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EPA reverses position on Sabal Trail pipeline

EPA reverses position on Sabal Trail pipeline

by DeVore Design, December 21, 2015

The lone government agency with environmental concerns over the planned Sabal Trail pipeline has changed its tune and dropped its objections.

In a Dec. 11 letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stated that it changed its stance after meeting with Sabal Trail company representatives, reviewing written comments from the company’s vice president/deputy general counsel and looking “more closely” at the project.

The EPA now believes the company “fully considered avoidance and minimization of impacts during the development of the preferred route” for the natural gas pipeline.

The Corps of Engineers is the agency that will decide whether to issue a Clean Water Act permit allowing Sabal Trail to discharge dredged or fill material into water during construction.

The EPA decision is a reversal of the “very significant concerns” over potential impacts to wetlands, wildlife habitat, rivers, springs and the aquifer the agency raised in late October in response to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) staff determination that the project would not have significant environmental impacts.

The planned 515-mile, $3.2 billion project is now closer to construction. The 36-inch-wide pipeline is planned to carry up to 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day from Alabama, through part of Georgia and a dozen Florida counties — including Sumter and Lake — to a connector pipeline in Osceola County.

The project is primarily meant to provide natural gas for Florida Power & Light electric generation in South Florida, with a smaller amount going to Duke Energy in Citrus County.

Representatives of environmental groups opposed to the pipeline’s route, which is planned to cross rivers, through springs protection zones, conservation areas and several hundred acres of wetlands, questioned the EPA’s decision.

“This sudden, 180-degree reversal raises the question of whether the pipeline’s powerful investors pulled political strings to get EPA to back away from the objections it raised a few months ago in a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,” said Frank Jackalone, senior organizing manager for Sierra Club Florida.

In its October comments, EPA officials said the route passes through some of the most vulnerable areas of the Floridan aquifer, areas of porous limestone prone to sinkholes and characterized by underground caverns and streams.

The agency estimated there are at least 3,750 known or potential karst features, such as sinkholes or underground caverns, within a quarter-mile of the pipeline route.

The route crosses sensitive areas of the Floridan aquifer at a time when the Sierra Club of Florida has submitted an emergency petition to the federal government to protect the aquifer as the state’s biggest drinking water source.

The planned route will cross some 178 acres of conservation areas, including the Green Swamp.