Category Archives: Pipeline

Sabal Trail today about the Dunnellon Compressor Station chronic problem: nyuk nyuk nyuk 2017-08-15

Sabal Trail today spelled out that they are not required to notify anybody about their chronic leaks of hazardous odorant chemicals, as if that explains everything.

Moe Howard of the Three Stooges
Moe Curly Howard of the Three Stooges, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, around 1938, the year the Natural Gas Act was originally passed, giving the predecessor of FERC the ability to hire staff and also presumably to buy a rubberstamp.

Two years ago the judge in WWALS vs. Sabal Trail & FDEP insisted that we couldn’t even ask about pipeline safety, because the Pipeline Safety Act relegates safety concerns of interstate natural gas pipelines to the federal government, mostly to the Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), or maybe to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) during permitting. Well, neither PHMSA nor FERC were even informed of this chronic stink leak incident, and neither of them did anything about it, nor did any other federal or state agency. Marion County was left to deal with it unassisted.

Even PHMSA says on their website that the Pipeline Safety Act: Continue reading →

WCJB TV: Dunnellon Compressor Station Gas Leak 2017-08-11

WWALS member Janet Barrow told WCJB TV of Gainesville, Florida,

To the Canadian-owned company that now owns Sabal Trail: rural lives matter. No eminent domain for corporate gain. And Houston, you have a problem.

Janet Barrow of Marion County

That would be Enbridge of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, which bought Spectra Energy of Houston, Texas, which is the builder and operator of the Sabal fracked methane Trail pipeline, now renamed Sabal Fail by locals.

Curtis Jennings, WCJB TV 20 News, 11 August 2017, Sabal Trail Pipeline in Dunnellon springs a leak, Continue reading →

WWALS to OSHA: Chronic Leaks at Sabal Trail Dunnellon Compressor Station Site, Marion County, Florida

Let’s try another agency about Sabal Trail’s chronic Mercaptan leaks in Marion County, OSHA: Page 1 of 2

WWALS members in Marion and Citrus Counties have asked me to write you about this situation, especially since all the state and federal permitting agencies and PHMSA have done nothing about it. Sabal Trail did not notify them, and none of them notified any of the local emergency management departments that are left unassisted to deal with this chronic safety problem.

The text is below, or see Continue reading →

Stooges Stink Again: Sabal Trail at Dunnellon Compressor Station 2017-08-05

Update 2017-08-11: Complaint filed with OSHA.

The smell of hazardous Mercaptan “would come and go” for at least two days starting August 5, 2017, and Sabal Trail had been doing some sort of work at the Dunnellon Compressor Station starting the previous day, although they hadn’t bothered to inform local first responders.

A Stooge plumbing
Still from The Three Stooges: A Plumbing We Will Go, Columbia Pictures, 1940

Only two weeks after the July 16-17 stink leak, Sabal Fail again caused expense for Marion County Fire Rescue in sending trucks and personnel. Unlike the private Sabal Trail Transmission LLC, Marion County responded to an open records request, and here are the narrative incident reports.

Saturday, August 5, 2017

Continue reading →

The Three Stooges Do Pipeline: Sabal Trail at Dunnellon 2017-07-16

Sabal Fail wrapped it in towels, sprayed a deodorant, and waited until morning.

“This is a new system and they are still learning,” said the Sabal Trail representative from Houston to Marion County Fire and Rescue, who were called by a local citizen to respond to a strong odor of natural gas at the site of the Dunnellon Compressor Station.

“Houston, we have a problem,” a Marion County resident remarked.

“Will be getting someone to respond,” Sabal Trail told Marion County 22 minutes after the call. When the county arrived (half an hour after the 911 call, mostly due to road distance), Sabal Trail personnel didn’t have the situation under control and hadn’t even communicated with Houston yet.

Marion County’s Narrative says: Continue reading →

Senate confirmed 2 FERC nominees with no discussion 2017-08-03

The Senate took less than two minutes to confirm Neil Chatterjee and Robert F. Powelson as FERC Commissioners, taking it up even earlier than we suspected. The only voice heard voting was Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that had forwarded their names. It’s not clear any other Senators were even in the room; certainly none spoke up at any point. She praised the new Commissioners and added that they would “help facilitate the buildout of an aging infrastructure and the add-on of new infrastructure”, which of course means more pipeline boondoggles when the country and the world need to get on with sun and wind power.

Reading the nominations

Worse, there are not one but two more FERC nominees in the pipeline, including a proposed Chair very friendly with pipelines and fossil fuels.

CSPAN, Senate Session, August 3, 2017, Continue reading →

Call Senators now to stop FERC nominees 2017-08-03

Update 2017-08-03: The Senate already did it. But there are more nominations to oppose and other things you can do.

FERC could suddenly get a quorum. Another FERC nominee went to the Senate Wednesday: no FERC rubberstamp Richard Click, general counsel to the minority party, the Democrats, on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Even the two nominees already forwarded to the full Senate June 6, 2017 if confirmed, added to the one still at FERC, would produce a quorum of 3 out of 5. So please call your Senators now and ask them not to vote to confirm any FERC nominee who does not vow to turn the agency to solar and wind power on a smart grid.

No, this won’t stop or turn off Sabal Trail. But it could stop further pipeline boondoggles from being confirmed. That’s good in itself, and could also erode the credibility of Sabal Trail with its creditors.

Here are telephone numbers for Georgia and Florida Senators, and there’s a script farther down. Continue reading →

Utilities have Opportunity to lead in solar power –Suwannee Riverkeeper in VDT 2017-08-02

They ran the op-ed last week online, and today the Valdosta Daily Times (VDT) put it on top of page 5A:

Point of View, page 5A, VDT

This newspaper op-ed has already resulted in a call about a water issue.

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!

State and local responses to Dunnellon Sabal Trail stink

Sabal Trail did not notify state or local officials about their “odorant” leak at the Dunnellon Compressor Station site, and Sabal Trail’s response to WWALS failed to mention local people called the same stink in to 911 two days in a row. FDEP said there’s no need so long as Sabal Trail follows various permits, but gave no indication of who is checking to see if Sabal Trail does that. Apparently we the people have to keep doing what the state and federal agencies still aren’t doing: watch Sabal Trail like a hawk.

Via FL 200
Google map of locations of Dunnellon High School and Sabal Trail Dunnellon Compressor Station. You can see most of the 100-foot Sabal Trail right of way.

Below are responses from FDEP and more details from Marion County Public Relations and Fire and Rescue, and from Dunnellon Fire and Rescue: none of them were notified by Sabal Trail, and FDEP seems OK with that. For the rest, an emergency plan would be prudent: “Run like hell” as in Spectra compressor station incidents elsewhere, is probably not adequate. Continue reading →

Enbridge about Sabal Trail stinks 2017-07-28

No gas leak, just a stink leak, said Spectra Energy’s new owner Enbridge in an emailed response yesterday to the WWALS 19 questions about the Dunnellon Compressor Station leak.

Stink tanks
These are apparently the “two odorant tanks and equipment” mentioned by Sabal Trail, visible from FL 200.

That response was no more substantive than we used to get in the bi-weekly reports: no indication of who notified Sabal Trail; no indication that they worked on it more than one day, even though multiple witnesses attest to that; no indication of who Sabal Trail notified, if anybody; no indication of what they were doing working in a different part of the site a week later when I took the pictures in the WWALS submission; no answer as to whether they are feeding methane to the Citrus County Pipeline; etc.

The responses from FERC and from USACE are the same as usual: nothing at all. We did get a reply from FDEP; more on that in a later post.

Previously Sabal Trail has provided its non-answers to WWALS and others in Continue reading →