Water, property rights over pipeline profits
“Protesters drove up to nine hours to Leesburg, Georgia, on July 10, where Spectra Energy lost an 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 property.
Spectra bragged in op-eds about 50 public meetings, never mentioning overwhelming public opposition in Moultrie, Valdosta, Clyattville, Madison and elsewhere to that gash through our fields, forests and wetlands, and under our Withlacoochee River twice.
Sabal Trail’s air-quality permit application with Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division met immediate objections by Greenlaw and Ted Turner’s Nonami Plantation.
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. Florida’s Suwannee River Water Management District asked FERC in April where the dirty testing water would go and said permits would be needed. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asked FERC in April how hydrostatic testing would conform with state water-quality standards and how it would affect downstream water users.”
Quarterman, John. Ocala Star Banner 3 August 2014.