Above Photo: John Shinkle/Politico
ALBANY — The complaints offered by 34 opponents of the Sabal Trail pipeline — plus the one comment in support of the project — were duly noted Monday evening by representatives of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. They listened patiently, a stenographer taking down comments to make them part of the official record of the event, as citizen after citizen made one point resoundingly clear: None wanted the pipeline or its accompanying compressor station.
“I am here tonight because I am my brother’s keeper,” Gladys Joyce Jordan Jones told the FERC representatives. “I am here because of the school children of this community. I’m here because the people of Indian Creek, the people of Willow Wood, the people of Countryside Village are afraid.
“This pipeline is an injustice, and I want to let the folks at (Spectra Energy) know that what they’re doing is not going to be like taking candy from a baby. It’s going to be like trying to take candy from a Flint River ‘gator.”
Teachers and housewives and lawyers and pastors and environmentalists alike spoke before FERC officials and a crowd of more than 200 in three-minute bursts that were variations of specific themes: The compressor station that Sabal Trail officials want to build in the Albany city limits is dangerous; the pipeline threatens the city’s water supply; the sinkholes already evident along the trail pathway offer evidence of unsettled topography; the company building the pipeline (Spectra) has a dismal safety record.
“The decision to allow this project to move forward given the evidence that’s been presented to FERC against it is reckless and dangerous,” attorney Ed Hallman said. “I tell the people I represent the only conclusion I can reach when looking at the supporting documentation is that this is a matter of incompetence, politics or money.
“Significant testing is being conducted on a similar project, the so-called Atlantic Sunrise project in Pennsylvania, because there is concern about sinkholes and karst topography. Why isn’t that same concern being shown with the Sabal Trail pipeline? Is the interest in the safety of the people of Pennsylvania higher than it is for the people of Georgia?”
Another attorney, Josh Marks, noted the “yellow triangles” signifying sinkholes along the proposed Sabal Trail pipeline path in Georgia, a total of 163, 68 in Dougherty County alone.
“Frankly, it looks like the ‘Yellow Brick Road,’” Marks said. “But this road is not going to Oz. It’s going to a much more dangerous place. These people couldn’t have picked a more risky route.”
Politicians — U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop’s representative, Kenneth Cutts; state Rep. Winfred Dukes; Albany City Commissioner Roger Marietta; Dougherty County Commissioner Harry James; former City Commissioner Arthur Kay Williams; mayoral candidate Tracy Taylor, and City Commission candidate Chad Warbington — had their say, as did former Albany State University football coach Hamp Smith.
“I thought our government was for the people and by the people,” Smith said, his voice rising in passion and intensity throughout his comments. “We’ve got two senators in this state that we haven’t heard a word from. They’re treating us like a soccer ball being kicked around by a big oil company. Let that pipeline rupture at 2 o’clock in the morning, and you’re going to have a lot of dead people in Dougherty County.
“Take your pipeline down (Interstate) 65 in Alabama and across I-10 in Florida. We don’t need it in Georgia, and we don’t want it here.”
Spectra did not have a representative at the meeting, overseen by FERC representatives Jim Martin, John Peconom, Monica Hagebak Davis and Mitch Shields, but Andrea Grover, a spokeswoman for the Houston-based company, said in an email that FERC’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement showed the project posed no imminent threat to communities located along the pipeline’s proposed path.
“Sabal Trail has been evaluating proposed routes, design and construction methods and impacts to community members and the environment since June 2013,” Grover wrote in an email to The Albany Herald. “Over this nearly 2 ½ years of discussions, surveys, studies and planning, Sabal Trail feels it has devised a balanced plan for the route, construction techniques, and measures to avoid, minimize or mitigate impacts. We feel that in its DEIS, FERC has performed a very comprehensive evaluation of the environmental impacts and has proposed reasonable conditions to mitigate those impacts for the Sabal Trail project.
“The DEIS notes that while construction will temporarily affect the environment, the project would not result in a significant impact to the environment. In addition, the DEIS addresses stakeholders and states that Sabal Trail will not have a significant adverse effect on local communities or the socioeconomics of an area.”
Kevin Grail, the president of Grail Management Group, which represents the Countryside Village Mobile Home Park that is near the proposed compressor station site, refuted Grover’s contention regarding economic issues.
“Fifty homeowners will have this compressor station in their backyard,” Grail said. “Sixty-eight percent of those residents are black, and 70 percent of the residents have a household income below $30,000. They’re going to be subjected to the horrible sound of that station running, and it never stops. And, oh, by the way, it may explode one day.
“These people are going to lose up to 50 percent of the value of their homes, and they can’t afford to move. They’re going to be stuck there.”
One speaker, Jim Woslager, who introduced himself as a pipefitter, said companies like Spectra are conscious of safety measures. He noted the “$2-a-gallon gas” that was a product of the country’s energy independence.
“This company has gone above and beyond to protect me and others working on their pipelines,” Woslager said. “I don’t like to hear people running them down. And I don’t like the integrity of our work being questioned. Our welders (in the pipefitters’ union) are the best in the world.”
As Woslager left the podium at the Albany Civic Center, someone in the audience yelled, “Go home,” and there was a handful of boos. “Please be respectful,” Peconom admonished.
Responding to Woslager’s comment about gas prices, speaker Samuel Black said, “My health and my children’s health are much more important than $2 gas. We’re here because we care about our families. I hope this meeting doesn’t turn out to be a formality so that we can just say we had a meeting.”
Most audience members spoke with passion in their comments before the FERC officials, some spoke with anger. But it was Tommy Evans who best summed up the mood of the Civic Center crowd.
“We have children here. We have grandparents here,” Evans said. “This is our home. All these people who are coming into our community to build this pipeline care about is a dollar bill. And we want them to know we didn’t work as hard as we did to have someone come in here and destroy our homes and our community.
“We want these people to know, you hurt one of us, you hurt all of us. We’re all in this together.”
FERC officials conducted similar public meetings in Moultrie on Tuesday and has another scheduled in Valdosta on Wednesday. In all, the agency will conduct 10 such meetings.