A pipeline project is quietly being installed as fast as possible, critics say, displacing residents, threatening water supplies, and racking up alleged construction violations.
And most people in the region — even those in the pipeline’s path — haven’t even heard about it.
Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC, known as Sabal Trail, is using $3 billion of Florida Power and Light (FPL) ratepayer money to build a 515-mile pipeline to transport natural gas obtained via fracking from eastern Alabama to central Florida.
Authorized by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in February, Sabal Trail is a joint project of Spectra Energy Corp., NextEra Energy, Inc., and Duke Energy.
In Alabama, Sabal Trail would connect to a pipeline network that will move one billion cubic feet of Marcellus-sourced gas from Pennsylvania to Florida, according to the company site, “to serve local distribution companies, industrial users and natural gas-fired power generators in the Southeast markets,” including FPL and Duke Energy of Florida.
Critics of Sabal Trail say the claim of meeting Florida residential and industrial users’ needs for more natural gas is bogus and point to evidence suggesting much of the gas will be sold and shipped internationally.
They also say Sabal Trail threatens the fragile limestone surrounding the Floridan Aquifer, one of the largest freshwater aquifers in the world.
And they’re angry that a private company is using eminent domain to force homeowners to sell their properties along the pipeline route.
The comparison between the Dakota Access and Sabal Trail pipelines is apt, critics say, because Enbridge, which is a stakeholder in the Dakota Access pipeline, has announced plans to buy Spectra Energy, one of Sabal Trail’s owners.
Eminent Domain Displaces Homeowners
In April FERC granted Sabal Trail a certificate of public convenience and necessity, giving the company a right to eminent domain. Thanks to a 2005 Supreme Court decision, local governments can force homeowners to sell their properties for private economic development projects.
Along the Sabal Trail project route, several residents have been forced out, some surprised that they were even in the path of the pipeline.
Two Georgia brothers are now faced with paying Sabal Trail’s legal fees in defending their property against the pipeline.
James Bell, one of the brothers, documents the company’s aggressive tactics in a video, saying:
“In my personal opinion I don’t see how a private for-profit company should be allowed eminent domain…I might understand it if it was for the greater good of the country but this is not. And it is certainly not the federal government or the state government building some road or highway.”
Bell and others along the Sabal Trail pipeline aren’t the only private landowners who have been displaced by pipeline companies’ right to eminent domain. The issue has sparked outrage among landowners in the way of the Dakota Access, Transco, and Sunoco Logistics pipeline routes.
Activists Document Construction Violations
Opponents of Sabal Trail say that pipeline construction alone poses a threat to local water resources by releasing hazardous materials and drilling mud into waterways, and they say that several incidents of negligence have intensified those concerns.
In November drilling mud from the Sabal Trail pipeline leaked into south Georgia’s Withlacoochee River, a tributary to the Suwannee River.
John Quarterman, president of the Wwals Watershed Coalition, one of the groups opposing Sabal Trail, tells DeSmog that the incident would never have been reported if he hadn’t seen it while flying over the area on a routine survey.
“I noticed this yellow thing across the river where they were doing horizontal directional drilling. The permitting agency admitted it was a turbidity curtain to contain drilling mud, but they weren’t telling me where the mud was coming from,” said Quarterman.
Quarterman told DeSmog such spills could affect the Floridan Aquifer, and that he wonders whether other discharges are not being reported publicly and whether the drilling could cause central Florida’s fragile underground cave system to collapse.
Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson, an organizer with the Sierra Club in Florida, told DeSmog that activists have documented multiple construction violations in the last six weeks, from plowing down homeowners’ fences to creating sinkholes.
One activist, Ronald Reedy, told DeSmog he observed an enormous piece of equipment, a track hoe, stuck in a wetland area in central Florida on two different days.
“The track hoe was tilting at a 45-degree angle and leaking diesel fuel. You could see the rainbow reflecting from the fuel slick. They’re not supposed to drive these things into the wetlands,” said Reedy.
“When they tried to remove it the next day, they had a man standing between two huge machines with no protection, an accident waiting to happen.”
Quarterman told DeSmog that activists are doing more oversight of construction than the permitting agencies.
Malwitz-Jipson and Quarterman believe that many violations and non-compliance issues are due to the speed of construction to keep the pipeline on track. Construction began in June to meet a May 2017 deadline, which has now been pushed to June 2017.
“They’re slamming this pipe into the ground, under water, as fast as they can and they’re careless,” said Reedy.
Malwitz-Jipson told DeSmog she hopes that enough violations will be documented that the US Congress will step in.
“Several citizens are in constant contact with key representatives who could take serious leadership and tell FERC to shut this down,” she said.
Stay tuned for more on the Sabal Trail pipeline, including an EPA about-face on its environmental impacts, as well as lawsuits against it and conflicting arguments about Florida’s current and long-term need for the natural gas it would bring.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy