Here are Gretchen Quarterman and Dave Hetzel at Heather Brasell’s annual A Day in the Woods at the Gaskins Forest Education Center near Alapaha, Berrien County, Georgia.
Pictures: WWALS at A Day in the Woods 2018-04-21
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Tag Archives: agriculture
Farmer Randy Dowdy objects to Sabal Trail’s soil mixing evaluation plan 2018-03-13
How can there be soil mixing yet zero noncompliance incidents?
Randy Dowdy asked directly to FERC, following up his
call in AgWeb for an independent investigation of Sabal Trail’s
destruction of his
world-record-holding soybean fields in Brooks County, Georgia.
Dowdy doesn’t trust Sabal Trail or anybody it sends to investigate that soil mixing. He’s hardly the first to say Sabal Trail’s inspectors don’t; see for example FERC’s Moultrie Scoping Meeting 2015-09-29 where James Bell said pipeline inspectors stood around until they noticed him watching, Sandra Jones said the surveyors were not qualified, and Attorney Daniel Dunn said Sabal Trail operates under darkness of misinformation. Dowdy may be late to the opposition, but he is determined.
Sabal Trail is still a stagecoach line in an electric car world, except stagecoaches didn’t destroy farmers’ fields.
Letter from Randy Dowdy to FERC
Continue readingFERC requires Sabal Trail report mixing of Randy Dowdy’s subsoil and topsoil
Bad news doubled for the little pipeline that cried wolf: FERC did not file any certificates today for Sabal Trail, and Brooks County farmer Randy Dowdy is vindicated with a letter from FERC demanding a plan from Sabal Trail “within 20 days” (emphasis in the original) for “for investigating the actual extent of the topsoil and subsoil mixing on the Dowdy and Robinson properties and the reported mixing on the Jones property.”
Map:
Google, of Sabal Trail pipeline through Randy Dowdy’s soybean fields, next to Little Creek, which runs into Okapilco Creek, into the Withlacoochee River, into the Suwannee, to the Gulf.
That letter refers to an inspection report of November 14, 2017, also filed by FERC today, that documents that “topsoil and subsoil mixing has occurred in agricultural areas during construction of Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC’s (Sabal Trail) Sabal Trail Pipeline Project.”
FERC has thus validated Continue reading
Emergency! Cries Sabal Trail 2018-02-02
Desperately seeking loopholes, at 4:58 PM today on a Friday, Sabal Trail claimed “Applicants would face irreparable financial harm,” which is pretty rich for the company that stuck the Bell Brothers with $47,000 in Sabal Trail legal fees for fighting eminent domain from that same FERC certificate the DC Circuit Court is likely to void next week.
It wants to “avoid the irreparable impacts of a system shutdown,” says the company that destroyed world-record-holding soybean farmer Randy Dowdy’s soybean fields. As Randy Dowdy said last May, and Sabal Trail’s own reports then say they have done nothing to correct:
“We’ve got loss of production for the future that will take not my lifetime, Continue reading
Fragility of monoculture agriculture in varying water conditions
They don’t want to say “we don’t know,” but they don’t know. At least they have a working hypothesis about the collapse of the 2017 peanut crop in much of Florida: it has to do with variations in rainfall.
Bob Kemerait, Southeast Farm Press, 22 January 2018, Peanut collapse: Something happened but it’s not clear exactly why,
…For months, University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Extension agents led by Anthony Drew, Mace Bauer and Dee Broughton had been sounding the alarm that an unprecedented collapse of the peanut crop was occurring across large areas of Florida’s production region. Symptoms of this collapse included stunted plants, late-season yellowing and leaves with distinctive marginal leaf necrosis. Where most severe, entire fields wilted in the weeks prior to harvest. Abysmal yields, off by as much as 45 percent, forced some to consider their future in farming if solution could not be found.
During the latter third of the season, Continue reading
A Resolution Against Phosphate Mines in Florida –Florida Waterkeepers 2017-12-18
Delivered via email as PDF to the Union BOCC before their phosphate mine workshop of Monday, December 18, 2017.
