A Spectra is haunting Atlanta!
Apparently Spectra is feeling the heat about its proposed Sabal Trail
fracked methane pipeline and has pushed the revolving door to get some lobbyists in Atlanta. We tried to warn you that you are surrounded, Atlanta!
So much for FERC being the only deciding body. Don’t forget to sign the Petition to GA Gov. Deal to oppose Sabal Trail pipeline.
Greg Bluestein, AJC Insider, 7 July 2015, Trio of bipartisan Atlanta lobbyists opening up new shop, Continue reading
Julie Bowland posted on facebook (reposted here with permission):
Continue reading
Paddled for a couple hours this morning around and downstream from the confluence of the Little and Withlacoochee Rivers…just a couple miles from my house. Forgot to bring a canvas so just played with some mixed media drawing. Fun!
Continue reading
Investment firms owned by Bill Gates have bought thousands of
acress of agricultural land in counties in or near WWALS watersheds
in south Georgia and north Florida, all above the Floridan Aquifer,
near the Alapaha, Alapahoochee, Withlacoochee, and Suwannee Rivers,
as part of a nationwide buying spree of a quarter million acres.
Here’s a summary of what we’ve found thus far. Any more recent posts should be found through this search.
These purchases of hundreds and thousands of contiguous acres are all after Bill Gates announced in 2012 he was going to “fix” agriculture in conjunction with Monsanto and Syngenta.
And it’s not just Bill Gates. Continue reading
Justice Scalia never said the EPA emissions rule was struck down,
rather the Supreme Court sent it back to a lower court to
get a cost analysis from EPA.
Meanwhile, many of the emissions controls are already in place
on coal plants (including Plant Scherer),
other coal plants have closed or are closing,
and investors are abandoning coal in droves.
So what Scalia wants may or may not be impossible for EPA
to deliver, but EPA actually already has helped sink dirty coal.
Meanwhile, Georgia Power finally is helping the sun rise on Georgia.
So the prognosis is good for less mercury in the Alapaha River.
Emily Atkin, ThinkProgress Climate, 29 June 2015, What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About The Supreme Court’s Mercury Pollution Ruling, Continue reading
The EPA should account for all costs before making a ruling on mercury
or other coal plant emissions, according to a 5:4 majority of the Supreme Court.
The dissenting minority points out not only are costs usually figured
in during the follow-on process for specific limits, but that actual costs
can’t even be computed without knowing those limits.
So Coal Plant Scherer mercury in the Alapaha River
can’t be limited without figuring all the costs first, says the SCOTUS majority,
although EPA and the Court minority point to numerous well-known medical
problems caused by mercury.
Are profits for a few big utilities and coal companies more important
than clean water and public health,
especially now that there are cleaner, safer, faster-to-build, and
less expensive renewable energy sources available in solar and wind power?
According to today’s SCOTUS ruling, Continue reading
Alapaha River Water Trail Committee Chair Chris Graham
went with a few friends down the middle section of this Blueway:
Which is roughly 12 river miles. It was amazing epic river trip. Continue reading
Pope Francis makes a religious, ethical, humane, scientific, and practical case for stewardship of this earth and its waters, with moral and ethical bases for “the choices which determine our behaviour”. His case does not require any reader to be Catholic or Christian, as the Pope integrates his faith with the science of an integral ecology. You don’t have to agree with everything he wrote (I don’t) to agree with the gist of it, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:
“all life is interrelated”
Pope Francis’ letter to the world is long but well worth reading in full, and these excerpts I hope will encourage everyone to do that.
ENCYCLICAL LETTER LAUDATO SI’ OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME, 18 June 2015, Vatican City. Continue reading
Update 2015-06-22: SOS will remain focused on the Lower Suwannee.
Can’t tell the players without a card, and there’s a new player at Monday’s
Suwannee-Satilla Regional Water Planning Council 2015-06-15,
in between south of Satilla Riverkeeper and WWALS Watershed Coalition: Save Our Suwannee.
Also, WWALS is now WWALS Watershed Coalition, a WATERKEEPER® Affiliate, conserving the Alapaha and Withlacoochee River basins, including the watersheds of all their tributaries.
In Florida, Continue reading
