This is one example of a spreading movement throughout Florida and beyond to defund Sabal Trail: #divestflorida, #NoSabalTrail. I’ve been calling for divestment for three years now, so I applaud this movement.
When: 3-6PM Friday March 17, 2017
Where:
Bank of America Tower (Jacksonville)
50 N Laura St, Jacksonville, Florida 32202
Event: facebook
Thanks to Continue reading
Op-ed Tallahassee Democrat, today, Sunday 29 January 2017:
Floridians are withdrawing money from banks backing the Sabal “Sinkhole” Trail pipeline, and demonstrating daily from Miami to Jacksonville and Tallahassee, sometimes physically blocking pipeline destruction. Fossil fuel profits do not justify eminent domain takings of local lands nor any risk to our waters. Solar power is cheaper, faster, and far safer.
Image: Electric power generation employment by technology,
U.S. Department of Energy
The solar industry provides more jobs than coal, oil, and natural gas combined. Sabal Trail’s own figures show Continue reading
SRWMD did post responses to comments from WWALS and others on the North Florida Regional Water Supply Plan (NFRWSP). A week before the planned NFRWSP adoption, same as for the agenda for the joint SRWMD-SJRWMD meeting next Tuesday in Alachua. After OSFR and WWALS posted critical blog posts, SRWMD Executive Director Noah Valenstein sent us and others an offer to meet this Friday in Live Oak to discuss. While many (including me), thanked him for his collegial offer, nobody took him up on it. See you in Alachua Tuesday (facebook event).
Below are Noah Valenstein’s letter and my response. Continue reading
Update 2017-01-19: Videos: NFRWSP Plan passed at joint SRWMD-SJRWMD Board Meeting 2017-01-17.
Update 2017-01-12: SRWMD did post responses to comments on the NFRWSP: they posted them a week in advance of planned adoption. Come on down to Alachua Tuesday!
Next week in Alachua without further public meetings or response to those who wrote in, SRWMD and SJRWMD plan to approve the North Florida Regional Water Supply Plan (NFRWSP), as the only item on the agenda.
When: 11AM Tuesday 17 January 2017
Where: 15100 NW 142nd Terrace, Alachua, FL 32615
Event: facebook
WWALS never got a response to our letter about the NFRWSP, not about less water withdrawal, nor about better modeling and data, nor about more water retention, nor specifically about ditching the Rube Goldberg Falling Creek Aquifer Recharge Project for Dennis Price P.G.’s more cost-effective solution, nor with any mention of participation from farther afield in Florida nor in Georgia, for that matter.
The language of the memorandum accompanying the agenda is rather Orwellian:
The NFRWSP has identified sufficient sources of water to meet the needs of the environment and the projected demands through 2035.
That sounds like the environment is making projected demands. Actually, the maps in the NFRWSP are pretty clear that Jacksonville is making the most demands for water, along with other cities and corporate agriculture, and the plan would take from the environment, mostly from the Suwannee River Basin, to get that water.
Our Santa Fe River sums it up pretty well: Continue reading
Op-ed, Valdosta Daily Times, today, January 8th 2017:
Sabal Trail and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection assured us there would be no problems drilling a 36-inch natural gas pipeline through the fragile karst limestone under the Suwannee River in Florida, yet already Sabal Trail’s pilot hole under the Withlacoochee River in Georgia caused a frac-out of drilling mud into the river and a sinkhole.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should halt construction and do a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.
When I happened to fly over the Withlacoochee River frac-out, I also saw Continue reading
It seems to miss one of the main points, but thanks to Mary G. Morris, CEO, VA529, for a thoughtful reply to the WWALS request to divest from Spectra Energy.
It seems to me that investing in a highly risky pipeline company such as
Spectra Energy would be “contrary to [VA529’s] overall investment goals and mission”, at least if those goals include reliable investments for college,
and not stranded investments.
It might be worth looking into the Parnassus Core Equity Fund she mentions. Perhaps college savers who want reliable investments would want to consider moving their investments there.
Suwannee Riverkeeper may continue correspondence with VA529.
Meanwhile, VA529 has a handy VA529 contact form or you can call or write: Continue reading
Update 2016-12-08: Letter sent to VA529 board: PDF.
Do the parents and grandparents who bought Virginia529 funds as safe investments for future college know VA529 is the biggest mutual fund investor in risky investments Spectra Energy of Sabal Trail and Enbridge of the Dakota Access Pipeline? Maybe you’d like to point that out to Mary G. Morris, the Chief Executive Officer of Virginia529 College Savings Plan, the biggest mutual fund investor in both Spectra Energy and in Enbridge, which is buying Spectra.
There’s a handy VA529 contact form or you can call or write: Continue reading
Where Sabal Trail connects to Transco: the head of the black snake,
at Hillabee Power Plant, owned by Exelon Corp., near Alexander City, Alabama.
We were driving by, so we took some pictures.
Here are
Sabal Trail’s Alignment Maps
for this area,
the
photographs I took yesterday,
and
a google map with links to the pictures,
plus
what you can do to stop this unnecessary, destructive, and hazardous fracked methane pipeline boondoggle.
Update 2016-10-10: All 527 of Sabal Trail’s April 2016 alignment maps are now available in small, big, huge, and PDF formats, courtesy of Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).
Here are a few pictures of some Bill Gates properties from the MIDS Southwings flyover of June 21st, 2016, including
Suwannee Farms which we previously discovered a Gates subsidiary had bought.
Notice how close these lands are to the Suwannee River or the Withlacoochee River and Madison Blue Spring. Some of them look freshly cleared. Many of them are probably also in Floridan Aquifer recharge zones. There is more identification work to be done. And we have more aerial pictures (and video).
See also the WWALS web page on Corporate Agriculture.
You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!
Continue readingUpdate 2016-09-23: Not quite: Energy Transfer backed out of buying Williams Co..
DAPL and Sabal Trail: now part of the same pipeline companies.
The pipeline companies behind the Sabal Trail fracked methane boondoogle through Alabama, Georgia, and Florida are now owned by the companies behind the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) that wants to pump oil through North Dakota where the Standing Rock Sioux have attracted an encampment of thousands of people who have successfully and nonviolently stopped pipeline construction at least for the moment.
WWALS was one of 93 Waterkeeper organizations worldwide that co-signed a letter from Waterkeeper Alliance in support of the Standing Rock Sioux.
Opponents of these pipelines, including native Americans in Florida and Georgia as well as North Dakota, are no longer just fighting the same industry:
they’re fighting the same companies.
The pipeline companies behind DAPL are Continue reading