Category Archives: Law

ARWT Resolution passed by Lanier County Commission 2018-01-08

Unanimously, after reviewing the ARWT Brochure and a few words by Suwannee Riverkeeper John S. Quarterman, the Lanier County Commission passed a Resolution to support the Alapaha River Water Trail (ARWT).

Alapaha River Water Trail Resolution, Board
Commissioners Paul Brockington (District 1), Susan Bowling (District 3), Harold Simpson (District 2), Dennis Fender (District 4), and Alex Lee (Chairman). Neil Ginty (County Administrator) in pink shirt.

I believe Commissioner Susan Bowling made the motion. Thanks to her and to Continue reading →

Motion to reject FERC DSEIS, to take Sabal Trail out of service, and to revoke its permit: WWALS to FERC 2017-12-29

reopen the whole basis of the FERC 2016 Order, Filing FERC, if it follows its own rules, should reject the DSEIS, stop Sabal Trail, and revoke its permit, says a motion filed today with FERC by Suwannee Riverkeeper.

Followup blog posts will feature major sections and arguments from these 20 pages with their 93 footnotes. The basic arguments are summarized on the first page:

WWALS argues that no SEIS can be complete without accounting for GHG from Liquid Natural Gas (“LNG”) exports, nor without comparing natural gas to solar power, according to precedents already set by FPL, FERC, and others, which also reopen the whole basis of the FERC 2016 Order.

FERC may not care, but the D.C. Circuit Court may, or candidates for office, or the voting public.

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

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

Filed with FERC today as Continue reading →

SELC against proposed suspension of Clean Water Rule 2017-12-13

Yesterday, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) submitted a sixteen-page letter against the EPA’s proposed suspension of the Clean Water Rule, on behalf fifty-six organizations including WWALS.10

Struggling to eliminate, Letter Much of that letter could as easily apply to today’s foregone vote to eliminate the FCC’s net neutrality rule. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s “‘unalterably closed’” views should have been enough for him to recuse himself. The three FCC Commissioners for the elimination of net neutrality made it clear they were not paying attention to the millions of public comments, despite requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act to do so. Chairman Pai with perhaps unintentional irony even argued that there was no need to hold public hearings since far more people commented online, which of course is only possible through an open Internet. Nevermind that the FCC appears to be ignoring those comments.

Similarly, the EPA does not seem to be paying attention to the “more than 680,000 public comments” on the Clean Water Rule repeal beyond taking only six days to come up with a two year delay in implementation of that rule.

The SELC letter to the EPA even cites two cases against the FCC when it says: Continue reading →

Impervious surface from development causes flooding

Could similar development in the Suwannee River watershed have something to do with the 700-year floods in 2009 and 2013?

Georgia State University, PR, December 6, 2017 Researchers Find Urban Development Dramatically Increases Stream Flow,

Fig. 1 watersheds

…Between 1992 and 2011, the amount of developed land in these watersheds also doubled, almost entirely at the expense of forest land.

In both watersheds, this urbanization led to Continue reading →

WWALS to FCC: Cancel vote on Order against net neutrality

If you like hearing about outings and advocacy so you can participagte, please contact the FCC today to oppose their vote tomorrow that would greatly damage the open Internet we all use to communicate and organize.

Please call or email the three Commissioners who favor this unfortunate Order:

  • Main #: 1-888-225-5322
  • Chairman Pai: Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov
  • Commmissioner Rielly: Mike.O’Rielly@fcc.gov
  • Commissioner Carr: Brendan.Carr@fcc.gov

You can also file comments, which are publicly visible, and thus may help get others to call or write the FCC.

To submit a written comment:

  1. https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/filings
  2. Either in the menu on the left (desktop) or the pulldown from the top (mobile), select Express.
  3. File a comment in WC Docket 17-108.
  4. Be sure to say you are against the proposed Order and for net neutrality.

Below is the letter I filed with the FCC today, confirmation number 20171213002539051; or see PDF.

Preserve an open Internet, Letter

Continue reading →

Cattle, sinkholes, and digups vs. Sabal Trail: Janet Barrow 2017-11-20

Sabal Trail apparently doesn’t know cattle.

cattle go rogue over Sabal Trail pipeline markers

The pipeline company claimed they know restoration, but that’s not what the ground looks like now, with sparse vegetation and erosion. They say they love wildlife, but they drove off a heron and who knows what else. They’re driving down property values. What are those bubbles? Which milepoint is which, anyway? Janet Barrow lives in Marion County, but she also reports on Citrus County. For 54 pages, with a summation.

