Tag Archives: Spectra Energy

Sabal Trail blowdown with no notice 2018-04-03

Update 2018-04-05: Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson noted yesterday: “Correction it was a FGT blowdown. Easy to be confused as Sabal Trail is in the same corridor and working on their pipeline too. And remember that SONAT gas pipeline is also in this same corridor. That’ll really be something else if and when all 3 gas transmission pipelines are being worked on simultaneously. I think it is also very disconcerting that pipeline companies do not have to inform the NRC (National Response Center) or PHMSA (Pipeline Hazard and Materials Safety Agency) when they do work on these explosive infrastructure corridors.”

See Where pipelnes already cross rivers into Suwannee County, Florida.

Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson reported on facebook yesterday:

Sabal Trail has been doing a blowdown operation on the pipeline corridor and the Santa Fe River. That was what sounded like a jet airplane in the river community on Monday April 2, 2018.

Photo: Jim Tatum.

That sounds much like the FGT pipeline noise last month in Suwannee County near the Suwannee River.

Also similar: Sabal Trail’s FERC-required Informational Postings contain no Critical nor non-Critical notices about whatever it is they are doing now.

Where are the state and federal agencies that permitted Sabal Trail? Why have they not required notices to neighbors, local Fire Rescue, and the public?

This month, Graphs

Meawhile, Sabal Trail gas is up and down yet again. How can this pipeline be needed when it’s shut down half the time? Is its main function really to scare the neighbors?

Continue reading →

FPL wants Martin-Riviera Pipeline folded into FSC

Update 2019-03-11: And of course FERC and FPSC approved it, this extension of FSC to within 300 feet of an LNG export port.

What is FPL hiding in all that confidential and redacted material in a 117-page petition for approval of folding FPL’s Martin-Riviera Pipeline into Sabal Trail’s downstream Florida Southeast Connection (FSC)? This has been planned at least two years. on the excuse of lower rates for customers. Yet FPL redacted what FSC would charge and future cost projections, so FPL’s customers and the rest of the public affected by these unnecessary pipelines have no way of knowing what they would cost, and emergency responders can’t see what’s on this pipeline.

Indiantown to Riviera Beach, in FERC 20180309-5230, Docket CP18-108.

Eagle-eye WWALS member Janet Barrow spotted this Florida Public Service Commission (FPSC) Docket 20170231 (OPEN) — Petition for approval to transfer Martin- Riviera Lateral Pipeline to Florida Southeast Connection and implement associated rate adjustments, by Florida Power & Light Company.

FPSC let FPL redact most anything it wanted to, in Continue reading →

Stigma and market fear count, says jury over Sabal Trail

A jury slapped Sabal Trail’s pet consultants with the stigma of market fear:

Sabal Trail contended that there are no damages to market value based on market fear or stigma.
…the jury rendered a verdict in the amount of $309,500. This, of course, is over five-times the amount offered by Sabal….

Perhaps farmer Randy Dowdy is also right to object to Sabal Trail’s soil mixing consultants. And I wonder how this precedent might affect other property takings cases.

Photo: Mark Skogman for WWALS on Southwings flight 2 February 2017 of Sunderland Groves on Lake Erie Road near Bay Lake Road, 28.4775900, -81.9026000

Brigham Property Rights Law Firm ( http://www.propertyrights.com), PRWeb, 20 March 2018, Jury Sides with Property Owners in Eminent Domain Suit with Sabal Trail Pipeline, Continue reading →

Farmer Randy Dowdy objects to Sabal Trail’s soil mixing evaluation plan 2018-03-13

How can there be soil mixing yet zero noncompliance incidents? Randy Dowdy asked directly to FERC, following up his call in AgWeb for an independent investigation of Sabal Trail’s destruction of his world-record-holding soybean fields in Brooks County, Georgia.

Dowdy doesn’t trust Sabal Trail or anybody it sends to investigate that soil mixing. He’s hardly the first to say Sabal Trail’s inspectors don’t; see for example FERC’s Moultrie Scoping Meeting 2015-09-29 where James Bell said pipeline inspectors stood around until they noticed him watching, Sandra Jones said the surveyors were not qualified, and Attorney Daniel Dunn said Sabal Trail operates under darkness of misinformation. Dowdy may be late to the opposition, but he is determined.

Sabal Trail is still a stagecoach line in an electric car world, except stagecoaches didn’t destroy farmers’ fields.

Letter from Randy Dowdy to FERC

Continue reading →

FERC rubberstamps reinstatement of Sabal Trail permit, with two dissents 2018-03-14

Just as for PennEast, Commissioners LaFleur (not even voting no, “dissenting in part”) and Glick (actually dissenting) weren’t enough to stop rubberstamping a renewed permit for Sabal Trail. Yet after a pathetic whimper a few days ago, Sabal Trail, as so often these recent six months, is shipping no gas.

