13th District Congressman Rodney Davis heard a mixture of praise and concerns during his visit to Carrollton last month for his open office hours.
Davis has made regular stops in Greene County ever since he was first elected to Congress in 2013. He says he was happy to meet with constituents to talk about two programs he helped facilitate grants for local improvements: “The good news is we were able to celebrate the USDA investing in Greene County once again with the HVAC improvements at the historic Courthouse and also the fire truck purchase to help the Roodhouse Fire Department out in the Greene County area. These are the types of investments that we, in Congress, help put forth to allow communities like Roodhouse and Carrollton and Greene County as a whole to benefit from.”
The Roodhouse Fire Department recently had members return from the State of New York to pick up their new fire truck. The truck is expected to be put into service in a few short weeks after lettering is completed and the truck is set up.
Davis said the biggest concern he heard from citizens in Greene County last month concerned the Spire STL Pipeline. The county recently reached a settlement over damages to the county’s roads during the pipeline’s construction last month after a nearly 2 year legal battle.
The pipeline’s remaining existence is currently in limbo as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently ruled that the previous sitting commission did not go through proper protocols when issuing the pipeline’s permit of operation.
Davis says landowners are concerned whether the land will be restored to its previous state and if Spire will be held to account: “We heard concerns about the pipeline and remediation efforts, and ensuring that the land that the Spire pipeline is under is reclaimed as promised by the company. Those are concerns we are continuing to address. We want to make sure that Spire lives up to its promises to reclaim that land to where it was before that project was moved forward.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Tuesday rebuffed a request filed by Spire STL Pipeline LLC to reconsider an earlier decision that vacated the Midwest natural gas conduit’s FERC certificate. What happens next for Spire, a 65-mile, 400,000 Dth/d project designed to tap supplies from the Rockies Express Pipeline for delivery into the St. Louis metropolitan area, could depend on how the now-Democratic-led Commission chooses to act. Current FERC Chairman Richard Glick dissented in the issuing of the certificate in 2018.