Category Archives: Economy

What WWALS Does: watershed advocacy from outings and water trails to wastewater and pipelines

Water trails, wastewater, corporate agriculture, solar power, fracking, and pipelines: WWALS works with many issues in many ways, as part of our advocacy for conservation and stewardship through education, awareness, environmental monitoring and activities such as our monthly paddle outings.

Here’s an introduction to WWALS for the many new members and even more people following WWALS on facebook and twitter.

WWALS Watershed Coalition, or WWALS for short, is an IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation about everything related to water in the watersheds Continue reading →

Road Closures in 2009 Flood, Lowndes County, GA

Back in 2009, Lowndes County spent hundreds of times more in infrastructure repairs than the $40,000 that Valdosta is asking as a match to build an online flood warning map, beyond just fixing sewer system spills to dealing with the rest of the flooding problem. At recent meetings, some County Commissioners seemed reluctant to authorize the request because the proposed map mostly covers subdivisions in Valdosta. But the entire county was affected by road closures in 2009, so maybe Commissioners could ask to expand the map to cover the whole county, which could also help find sources of the flooding problem. Sources and effects extend all the way to the edges of the county, as you can see in this a google map I built back then:

Roads closed in Lowndes County, Georgia, as of 9:38 a.m April 6th, according to the Valdosta Daily Times. This map shows locations and terrain. It’s a Google map, so it’s interactive: you can zoom and pan and change to satellite view, street map, street view, etc. Some of the locations are guesstimates from the cryptic descriptions in the VDT article. The one green blob is the one reopening mentioned in the article: “North Valdosta Road Withlacoochee River Bridge opened at 10 p.m. Sunday.”

That VDT article no longer seems to be online, but this one is. Jason Schaefer, VDT, 27 April 2013, What natural events cost Lowndes taxpayers, Continue reading →

We have a right to expect waterways and groundwater to be clean –Dennis J. Price

Another letter against Sabal Trail and for the rivers and the aquifer in the paper Suwannee Democrat, May 5th 2016.

In response to Jason Bashaw’s, Chairman of the Suwannee County Commission, article in the Suwannee Valley Times, I have this to say. Why is it that if people are concerned about the environment they live in, they are automatically placed into this environmental left category? Like many, many people in our surrounding counties, I hunt, fish, hike and paddle our local rivers. I use the environment as do we all.

So, for working and paying taxes all my life — as a Vietnam Veteran, as a person who chose to live in this rural part of Florida and raise his kid, as a person who is not now nor ever will be wealthy — I count our public lands, our woods and rivers as a reward for doing the right thing. I do not mind my tax dollars going towards public lands. Mr. Bashaw uses the environmental left in a derogatory manner as a means of denigrating them, and he is including me in it and I resent it. I resent it for my friend’s in WWALS and others who show concern for the pipeline route. I have not met an environmental lefty among them.

WWALS is, Continue reading →

Leadership is supporting the county’s own people against the Sabal Trail invader –WWALS in Suwannee Democrat

In the paper Suwannee Democrat, May 5th, 2016.

WWALS Watershed Coalition showed Suwannee County Commissioners sinkholes in the middle of the pipeline path that Sabal Trail didn’t mention to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). All of them, except Jason Bashaw, studied a report by a local geologist and showed leadership by voting to tell that “truth that exists in the middle” to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The quotation above is a reference to Continue reading →

Lowndes County Chairman says accepting easement was not endorsement of Sabal Trail pipeline

So Lowndes County should have no problem asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to come investigate what Sabal Trail didn’t tell FERC. And if the county is concerned about legal expenses, maybe it should pay attention to the lawsuits happening right now in California about a natural gas leak that went up into the air, closing schools, evacuating hundreds, and making many of them sick.

The VDT article today doesn’t mention writing a letter to the Corps was one of my requests to the county. It does quote the Chairman expresssing interest in details of eminent domain, in differences in regulation of oil and gas pipelines, and in environmental and safety issues of natural gas pipelines. Treating his statements as questions, I have provided some further information below on those points.

