Atlanta is surrounded by pipelines, says the AJC reporter and photographer who came to to Dougherty, Colquitt, and Lowndes Counties in February.

Dan Chapman, AJC, 3 April 2015, South Georgia pipeline plan fuels fight,

Valdosta — Southwest Georgia is roiling mad over a proposed gas pipeline to Florida that virtually nobody in Atlanta, except Ted Turner, has heard about.

Electric Light & Power has more of the text:

The 157-mile Sabal Trail pipeline would cross nine Georgia counties, four rivers, three state parks and thousands of acres of environmentally sensitive wetlands, forests and meadows. Opposition is strongest at the end points — Albany and Valdosta.

The fight over the pipeline, proposed by Houston-based Spectra Energy, reflects the increasingly tense battle over America’s energy future and echoes many of the arguments brandished in the national debate over the Keystone XL pipeline that would run from Canada to the Gulf coast.

Spectra says two existing natural gas pipelines into Florida are near capacity and that potential clients, including Florida Power & Light and Duke Energy, will need more gas in the future.

Opponents, who include hundreds of local officials, farmers, retirees, college students, geologists, big landowners and a former U.S. senator, say building more pipelines is bad energy policy or just don’t want one on or near their properties.

The controversy comes as pipeline projects proliferate across Georgia. Hearings are being held in East Georgia over plans to build a $1 billion gas, diesel and ethanol pipeline to run from South Carolina to Florida with terminals near Augusta and Savannah.

That’s the Palmetto Project. See Push Back the Pipeline and Savannah Riverkeeper for the opposition.

A pipeline carrying imported gas from Savannah to Atlanta could be reversed to export gas by 2017.

That’s the pipeline for Elba Island LNG, also owned by Kinder Morgan, the same company of the Palmetto Project.

And Atlanta Gas Light hopes gas will begin flowing north from Coweta County to Dalton via a 111-mile line that same year.

That’s the Williams Transco Dalton Expansion Project. And that’s the same Transco Sabal Trail expects to get its gas from.

“Atlanta is surrounded by fossil fuel invaders with more pipelines likely in the future,” said John S. Quarterman, a leader of the anti-Sabal Trail campaign in Valdosta. “But there’s no need for any of this now that solar power is cheaper, far cleaner than oil or gas and doesn’t require pipelines, terminals, compressor stations, eminent domain or environmental degradation.”

The AJC premium article has much more text, and also has pictures of WWALS member Dan Coleman, VSU Geology Professor Don Thieme, and WWALS President John S. Quarterman (me) at Shadrick Sink on the Withlacoochee River. The picture above is instead one I took of Don Thieme and Dan Chapman at the nearby Cherry Creek Sink.

-jsq

PS: See also Andrea Grover’s dishwasher, i.e., the compressor station proposed for Albany. And picture of the AJC front page with things you can do to help preserve our south Georgia paradise.

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