From:
WWALS Watershed Coalition
3338 Country Club Road #L336
Valdosta, GA 31605
www.wwals.net
wwalswatershed@gmail.com
18 October 2013
To:
Secretary Sarah McKinley
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
888 First Street N.E
Washington, DC 20426
Re: Pre-filing Docket PF14-1
Sabal Trail Transmission
Cc:
Georgia Public Service Commission
Florida Public Service Commission
WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc.
opposes the proposed Sabal Trail Transmission gas pipeline
that would cut a 100 foot wide gash across our Withlacoochee
River and through many wetlands in south Georgia and north
Florida, including recharge zones for the Floridan Aquifer
that provides our drinking water.
Sabal’s parent company,
Spectra Energy, has a
safety record that gives no comfort
that such a pipeline would be constructed or operated
safely.
EPA fined Spectra a record $15 million for
PCB spills at 89 sites along another pipeline.
PHMSA fined Spectra $134,500 in December 2012 for five violations of
both federal regulations and Spectra’s own company
policies, and that was just one of
21 cases against Spectra by PHMSA,
involving more than $8 million in property damages.
This pipeline is proposed to be
36 inches in diameter, which is 44% more capacity than the
30 inch pipeline that exploded in Oklahoma 9 October 2013
and was visible from Kansas and Texas, yet its proposed path
runs much closer than that to local houses, schools, and
churches.
The route shown at
Spectra’s landowner meeting in Lowndes County goes
through the closed Lowndes County landfill, introducing
further environmental hazard.
This pipeline would also
contribute to the destruction of groundwater through
fracking the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and the Barnett
Shale in Texas. The gas
fracked for this pipeline is
methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide,
and many gas wells and pipelines leak into the atmosphere,
contributing to climate change.
This pipeline brings only
hazards and destruction with no benefits to Georgia, and it
is expensive and equally hazardous and destructive to
Florida.
The gas plants active or
proposed for this pipeline to feed in Florida
use far too
much water from the same Floridan Aquifer underlies our
watersheds, raising
the risk of sinkholes, which not only
could destroy nearby property as has happened many times
recently, but could break the pipe itself.
There is no excuse for yet
another gas pipeline when solar power is already less
expensive, doesn’t require a hundred foot right of
way, emits no pollution, doesn’t use massive amounts
of water, risks no spills or fires, and provides cheaper
electricity and jobs right here in south Georgia and north
Florida.
Profits for fossil fuel
companies elsewhere are no reason to violate property rights
of local people, or to destroy our local watersheds, or to
risk contamination of our aquifer.
For these reasons WWALS is
submitting this comment to FERC opposing the Sabal Trail
Transmission pipeline and filing as an intervenor on docket
#FP14-1.
WWALS is an advocacy
organization working for watershed conservation of the
Willacoochee, Withlacoochee, Alapaha, and Little River
Systems watershed
in south Georgia and north Florida through
awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen
advocacy.
Thank you,
Dave Hetzel,
President
WWALS Watershed Coalition
