Sierra Club tries to stop gas pipe OK
The Sierra Club has filed a challenge to the Florida Southeast Connection’s request for fasttrack authorization to extend the fracked-gas Sabal Trail Pipeline.
The project, known as the Okeechobee lateral project, would supply a massive new gas-burning power plant that FSC’s affiliate, Florida Power & Light Co., wants to put into service in Okeechobee County in 2019. In the filing Monday with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Sierra Club contends that an appellate court decision last month in a case involving Sabal Trail effectively bars the use of FERC’s fast-tracking procedures.
In August, the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ordered FERC to conduct a new environmental review of the $4 billion pipeline that brings natural gas to FPL’s plants. The court said that FERC failed to consider the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from the plants when deciding to approve the pipeline project.
In its ruling, Sierra Club said, the court invalidated the certificates for Sabal Trail and FSC’s connected pipelines, instructing FERC to evaluate the climate effects of burning the gas via pipelines when determining if they were necessary and appropriate projects.
The Sierra Club argues that FERC should consider together the greenhouse gas emissions and climate impact from FPL’s new gas plant, the Okeechobee lateral, Sabal Trail and other connected pipelines.
By 2021, the new pipeline
— which would transmit gas extracted from the Marcellus Shale Formation in the Midwest and New York — would have the capacity to deliver about 1.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day.
The Sierra Club, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and Flint Riverkeeper filed the challenge last year to FERC’s approval of the pipeline. FPL and Duke Energy Florida intervened.
In response to the August ruling, FPL spokesman Dave McDermitt said the challenge from environmental groups is self-defeating.
“If the Sierra Club succeeds in curtailing access to natural gas, Florida consumers would experience increased fuel costs due to more limited availability of natural gas and increased air emissions due to the continued use of older coal-fired power plants,” McDermitt said.
“FPL has been working to phase out three coal-burning plants in Florida, but the Sierra Club’s actions would jeopardize these plans,” McDermitt said.
Unlike most states, Florida has access to only two other major natural gas pipeline systems, McDermitt said.
“The courts have ruled that FERC’s days as a rubber stamp for the fracked gas pipeline industry are over and that means finally putting an end to the fast-track approval process,” Kelly Martin, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign, said in a statement Tuesday. “Now, the agency must fulfill its duty and evaluate these dirty and dangerous pipelines for what they are: a threat to our clean air and our communities. FERC’s responsibility is to protect people, not polluters, and ending fast-track approvals for fracked gas pipelines puts them one step closer to actually fulfilling their mission.”