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Natural Gas Pipeline Cause Concern for Property Owners
Briana Harper, GTN News Reporter
Jan. 30, 2014

People in North Central Florida are sounding off about a natural gas pipeline and its effect on their property.

The Sabal Trail Gas Pipeline is a project more than 400 miles long spanning across three different states. The purpose is to provide domestically-produced natural gas for the southeast region. But this pipeline comes at a cost to property owners.

Eminent Domain Attorney Brian Bolves says, “It’s a big scale project that’s coming through the community. It will change the character of a lot of people’s property,there have been a lot of surveyors assessing people’s property and so people have a lot of concerns about the nature of this facility.”

The project will affect 12 Florida counties including Alachua, Levy, and Gilchrist. And while this natural gas pipeline has its benefits….
“It reduces dependence on foreign oil, so that’s an important factor it’s cleaner burning than coal or oil as a fossil fuel so there’s a lot reasons to have natural gas.”

But some local towns like Gilchrist are concerned about the gas pipeline’s safety.

Gilchrist County Administrator Bobby Crosby says, “Small county with limited resources we are concerned with what area it goes in as well as an explosion or just simply an injury to a worker with the type of equipment they will be working with that we will have a quick response.”

The pipeline is scheduled to begin service in May 2017 but construction could begin within the next year and a half.

Read the original article and watch the interview here.