Residents protests Sabal Trail
Published 6:00 am Wednesday, October 22, 2014
- Tom Hochschild is joined by a man dressed as a pipeline during anti-Sabal Trail protests on Tuesday.
VALDOSTA — A group of around 40 Valdosta and Lowndes County residents went to the Sabal Trail’s Valdosta office on Tuesday afternoon in protest of the group’s proposed pipeline.
The group, many of which carried signs displaying their opposition to the pipeline, discussed the impact of a pipeline on the area.
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Dr. Michael Noll, president of Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy, discussed wanting to educate the community about the dangers of a natural gas pipeline.
“We also want to educate them also on the possibilities they have to comment with FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee, which deals with projects such as this,” Noll said. “We want to highlight aspects of connections that exist between the political and corporate machine.”
Noll cited a July 2014 article from the Miami Herald that explained that Florida Governor Rick Scott owned a stake in Spectra Energy, the Houston, Texas-based company that is intending to build the pipeline in a joint venture with NextEra Energy.
“What you have is a situation where they are trying to sell you a product which is supposed to be for the public interest, but it’s really for profit interest,” Noll said. “The pipeline that leads from Central Alabama to Central Florida is being considered because there is a lucrative export market.”
One homeowner, Bill Kendall, explained that Sabal Trail is wrongly using eminent domain for the pipeline.
“The fact that the government is taking eminent domain and giving it to a private enterprise to use against the citizens of Georgia, we don’t agree with that,” Kendall said. “That’s what we’re against.”
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Kendall explained that he owns 17 acres of land in three tracts, and that the land would be harmed severely by a pipeline. Kendall has owned the land since 1992.
“The Sabal Trail people want to avoid a little wet place that’s going to cost $1,500,000 to dig under, and go across my pasture land because it’s high and dry,” Kendall said. “That’s going to wipe out my farm, man. I’ve worked all my life for this dadgum farm, and I’m proud of that thing, and here they are, just going to come and wipe it out. What right do they have to do that?
“I couldn’t care less about their stinkin’ pipeline, and so could all of these other people,” Kendall said. “I’d rather have my land.”
Kendall works as a land surveyor, and explained that there were few farms that had that kind of land available for horses and other animals.
“Where are you going to find something like that to move to?” Kendall said. “I don’t want to live on this stupid pipeline, and I don’t want it going through my property, just for their convenience.”
Another landowner expressed concern with the dangers of a pipeline right through his property.
“Where it’s coming across is within a couple of hundred feet of where I sit every morning and have my morning wake-up,” said Rick Hastings. “I asked the gentleman with the pipeline who was standing on my front porch if there happened to be a leak in the pipeline, and there was an explosion, what would happen? Without hesitation, and without any thought, he simply replied ‘You’ll never know it.’ In other words, me and my home, my grandchildren, and whoever’s there with me would be vaporized.
“They say it’s safe, they say there’s never explosions, and there’s never leaks, and that’s a crock of hooey.”
