Sunday, Mount Zion Baptist Church in Albany celebrates its 150th anniversary. U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, a deacon at the church, will be in attendance to honor the fixture in his community.
Last week Bishop spoke with pride about his congregation’s investment in the sanctuary and expansion plans, laying the foundation for the next century and a half.
And the Democrat does not want to see the neighborhood marred by a natural gas pipeline that has become a heated political fight in southwest Georgia, particularly after a rejiggered route placed a large compressor station not far from Mount Zion.
Because you don’t mess with a congressman’s church.
“Yes, I take it personally,” Bishop said.
Sabal Trail is the lesser-known pipeline fight in Georgia these days. The Palmetto Pipeline along the coast has been held up in legal wrangling, but state and federal regulators have given the Sabal Trail pipeline a preliminary thumbs up to pass under five southwest Georgia rivers and creeks as it carries natural gas from Alabama to Florida.
Bishop does not want to kill the pipeline, he says, but rather get a new route that stays out of Georgia or at least avoids populated areas. The Albany compressor station has become a contentious point, with noise and emissions in what Bishop points out is a “low-income, predominately African-American area.”
Andrea Grover, a spokeswoman for Houston-based Spectra Energy, said the company is following all environmental and regulatory protocols as it searches for the best route. Grover said there are only six property owners and 39 occupied mobile homes within a half-mile of the proposed compressor station, and noise from the station in those areas is legally required to be no louder on average than 55 decibels, a typical conversation. She added that the site is a full 1.5 miles from Mount Zion.
Bishop’s beef is not just with Spectra, but with the Obama administration.
“We’ve made numerous requests for clarification and additional information and they’ve been somewhat evasive,” Bishop said.
The 12-term congressman wrote two letters to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He never really got a reply to the first, Bishop said, and the second reply was “vague and perfunctory.”
He echoed environmentalists’ worries about sinkholes and drinking water contamination. There’s also the larger concern of what’s in it for Georgia, since the gas is going to Florida.
But Spectra estimates that pipeline will employ more than 1,800 people in Georgia during construction, with a $242 million economic benefit.
Despite Bishop's concerns, FERC is moving forward with the project, issuing a draft environmental impact statement last month.
Perhaps the most measured and cautious member of the Georgia delegation, Bishop is not going on the warpath. He’s merely hoping for FERC to extend the public comment period and perhaps shift the route.
“I am doing my best to articulate the concerns of people who are residents of the 2nd Congressional District who have contacted my office,” Bishop said.
Not to mention his fellow churchgoers.
Georgia’s speaker shuffle
The stunning move by Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to withdraw from the race to replace Speaker John Boehner threw the House into disarray at the end of last week, with big implications for the Georgia delegation.
U.S. Rep. Tom Price, a Roswell Republican, had been running for the majority leader post, assuming McCarthy would move up. He was said to be considering a speaker bid of his own, but he ended the week — like so many of his colleagues — talking about what a great speaker his pal U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., would be if Ryan would only agree to do it.
Price's intradelegation thunder was stolen by U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Coweta County Republican, who all but threw his hat in for a long-shot speaker bid.
But there is another Georgian lurking, waiting for his moment to rise again. You guessed it: Newt Gingrich.
This was the former speaker's typically grandiose reply when asked by Fox News host Sean Hannity whether he would return, if summoned by the rudderless House Republicans.
“If you were to say to me 218 have called you up and given you their pledge, obviously no citizen could ever turn down that kind of challenge,” Gingrich said. “This is why George Washington came out of retirement — because there are moments you can’t avoid.”
Vote of the week
The U.S. Senate voted, 70-27, to send the annual National Defense Authorization Act to the president, despite a threatened veto.
Yes: U.S. Sens. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and David Perdue, R-Ga.
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