Graphs by WWALS, using data from Sabal Trail’s own FERC-required Informational Postings.

About Commissioner Glick’s dissent

Commissioner Glick sure got one thing right, at the end of his statement: Continue reading →

Randy Dowdy calls for independent investigation of Sabal Trail soil mixing 2018-03-06

Dear pipeline companies: if you gouge through a rock-star farmer’s world-record-holding soybean fields, you may find he gets national coverage.

Bryan Mitchell, March 6, 2018 08:16 AM, AgWeb powered by Farm Journal, Pipeline Nightmare: Randy Dowdy Calls For Independent Investigation,

Randy Dowdy’s soil death is no mystery, insists the Georgia producer, and now a federal inspection report appears to back his claims of soil damage on record-breaking farmland due to pipeline construction. A letter (Feb. 6) from the Federal Regulatory Commission (FERC) to the Sabal Trail Pipeline Project describes “topsoil and subsoil mixing” on Dowdy’s farming operation, yet significantly does not address issues of noncompliance.

GA-BR-029.000 Dowdy south field, Little Creek, MP 217, 1657-PL-DG-70197-219, 30.9439700, -83.6154600

Dowdy signed Continue reading →

Sabal Trail alleged plan for soil mixing 2018-03-09

Yesterday Sabal Trail filed with FERC a sketchy plan to investigate the subsoil and topsoil mixing it caused on four farmers’ lands in two Georgia counties. The tail wagging the dog, Sabal Trail demanded FERC rubberstamp this plan within one week.

GA-BR-028.000 Dowdy north field, Little Creek, MP 216.4, 1657-PL-DG-70197-218, 30.9503000, -83.6217700

Needless to say FERC didn’t supply the GPS coordinates, nor the county parcel numbers, nor the related Sabal Trail alignment maps: WWALS did that, to figure out things are in what Sabal Trail filed.

The details are on the WWALS website, also including maps by WWALS.

-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

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

Sabal Trail is shut down while DC Circuit Court delays again 2018-03-08

Sabal Trail is already shut down, while the DC Circuit Court delays its mandate to shut it down.

This month 2018-03-01 – 2018-03-09: Graphs by WWALS from Sabal Trail’s own FERC-required Informational postings.

Here’s the problem:

Courts rarely block pipelines, even if regulators are found to have fallen short of the National Environmental Policy Act, and they have never halted a pipeline for inadequate climate review.

It’s long past time to get the clammy grip of fossil fuels off not only Congress and the agencies, but also off the courts.

Ellen M. Gilmer, E&E News, 8 March 2018, Shutdown averted for Sabal Trail pipeline, Continue reading →

Pipeline opposition rebuts wild-eyed Congressional distractions 2018-03-08

The headline would read better in this order: “Congressional Committee trolls energy policy.”

Suwannee Riverkeeper John Quarterman… said the science committee’s chairman, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, was making “wild-eyed attempts to divert from the misdeeds of his patron, the fossil fuel industry.”

Steve Patterson, Jacksonville.com, 8 March 2018, Congress: Russians trolled Florida pipeline debate,

Efforts by Russian internet trolls to destabilize the U.S. energy industry reached all the way to Florida and the controversy over construction of the Sabal Trail gas pipeline, according to a Congressional report.

For my previous takedown of that report, see Fossil fuels are a far bigger threat than the Russians.

And if the Russians were behind me spotting from the air this frac-out of Sabal Trail drilling mud up into the Withlacoochee River in Georgia, they’re way behind in their payments.

View from the south bank of Sabal Trail turbidity curtains and pipe from the north bank of the Withlacoochee River, about 2000 feet upstream from the US 84 bridge.
Photo: John S. Quarterman, October 22nd 2016.

Maybe I should send that Committee a bill Continue reading →

Fossil fuels are a far bigger threat than the Russians

Leaks of hazardous materials, explosions, land takings, sinkholes, frac-outs: these are far bigger threats than Texas Rep. Lamar Smith’s Committee report “that states Russian agents were attempting to disrupt U.S. energy markets and using social media to purportedly stir up protests against pipelines such as Sabal Trail,” as a reporter asked me about recently. Smith’s report doesn’t mention that solar and wind power are growing far faster than his favorite, fracked methane gas.

Business Council for Sustainable Energy by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, February 2018, 2018 Sustainable Energy in America.

Elsewhere I already looked behind Lamar Smith’s fossil fuel smoke and mirrors, and found I post more on social media than the tiny Russian numbers that horrify him.

His actual examples are seriously rolling-on-the-floor laughable, such as this: Continue reading →

WWALS Watershed Coalition (WWALS) is Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

A healthy watershed with clean, swimmable, fishable, drinkable water.