When I first heard the words Sabal Trail, it evoked an image of a palm tree-lined natural hiking trail. The reality, of course, is almost the opposite.
Sabal Trail is a massive interstate natural-gas pipeline system owned by Enbridge, NextEra Energy and Duke Energy. Now, nearly a decade after the original fight over the pipeline, landowners across Alabama, Georgia and Florida are receiving notices asking permission to survey their property.
Why is this $1.49 billion company, owned by investor-owned utilities, asking to survey our neighborhoods and land?
Sabal Trail LLC says it will use access to these properties to conduct surveys and refine its proposed route based on what it finds.
If you remember what happened a decade ago when Sabal Trail expanded through North Central Florida, you may feel the same disquieting pit in your stomach that I do.
Communities fought that pipeline for years. The Sierra Club, Suwannee Riverkeepers and property owners challenged FERC’s approval in federal court - and won. The court found that FERC had failed to adequately consider the greenhouse-gas pollution created when the gas carried by the pipeline was ultimately burned. That victory showed the power of organized people fighting for their communities.
And now, before the original project is even fully completed, they want to expand it and extend it.
Putting in a pipeline is no small matter. Pipelines affect water resources, wetlands, vegetation, wildlife habitat, property values, local economies and quality of life.
Sabal Trail already crosses Florida’s extraordinary karst landscape - limestone, springs, sinkholes, caves and underground water systems connected to the Floridan Aquifer - and has already been associated with documented sinkholes, leaks and damage to water systems.
Now the company is studying an expansion from Alabama through Georgia and Florida, including additional compressor capacity and a new pipeline near the existing route. It also wants to extend the system west into Mississippi.
Yet they do not even know the final size and scope of the project.
They say the route has not been finalized, and they have not disclosed the pipe diameter or final capacity increase. At the same time, they are already seeking access to private property. Once a pipeline easement is granted, it is permanent.
Sabal Trail says the project will ultimately depend on “customer commitments.”
Which customers? They don’t have the commitments yet, but they want access to your property now.
Their own notices say one of the project’s primary objectives is providing “firm transportation service to new high-volume customers seeking affordable and reliable natural gas supply.”
That raises an obvious question: are those “high-volume customers” connected to the explosion of proposed Data Centers?
FPL, Duke and other investor-owned utilities are already competing to serve enormous new electricity demand from Data Centers and other large industrial users. They invest in infrastructure to “meet demand,” while residential customers can ultimately be left paying the bill.
Before we build another generation of fossil-gas infrastructure around wishful forecasts of “future demand,” and before we risk our land and water, and our communities, we deserve answers.
Who wants this gas? How certain is the demand? Who pays? Who carries the risk? And who profits?
We deserve better than to be treated as grist for their Data Center competition and market bubble. We are flesh and blood and earth and water, not paper profits on a ticker tape.
Don’t give them access to your property without understanding exactly what is being proposed and what it could mean for your land and community.
Say “NO - We will not let our communities become fuel for your profits!”
If this pipeline is being justified by a new wave of industrial electricity demand, including Data Centers, then these fights are not separate. They are two fronts of the same fight.
The question is simple: will the people whose land, water, communities and utility bills carry the burden benefit at all - or will we be left with higher bills than ever, AND a damaged landscape?
Fight the Data Centers. Stop the Pipeline. Save our Homes.
Written by Jyoti Parmar, Clean Energy Organizer, Sierra Club Florida