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Feliciana Explorer • Tuesday, April 8, 2014 • Vol. 4, No. 14 • Published Weekly • Circulation 17,000 • felicianaexplorer.com • © 2014

EXPLOREREXPLORERFeliciana

Proud to be the Felicianas' only locally owned, managed, and staffed newspaper.

See GAS LINE on page 5

Attending the March 27 meeting at Slaughter Municipal Building to discussthe natural gas pipeline service issue were from left: Jon Craft, Presidentof Anvil Industries, Mayor Robbie Jackson of Slaughter and natural gaspipeline consultant, C. J. Arnold.

Midla Gas Pipeline Seeks to Renegotiate Fees or Shut DownBy James Ronald skains

Slaughter Mayor Robbie Jack-son has assumed a lead role in the natural gas service contract with MIDLA Gas Transmission Company. On Thursday morning, March 27th, Mayor Jackson hosted a regional meeting at the Slaughter Municipal Building to address the natural gas service issue.

“I’ve been involved in this natu-ral gas service issue for the last six months,” Mayor Jackson told the Feliciana EXPLORER. “It seems that MIDLA Gas Company is try-ing to get a huge rate increase that they don’t deserve. The rate we pay now for natural gas is already higher than what most natural gas transmission companies are charg-ing their customers.”

Mayor Jackson told some 25 stakeholders who attended the March 27th meeting: “MIDLA says they are losing money and if

their customers don’t pay for the repairs and upgrades, which would cost millions, they will either go bankrupt or file to abandon the gas line that serves a lot of towns in southeast Louisiana.”

“The pipeline that services this area was built in 1928. MIDLA is saying that the pipeline is unsafe to operate. I don’t think the Fed-eral Energy Regulatory Commis-sion, or FERC as we call it, will allow MIDLA to do anything like what they are threatening, but we need to be proactive. I’ve been in contact several times with Senator Vitter’s office and Congressman Cassidy’s office about what MID-LA is trying to do.”

Those attending the meet-ing included the Mayor of Wood-ville, Mississippi, Gary D’Aquilla, (who had hosted a previous meet-ing on MIDLA’s plans), Mayor of

Betsy Jones Seeks Vacant JudgeshipJudge Ware leaving the Bench after 18-year service to East and West Feliciana

Local attorney Betsy Jones an-nounced today that she would be a candidate in the November 4 Pri-mary Election to replace retiring Judge George H. Ware.

In announcing her candidacy Jones said “I have been fortunate to prosecute criminal cases in Judge Ware’s courtroom for many years. He taught me first hand what it takes to make a good judge. I would like to put those lessons to work for the people of our commu-nity.”

Betsy Jones, 48 , has served us as an Assistant District Attorney for 11 years and in that time she

has successfully prosecuted vi-olent criminals and drug dealers. A graduate of LSU and the

LSU Law Center she has been a licensed attorney for 20 years. Betsy Jones is a former Judicial Law Clerk and member of the Fe-liciana and LA State Bar Associa-tions. She was former Town Attor-ney for the Town of Clinton. Jones is an involved community leader who has served as President of the Clinton Development Association, Chairman of the East Feliciana Planning Commission, President of the East Feliciana Chamber of Commerce and currently serves as Treasurer of the Rotary Club of Saint Francisville.

An avid hunter and outdoor-swoman, Betsy Jones is a Life Member of the National Rifle As-sociation. She is a member of the Betsy Jones

Coastal Conservation Association, Ducks Unlimited and the National Wild Turkey Federation.

Betsy Jones and her husband of 16 years Donald Caillier are mem-bers of Clinton United Methodist Church.

“This important election will be about courtroom experience, community values and a real com-mitment to justice.” said Jones. “ I humbly ask for your prayers, your support and your vote.”

The 20th Judicial District of Louisiana is one of the 42 Loui-siana District Courts. It covers the all of the parishes of East Felici-ana and West Feliciana. All eli-gible registered voters can vote in the November Election.

2 Tuesday, April 8, 2014

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Letter to Editor

Brenda GardnerExecutive DirectorEast Feliciana Council on AgingP.O. Box 986Clinton, La. 70722(225) 683-9862

Letters to the Editor are un-edited sub-missions to the Feliciana Explorer newspa-per. Letters to the Editor may be submitted for publication at [email protected]. Submissions will be printed in the next issue of the Explorer, space allowing. Deadline for submission is by 5 p.m. the Thursday before Tuesday publication.