For the rest of FERC Accession Number 20171120-5026, “Comment of Janet L Barrow under CP15-17, et. al.; A Citizen’s Supplemental Information Regarding Sabal Trail’s October, 2017 Monthly Report” on the WWALS website, follow this link.

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

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

EPA perfunctory Lack of Objections to FERC Sabal Trail DSEIS 2017-11-20

EPA doesn’t even remember when it sent its own greenhouse gas (GHG) comments to FERC, forgets that it already told FERC nevermind, and now says, despite copious evidence filed by Senators, professors, Riverkeepers, and environmental organizations from multiple states as far away as Colorado, that FERC’s incorrect and inadequate Draft Supplementary Environmental Impact Statemen (FSEIS) rates “Lack of Objections or “LO””.

EPA to FERC, Re: SMPP This latest EPA letter is dated November 20, 2017, but FERC didn’t inform intervenors about it until today, two weeks later. The EPA letter claims:

The EPA commented on the FEIS on January 25, 2016. In those comments the EPA provided several recommendations including that the FERC consider a detailed evaluation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in future analyses.

Yet FERC’s Docket CP15-17 shows no comment by EPA in January 2016. It does show this same G. Alan Farmer, Director, Resource Conservation and Restoration Division, EPA, wrote a letter to FERC filed 1 December 2015 as Accession Number 20171201-0034 (see also WWALS blog post), in which he said nothing I can see about greenhouse gases, but he did basically say “nevermind” to EPA’s extensive letter of October 26, 2015, filed as Accession Number 0151102-0219 (clean text on the WWALS website), which October letter did include: Continue reading →

WWALS to FWC BAC against paid permits for paddle boats 2017-11-27

Sent today. See also PDF, and previous posts about what you can do. -jsq

To: Nick Wiley, Executive Director
Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
620 South Meridian Street
Tallahassee, FL  32399-1600
850-488-2975
nick.wiley@MyFWC.com
Emily Herschman Davis:   850-617-9577
emily.herschman@MyFWC.com

Colonel Curtis Brown, Chairman
Boating Advisory Committee (BAC)
Curtis.Brown@MyFWC.com

Captain William Griswold, Chairman
Non-Motorized Boat Working Group (NMBWG)
WSGriz@aol.com

Re: Paid permits for non-motorized boats

Dear E.D. Wiley, Chairman Brown, and Chairman Griswold,

As the head of an organization that holds many paddle outings in Florida, I thank you for holding a public meeting tomorrow of the Boating Advisory Council that could finally put to rest the ill-advised idea of charging permit fees for paddle boats or boards. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend, so I am sending this letter.

population density map of Florida
Stean Rayer, Ying Wang, Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR), University of Florida, 30 October 2014, Measuring Population Density for Counties in Florida

Thank you, FWC Executive Director Wiley, for saying back in February Continue reading →

NMBWG and BAC going for paydirt of paid paddle permits

Remember, you can object to paid paddle boat permits before the Tuesday morning meeting of the Florida Boating Advisory Council (BAC). More below on what you can do, plus still more apparent term limit overruns, paddle boaters represented by a yacht business owner, the last NMBWG meeting, the paydirt of paddlers pay (for marinas), and what that would cost.

After a decade of BAC attempts to charge people for paddling (see yesterday’s installment), in 2015 the BAC decided it needed a sub-group:

“The Non-Motorized Boat Working Group (NMBWG) was created by the Boating Advisory Council at its May 18, 2015 meeting. The purpose of the working group is to address four core areas of non-motorized boating: access, education, safety, and user pay/user benefit.”

It doesn’t take much reading of the NMBWG minutes to infer that the whole goal of this group was not access, education, safety, nor (non-motorized boater) user benefit, but “user pay”.

Yacht Octopus by Peter Sleeckx, 2 December 2006
Yacht Octopus by Peter Sleeckx, 2 December 2006, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Term limits apparently don’t apply

Continue reading →

More than a decade of attempts to charge permits for paddle boats

Remember, you can object to paid paddle boat permits before the Tuesday morning meeting of the Boating Advisory Council.

For more than a decade, at least half its lifetime, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), Boating Advisory Council (BAC) has been trying to find a way to charge permit fees for registration of non-motorized boats. Here’s the story so far, which will make clear there’s no reason to believe such efforts will stop. Also including not one, but two BAC members mysteriously serving longer than state-mandated term limits would seem to allow. Is it really about the children? Or is it about marinas, that paddle boaters don’t use? With a special appearance by the Florida state rep. who sponsored the law that expedited WWALS vs. Sabal Trail & FDEP.

BAC logo

The Boating Advisory Council (BAC) was created Continue reading →