On Friday night we attended a meeting at Groveland Township Hall led by our friend Jeff Axt. Supervisor Bob DePalma invited Jeff to reprise the presentation he’s given in Brandon and Rose Townships– to large crowds we’re told. There weren’t a lot of people in attendance last night (owing to a combination of short notice and a nice Friday evening), but those who were there– including, it appears, Supervisor DePalma had serious misgivings about the project and seemed energized by Jeff’s excellent presentation to let their opposition be known to FERC. That’s good news.

Jeff Axt, the “Brandon Brawler”

Even better news, DePalma appeared to indicate that the Groveland Board of Trustees will join Brandon and Rose in passing a formal resolution opposing ET Rover’s proposed route. This is, in our view, a major step: that means three townships– that’s nearly half the Oakland County route–will have expressed official opposition to Rover. And we expect more will follow. The will, the preferences, and the positions of the citizens of Oakland County is becoming loud and clear: ET Rover is not needed, the proposed route is wrong and poses too much danger to sensitive natural resources, and we won’t sit by and allow yet another company to take private property for their own gain with very little if any benefit to Michigan and its citizens. We’re very pleased to see township supervisors stepping up and showing leadership on this matter.

Next up, Jeff will give this presentation to Oxford Township on August 27 at 6:30p at the Oxford Veterans Memorial Civic Center: 28 North Washington Street in Oxford. Mark your calendars!

It would be even better to have more townships on board. For that reason, we urge you to contact your own township supervisor and urge them to take similar action. Invite them to this blog. Encourage them to invite Jeff to give his presentation. Demand that they respond to the concerns of their constituents.

In the meantime, it is very important that, in addition to the statements made by townships, that a large number of individual citizens write to FERC and make their opposition to the ET Rover project and route known. We urge you to submit a comment, explaining that this pipeline is NOT a public necessity and that it poses too many dangers to Oakland County’s residents and natural resources. Below are instructions on how to do file a comment on ET Rover with FERC. Please take some time to do so:

Go to the FERC eComment website.

Click on the eComment button, which takes you to an authorization page.

Enter your name and email address, and type in the “authorization” letters / numbers that appear.

Click on authorize.

FERC will send you an email. Click on the link in the email.

You should be taken to a page on the FERC website with your name and email filled in.

In the field for “Enter Docket Number” type PF14-14 (no spaces)

Click on the Search button.

Click on the blue cross in the far right column under the heading labelled “Select”

Enter up to 6000 characters in the box for editing a comment.

You’re probably better off to have written your comment before hand. Then, you can just copy and paste it into this box.
Click on Send Comment

You can also subscribe to the docket, which allows you to get notices of other people’s comments, which you can read. Or, if you’d just like to read the comments (you can get an idea of what to include in your own comment), just click here.  Then enter in the Docket Number PF14-14 and hit “submit.” You should get a list of all the comments that have been submitted.