Category Archives: Economy

College mutual fund VA529 owns Sabal Trail stranded assets

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.

Sabal Trail through Suwannee River State Park

There’s a handy VA529 contact form or you can call or write: Continue reading

Sabal Trail begins at Hillabee Power Plant

Where Sabal Trail connects to Transco: the head of the black snake, Sabal Trail, Hillabee Power Plant, Exelon Corp., Brick Plant Rd., 33.0045260, -85.9051100 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).

What you can do

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Bill Gates, Suwannee Farms, Lakeland Sands, examples from the air 2016-06-21

Here are a few pictures of some Bill Gates properties from the MIDS Southwings flyover of June 21st, 2016, including Lakeland Sands 208th St. to Suwannee Farms 30.0667640, -82.9828050 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!

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Same owners, DAPL and Sabal Trail

Update 2016-09-23: Not quite: Energy Transfer backed out of buying Williams Co..

DAPL and Sabal Trail: now part of the same pipeline companies.

DAPL owners Energy Transfer, Enbridge, own Williams and Spectra of Sabal Trail 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

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. McIntyre Spring snorkel 30.6416626, -83.3660889

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. Map of roads closed 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.

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.

A company from Houston, Texas wants to fill our earth, water, and air with violence. 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.