No anonymous letters will be accepted.

Letters can be emailed to us at [email protected]

In a Police Jury Meeting held March 18, 2014, the East Feliciana Council on Aging made a second request to place a proposal for an Ad Valorem Tax of one mill on the ballot in November to support programs for the elderly citizens in East Feliciana Parish. This tax would be dedicated and used to supplement the cost of elderly services provided by the Council on Aging.

In addition to our best known service called, “Meals on Wheels”, our agency also provides nutrition education, transportation, medication management, material aid (adult diapers, wheel chairs, walkers and nutritional supple-ments), utility assistance, wellness programs, telephone reassurance and legal services. The COA transports clients daily to doctors appointments in Clinton, Jackson, Baton Rouge, Zachary and Baker. Many of these transportation services are for Dialysis and Medicaid clients. The Council on Aging has 63 frail elderly citizens on a waiting list for meals. If it were not for the Councils on Aging throughout Louisiana, more of our citizens would need long-term assistance, such as assisted living or nursing homes. Last year the East Feliciana Council on Aging provided 38,746 units of service to the elderly citizens of this parish.

Should President Obama’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour become effective it would be devastating to the Council on Aging. The COA has a total of 12 employees with 7 making under $7.65 per hour. Several employees would be laid off and services to the elderly would be significantly cut.

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the 5 Police Jury Members, Louis Kent, Karl”Bubba”Chaney, Keith Mills, Edward Brooks, Dwight Hill and Jason McCray for their overwhelming support and concern for our senior citizens.

Please remember, together we can make a difference by reaching out to those in need.

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DAR American Citizenship Award Essay Winners AnnouncedThe Alexander Stirling Chapter

of the Daughters of the American Revolution is very excited and de-lighted to announce that East Feli-ciana Parish has an abundance of students that are State First Place winners in the Junior American Citizens Contests. The theme was “Honoring Our Heritage.” Their work is now in South Central Re-gional competition.

For their work to be entered in South Central Regional com-petition they had to win several phases of competition. The first phase was to win first place in a tri-parish competition (Pointe Coupee Parish, East and West Fe-liciana Parishes). After tri-parish competition was the 2nd phase. All those that won first place were sent to the State competition, after winning first place in State comes phase three. The student work is then sent on to South Central Re-gional. The odds are with us to have a first place winner in South Central and those that win first are then sent on the National Compe-tition as phase four. South Central Regional consists of the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas, Mis-souri, Oklahoma, and Texas. East Feliciana had twenty-four students whose work placed first and now we are all anxiously awaiting the results of the South Central com-petition.

A winner from Slaughter El-ementary was a 6th grade student, Madison Graham, for her Stamp Design of a buffalo. A third grade student, Cameron Martin, from Silliman won first, also. The re-maining twenty-two winners are from Slaughter Charter Commu-nity School.

Creating a banner is a category that a group can work together. East Feliciana made a grand sweep because they won the banner divi-sion in four grade levels. Winning in the 10 grade banner competition was Reonna Brown, Alden Ceasar, and Jamyria Tillery; winning in the 9th grade level was Hannah Winans, Krista Box, Tristan Sex-ton, Alex Jackson, and Desiree Davis; winning in the 8th grade division is Desiree Davis, Danielle Parisi and Shelby Arnett; and win-ning the 7th grade banner contest was Emily Phillips.

Creating a stamp design is drawing a 5x7 picture on a regular sheet of paper. Camryn Elizabeth Phillips won for the 7th, Destiny Ann Davis won for the 8th, and Nicholas Hayes won for the 9th.

Seventh grade student, Kyleigh Meredith won in the 7th grade poster division and Jake Phillips won for the 9th grade. Desiree Da-

See DAR on page 6

Pictured left is 3rd grader Cameron Martin from Sil-liman Institute. Photo and story submitted by Beth Dawson.


GAS LINE continued from page 1

She Knows The Courtroom.

She Knows The Law.

She Knows Justice.

Paid for by The Committee to Elect Betsy Jones

Clinton Lori Ann Bell, Slaughter Town Alderman, Nicholas St. Ger-main, Johnny Arcenaux, Direc-tor of Workforce Solutions, Brian McNabb, District Director with Representative Cassidy’s office and a representative from Senator Vitter’s office.