And he does say the county might have incurred legal expenses if it hadn’t accepted Sabal Trail’s money for the easement. He doesn’t mention how much money Lowndes County spent suing a local company on behalf of a trash collection company financed out of New York City, or how much money the county spent suing a local church about a minor tax matter. It seems when Lowndes County wants to do something, it doesn’t worry so much about legal expenses. And maybe the county should worry more about legal expenses if something does go wrong with that pipeline, especially considering what’s happening with the Porter Ranch leak in California.

Besides, writing a letter Continue reading →

Sabal Trail is surrounded in Live Oak

Update 2016-04-21: Longer report here.

See also Short-term jobs are not worth long-term Sabal Trail risk –Locals to Sabal Trail jobs-seekers at Contractor Fairs, which has a link to the PDF flyer we were passing out. Some of that PR was picked up by ValdostaToday; it begins:

LIVE OAK, Fla. — Local residents and half a dozen environmental organizations want applicants at Sabal Trail pipeline job fairs to know a job for a few weeks isn’t worth risking drinking water for all our families and children and grandchildren.
Opponents of the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline and supporters of solar power include the Suwannee-St Johns Sierra Club Group, St Johns Riverkeeper, WWALS Watershed Coalition, Our Santa Fe River, Earth Ethics, Gulf Restoration Network, and SpectraBusters.

As a group of students said in unison: No Fracking!

-jsq

PS: Hi, Andrea Grover. Good to see you as always, and looking forward to the end of this project.

Sabal Trail Contractor Fair, Moultrie, GA 2016-04-15

Not just for compressor station counties, also apparently also for where Sabal Trail has promised side taps, including Moultrie, Georgia, as seen today in the Tifton Gazette and the Valdosta Daily Times.

When: 11AM – 2PM Friday, April 15th 2016

Where: Southern Regional Technical College, Seminar Center, 361 Industrial Drive, Moultrie, GA 31788

This Moultrie job fair is scheduled one month after Colquitt County sent FERC exorbitant claims of benefits in property tax revenue, wildly high and out-of-context construction jobs claims, and discounted safety and environmental concerns, with no mention whatever of agriculture, nevermind Colquitt County’s letter to FERC two years before about agricultural concerns.

The Colquitt letter to FERC made no mention of lowered property values reducing tax revenue, cited no source, just “It is estimated that”. However, in the same paragraph: Continue reading →

Thanks for a historic victory against Sabal Trail –WWALS in VDT 2016-04-10

In today’s Sunday April 10th 2016 Valdosta Daily Times:

The Georgia House on March 22nd by an unprecedented 34 ayes to 128 nays rejected easements for Sabal Trail to drill our Withlacoochee and other Georgia Rivers. This was a historic victory by the Georgia Water Coalition, including Georgia Sierra Club, WWALS, Flint Riverkeeper, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, plus SpectraBusters, and thanks to all of you who called their state reps.

That same day, Continue reading →

Contractor Fair, Sabal Trail, Ocala and Live Oak

Update 10 April 2016: And Moultrie, GA April 15th.

Update 9 April 2016: And Albany, GA April 21st.

Sabal Trail plans to entice locals by offering jobs week after next in Ocala and Live Oak, ignoring river easements slapped down hard by the Georgia legislature, and both Hamilton and Suwannee Counties, Florida, inviting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to come see what Sabal Trail didn’t tell FERC,

Sabal Trail admitted two years ago in Gilchrist County that it had already retained the main contractors for pipeline installation. Should a few temporary leftover jobs for local people be enough to outweigh taking local property by eminent domain and gouging under our rivers and through the most sensitive area of the Floridan Aquifer, source of all our drinking water?

Those are private venues, but they have public roads outside.

Ocala

Continue reading →

WWALS invites Army Corps of Engineers to inspect and investigate Sabal Trail

Sent 5 April 20156. PDF.

You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!