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Feds OK Sabal Trail gas pipeline

Feds OK Sabal Trail gas pipeline

by DeVore Design, February 9, 2016

Federal regulators have approved the controversial Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline project, which will cut through Central Florida.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has issued a certificate of public convenience and necessity for the $3.2 billion, 516-mile, three-foot-wide pipeline that will carry up to 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day from Alabama, through Georgia, and a dozen Florida counties — including Sumter and Lake — to a connector pipeline in Osceola County.

The pipeline will supply natural gas for a Florida Power & Light electric generation and a Duke Energy plant in Citrus County.

The pipeline is a joint venture between FPL parent company NextEra, Duke and Spectra Energy, the Houston-based company that will build and operate it.

On Wednesday, Spectra Energy released a statement saying construction was expected to start in May or June with the pipeline in operation by May 1, 2017.

A contingent of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, the Gulf Restoration Network, Our Santa Fe River and the south-Georgia based WWALS Watershed Coalition, have organized in opposition to the pipeline.

They have cited environmental concerns because the pipeline route is expected to cut across wetlands, conservation areas, sinkhole-prone terrain, high aquifer recharge areas and under the Lower Santa Fe and Suwannee rivers.

They’ve also argued the pipeline is not needed and Florida should rely more on solar-generated energy.

John. S Quarterman, president of the WWALS Watershed Coalition, which fought an unsuccessful legal battle against a Florida Department of Environmental Protection permit for the pipeline, said the FERC permit will not end the fight.

“In fact, the opposition is increasing … the number of groups and individuals is growing,” he said.

Quarterman noted that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has not issued a permit allowing for construction through wetlands. Quarterman also said an environmental group with more financial resources than WWALS — he declined to provide the name — may also mount a legal fight against the FERC permit.

Spectra Energy officials said the FERC decision was based on comprehensive review.

“Sabal Trail has been evaluating proposed routes, design and construction methods and potential impacts on community members and the environment since June 2013,” Spectra spokeswoman Andrea Grover wrote in a statement.

“Over this 2½ years of discussions, surveys, studies, permitting and planning, Sabal Trail feels it has developed a balanced plan for the route, construction techniques, and measures to avoid, minimize or mitigate impacts. We believe that FERC has performed a very comprehensive evaluation of alternative routing, impacts involving karst, surface water and groundwater aquifers, protected species habitat and properties crossed by the pipeline, and has proposed reasonable conditions to mitigate those impacts.

“FERC has responded to concerns raised by stakeholders and feels it will not have a significant adverse effect on local communities,” Glover said in the release.

When FERC officials met with area residents at Groveland High School in one of several public meetings in the past two years about the pipeline, landowner Jane Geraci saw the project as inevitable.

“We know we can’t stop it (pipeline), it’s coming, but we are just asking for a different route which would take it down that government land instead of private land, which we don’t think is unreasonable,” she said.