The MIDLA pipeline is an in-terstate natural gas pipeline with approximately 370 miles of pipe-line linking the More Natural Gas Field in Northern Louisiana and interconnections with the TRANS-CO Pipeline System and Gulf South Pipeline systems to custom-ers near Baton Rouge. MIDLA was wholly owned by American Midstream Company, but was par-tially acquired by Boston-based financial company, ArcLight. The interest in MIDLA was then sold to an ArcLight company, High-point Energy.

American Midstream Partners, LP notes that they are a growth-oriented company engaged in the business of gathering, treat-ing, processing, fractionating and transporting natural gas and natu-

ral gas liquids. They own and op-erate twelve gathering systems, four processing facilities as well as a 50% non-operating interest in a fifth plant, two interstate pipe-lines and five intrastate pipelines.

From research into the financial condition of both American Mid-stream and MIDLA, this writer could find no indication of any financial hardships of either party related to the 370 miles of pipeline its operates. One of the reasons

given by MIDLA that the pipeline was unsafe was the use of Dresser Industries Couplings at the joints in the pipe. However, Dresser In-dustries couplings have a long ser-vice record of being trouble fee and are still used in piping systems today.

“For decades, MIDLA custom-ers have been paying at least $.40 per MBTD for maintenance and renovation of the MIDLA pipe-line system that services our area,”

Mayor Jackson emphasized. “What I want to know, is what has happened with the $.40 per MTBD that we have been pay-ing for years to refurbish this pipeline? A substantial amount of money has been accumulated over decades by MIDLA to keep their pipeline up to date. To my knowledge, based on plenty of research, MIDLA has spent very little money maintaining their pipeline.”

Mayor Jackson filed a request with FERC for an investigation into circumstances surrounding the transactions and expenditure of past fees for the maintenance of a pipeline providing services to customer near Baton Rouge. Jackson noted in his filing that a significant portion of MIDLA’s system serves rural and economi-cally depressed areas. There are real concerns that residents may be forced to accept new terms for natural gas services for the costs of building a new pipeline, or ac-cept abandonment of service to the region.

C. J. Arnold, CEO of Black Belt Energy, a natural gas con-sulting firm located in Jackson, Alabama pointed out: “MIDLA’s contention that their pipeline is old, outdated and unsafe does is not necessarily true since they have not had any major problems with the pipeline. We have pipe-lines in Alabama that are over 100 years old.”

“There are other pipeline transmissions companies in the area such as TRANSCO and Gulf South. It would seem that switch-ing pipeline companies would solve the problem; however, each time a tap is made into a pipe-line the cost can easily exceed $500,000. In addition, to tie into other pipelines would necessitate laying some miles of pipeline which would be very expensive.”

Other local leaders attending the session at the Slaughter Mu-nicipal Hall were Dennis Aucoin representing the East Feliciana Parish Police Jury, Hon Craft, President of Anvil Industries, Charmaine Efferson represent-ing the Zachary Chamber Lead-ership North Program, and Mi-chael Bradford, Manager of Gas District 2 in EFP and President of the East Feliciana Parish School Board.

Mayor Jackson said in clos-ing out the meeting: “Even if MIDLA was successful in getting what they wanted from FERC, it would take more than 14 months to get a ruling on the issue. There is nothing to panic about, but we do need to move forward with our plans of action. We need to prepared because at some point in the future there will be chang-es in our gas service.”

5th District Congressman Vance McAllister who represents the majority of the residents and commercial accounts who would be affected by MIDLA’s actions told this writer in a later inter-view: “MIDLA is not going to get what they want from FERC in the pipeline controversy.”



DAR continued from page 4

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vis, an eighth grade student, won for her photo essay and K’chelle Robinson won for her short story.

Two students won in the Poet-ry contest and they were Ty’Daria Alfred an eighth grade student and Rebecca Shields a 9th grade

student. The Alexander Stirling Chap-

ter is anxiously awaiting the results of the third phase of competition and we hope we will have some exciting news to tell the students and the public about these talented young people.

Pictured above: Slaughter Charter Community School winners with their teacher Mrs. Kent (far right).

Pictured left: Young lady with Assistant Principal, Thomas Sanchez, is 6th grade student, Madison Graham. She drew all the pictures on wall in back of her and Principal Sanchez.


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feliciana explorer apr 8

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