Sabal Fail wrapped it in towels, sprayed a deodorant, and waited until morning.
“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
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.
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
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:
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
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.
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
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.
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
The attorney got the judge’s attention for a few minutes, after waiting an hour, then the defendant was sent away until August 8, 2017 at 1PM at the same Suwannee County Courthouse.
Here is Kaithleen Hernandez’ attorney Steven Glazer looking puzzled afterwards, because he came for a hearing and the judge said this was Continue reading
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dunnellon, Florida, July 27, 2017 — Following up member reports of a very strong smell of natural gas on Florida 200 next to the site of Sabal Trail’s planned Dunnellon Compressor Station, which apparently was leaking, Suwannee Riverkeeper John S. Quarterman and several WWALS members took pictures of the site and related locations from the ground and from the air. Today Suwannee Riverkeeper sent nineteen questions to the agencies that permitted the Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline, all of whom assured us that pipeline would be safe, even though it appears it developed a leak less than a week after saying it had gone into service. These questions range from what did Sabal Trail report to the agencies to who asked for the smell to be put into the gas to what were the local counties and cities or the public told?
While this apparent leak was in Florida, Continue reading
Starts at 9am, Suwanee County Courthouse
Rescheduled; details here.
-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®
You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!
While many Sabal Trail pipeline protesters’ charges have been dropped, at least one, Kaithleen Hernandez, has a court date this Thursday morning, 8AM, at Suwannee County Courthouse in Live Oak, Florida. She says, “We are not outnumbered, we are just outorganized.”
When: 8AM Thursday, July 27, 2017
Where: Suwannee County Courthouse, 200 S Ohio Ave, Live Oak, FL
Event: Probation case against Kaithleen Hernandez
Photo:
Ebyabe, Dual-licensed under the GFDL and CC-By-SA-2.5
Kaithleen Hernandez was arrested in 16 January 2017 at Continue reading
Let me fix some typos in Sabal Trail’s PR of yesterday, Sabal Trail Transmission Project Placed In-Service: New Pipeline System Increases the Reliability and Diversity of the Southeast U.S. Natural Gas Infrastructure.
Corrected headline: Sabal Trail starts stagecoach line in an electric car world.
Apologies to the 1877 Omaha Herald and
True West.
Adding a third natural gas pipeline merely makes Florida even more than 60% dependant on natural gas, as Sierra Club Alabama, Georgia, and Florida pointed out three years ago. The people of Florida voted for solar power twice last year. Yet Sabal Trail is wasting $3 or $4 billion on Continue reading
