerated and soil baked into glass in Alabama in December 2011
on Williams Transco’s 36-inch pipeline, the source of Sabal Trail’s fracked methane.
Local landowners and local and state governments get left to pick up the bodies, repair the
buildings, and clean up the mess.


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FERC has acknowledged that the pipeline could later be
sold and reused for shipping other substances. Do we want
tar sands oil leaking into our rivers or aquifer?
What if this pipeline gets repurposed to send our water
to Florida’s coastal cities, whose local water supplies are already being affected
by rising sea levels
?



Ms. Grover bragged about 50 public meetings, but didn’t
mention that the public was overwhelmingly opposed
to the pipeline, including in WWALS’ watersheds at Moultrie,
ValdostaClyattville, and Madison.  We don’t want leaks
or explosions in our watersheds or our aquifer,
nor the hundred-foot wide gash for Sabal Trail’s
yard-wide fracked methane pipeline though our fields, forests,
and wetlands,    and under our Withlacoochee River twice.

As Valdosta City Council Tim Carroll told FERC back in March,
one-time payments to landowners in no way compensate for this
pipeline with no local benefits: “The health, safety and
welfare of our local citizens clearly outweighs those of a private
company in this matter.”

If even Florida wouldn’t benefit, there’s no justification for eminent domain.
Duke Energy says it doesn’t need Sabal Trail for its proposed Citrus County, FL power plant.
The VDT noted the pipeline would provide more power than all of Florida
currently uses.


Transco, Sabal Trail, and FPL’s Florida Southeast Connection (FSC)
lead right to at least three already-authorized liquid natural gas (LNG)
export operations in Florida.

Florida Governor Rick Scott owned or owns stock
in both
the existing Florida methane pipelines (Gulfstream and Florida Gas
Transmission), and in both Williams of the Transco pipeline
and Spectra of Sabal Trail. Who profits by this pipeline boondoggle?



Solar and wind don’t require water for hydrostatic testing, don’t leak or explode,
and don’t use water for cooling, unlike natural gas, coal, oil and, nuclear plants.
According to Sabal Trail’s own figures, half the acreage of that pipeline
could produce just as much solar power, with solar panels on rooftops and where
landowners actually want them, such as the 2 MW by Lakeland Solar Energy on
Burnt Church Road in Lanier County, connected to Georgia Power in January 2014.
And the  20 MW solar farm near Hazelhurst, Jeff Davis County, GA, announced
by Green Power EMC this June.



Beyond the minimum depth requests of the Dougherty, Colquitt, and Brooks County
Commissions, the Lowndes County Commission’s insistenc that the pipeline company
follow fourteen points of local regulations, local governments can do much more.

State Supreme Courts in Pennsylvania and New York have ruled that local zoning ”
ordinances  can ban fracking and pipelines.  why should Georgia be different?

South Buffalo, Pennsylvania
rejected a compressor station in February 2014.
Princeton, New Jersey on June 16th, asked FERC to reject a pipeline,
and two Congress members and two Senators took up the call. How about a Community
Bill of Rights against pipelines
?

Like Georgians at Fort Morris in 1778, landowners don’t have to surrender
at the first pipeline company lowball offer:  1102 Come Take It In: Water And Property Rights More Important Than Methane Pipeline Profits | Our Santa Fe River, Inc. (OSFR) | Protecting the Santa Fe River

Come and Take It!


Ms. Grover admitted in the VDT

that FERC requires survey data for all affected properties,
so any holdouts do indeed crimp that pipeline.

Local people and governments are not alone. The Alabama, Georgia,
and Florida Sierra Club chapters
, oppose this pipeline, as do Greenlaw,
Flint Riverkeeper  Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Our Santa Fe River,
and many others.


FERC5 In: Water And Property Rights More Important Than Methane Pipeline Profits | Our Santa Fe River, Inc. (OSFR) | Protecting the Santa Fe River


July 14th in DC, protesters from many eastern states

marched against Spectra’s proposed Constitution Pipeline and LNG exports
through Cove Point, Maryland, including the first-ever
sit-down protest in front of FERC, where dozens people were arrested,
one dressed as the Statue of Liberty.




Celebrities like Bill Cosby
are opposing pipelines.  The Fraser Valley
Association of Pipeline Landowners
 in Chilliwack, British Columbia
is countersuing Spectra’s demands for new pipes with no payment on
an existing right of way.


lng rally 3.9.11 dan and crowd In: Water And Property Rights More Important Than Methane Pipeline Profits | Our Santa Fe River, Inc. (OSFR) | Protecting the Santa Fe River

From BC that fracked methane would go through
Williams Company’s Washington Expansion Project (WEP)
to two LNG export terminals in Oregon, all opposed by
Columbia Riverkeeper and Rogue Riverkeeper.

After widespread opposition to the Bluegrass Pipeline in Kentucky,
Williams cancelled it in April, citing:  “an insufficient level of
firm customer commitment”
.

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Let’s repeat that history here in the southeast,
and turn to conservation, efficiency, and solar power:
cheaper, faster, on-budget, with local jobs and lower electric bills.

WWALS wants to get people out onto our rivers to see their
pines and oaks and turtles and herons and tea-colored waters,
for example through the  Alapaha Water Trail.

So WWALS filed as an intervenor with FERC in November 2013
and will file again formally if Sabal Trail files for a permit as it plans for October.

Meanwhile, it will be very different from Sabal Trail’s
recent one-sided puff pieces when Spectra has to haunt
south Georgia again for a trespass jury trial.

—John S. Quarterman, President, WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc., www.wwals.net

-jsq

The post Water and property rights more important than methane pipeline profits appeared first on WWALS Watershed Coalition.

Read this article at WWALS Watershed Coalition at http://www.wwals.net/2014/07/30/water-property-rights-important-methane-pipeline-profits/.
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