A Resolution
Against Phosphate Mines in Florida
WHEREAS, Waterkeeper Alliance Members are obligated and dedicated to protect the water resources, citizens’ interests, and related benefits in their jurisdictions; and
WHEREAS, phosphate mines have been shown to threaten and cause actual harm to these
resources, interest, and related benefits; and
WHEREAS, there are several phosphate mine projects in various stages of permitting in local, state, and federal agencies including county and city governments, Water Management Districts (WMDs), Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE); and
WHEREAS, there seems to be no public list of current phosphate mines and related facitlities, which include at least
Continue readingGlobal Croplands, Suwannee River Basin
You can see on these maps that the Suwannee River Basin is massively agricultural, except where it’s forestry or swamp or other wetlands. Thus it’s no wonder that most of the nitrate runoff problem here is due to agriculture, as shown in the Basin Management Action Plans (BMAPs).
WWALS Science Committee Chair Tom Potter points to this Global Croplands map to illustrate the BMAP issues. The question remains of whether agricultural best management practices as advocated in the recent BMAP meetings will be sufficient to deal with the problem, considering they haven’t decreased it in the past decade.
Global Croplands About: Continue reading
Pilgrim’s Pride to pay $1.43 million Suwannee River pollution to settle lawsuit by Environment Florida and Sierra Club 2017-11-14
Despite what we heard at the BMAP meeting Tuesday, it turns out Best Management Practices (BMP) are not all that can be done to fix fertilizer nitrate runoff in the Suwannee Rier Basin. “More than $1 million of the Pilgrim’s penalty would fund a program to help nearby farmers reduce their pollution as well.” The Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (FDACS) could also ask the legislature for further such funding, in addition to recommending BMPs. Congratulations, Environment Florida and Sierra Club, for doing what the state of Florida has not!
Photo: Dominic Gheesling for WWALS on Southwings flight 22 October 2016,
Pilgrims Pride, US 90, 30.3648380, -83.1636130
Another chicken breeder is setting up in the Suwannee River Basin, near Quitman in Brooks County Georgia, next to Okapilco Creek, which flows into the Withlacoochee River and then the Suwannee River. We’ll be watching.
- Video by Environment Florida, starring Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson (Sierra Club), Jeniffer Rubiello (Environment Florida), and Heather Govern (attorney, National Environmental Law Center), and Whitey Markle (Suwannee-St Johns Group, Sierra Club Florida). Continue reading
WWALS at Berrien County Harvest Festival 2017-09-30
Join WWALS for our first time at the eighth annual Berrien County Harvest Festival in downtown Nashville.
When: 9AM – 4PM, Saturday, September 30, 2017
Where: Downtown Courthouse Square, Nashville, GA 31639
Free: No entrance fee.
Event: meetup,
facebook hosted by WWALS
facebook Hosted by Berrien County Chamber of Commerce and Development Authority and Nashville Main Street
“It’s time to get excited for the 8th annual Berrien County Harvest Festival! Come join us in Downtown Nashville for crafts, food, fun, and entertainment by the Peterson Farm Brothers and more!”
Environmental Resources
in 2015 update to Berrien County Comprehensive Plan.
Berrien County PR, unknown date, Berrien County Harvest Festival set for September 30th,
The Harvest Festival will feature Continue reading
Sinkhole, Sabal Trail, Okapilco Creek, Brooks County, GA 2017-09-19
Update 2017-09-21: Yes, I reported it to GA-EPD, et al. (PDF), and here are facebook photos of most of the images below.
How close to exposed is Sabal Trail’s pipe? This sinkhole is at least a foot deep, maybe two or more, and Sabal Trail only buried their pipe three feet deep, despite requests by Brooks, Colquitt, and Lowndes Counties to bury it deeper.
N of sinkhole, Sinkhole
Is that fill material exposed Continue reading