How you can help stop Sabal Trail and reform FERC to prevent pipeline boondoggles | WWALS Watershed Coalition (WWALS) is Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

Update 2017-06-15: Sabal Trail’s gas is on, but there are many things you can do.

What you can do to stop the Sabal “Sinkhole” Trail fracked methane boondoggle:

Protest, Monitor, and Report

Go to events.
Report potential violations.

Demand a re-do of the permits

The same day Sabal Trail turned on the gas, Lynda V. Mapes, Seattle Times, 14 June 2016, Federal judge rejects Dakota Access Pipeline permits, calls for do-over.

The flow of oil [through DAPL] began June 1.
But on Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg for the District of Columbia said in a 91-page decision that the Corps did not adequately consider the impacts of an oil spill on the tribe’s fishing rights, hunting rights, or issues of environmental justice when it issued the permits needed to complete the project. The Corps must now reconsider those aspects under the judge’s demand that the agency substantiate its decision to issue the permits.

We should demand a do-over for the Corps’ permit for Sabal Trail, especially given the Corps refused requests from four Florida counties (Hamilton, Madison, Suwannee, and Marion) to come inspect the situation and to do a Supplemenatal Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).
Second this invitation from WWALS: WWALS invites Army Corps of Engineers to inspect and investigate Sabal Trail.
And this more specific invitation from Georgia Congressman Sanford Bishop (GA-02): Sanford Bishop GA-02 requests Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement for Sabal Trail from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 2016-05-27
Demand Austin Scott (GA-08) and Ted Yoho (FL-03) and other members of Congress require the Corps to do a SEIS.

Divest

Take your money out of banks that back Sabal Trail, and ask others to do the same.
Ask investors in Spectra Energy such as Virginia 529, the largest U.S. college savings fund, and also the largest mutual fund investor in Spectra Energy, to divest from those stranded assets. Here’s VA529’s response to a request from WWALS.

Block FERC Nominees unless they vow to turn the agency to the sun

Ask your Senators not to confirm any FERC Commission nominations, thus shutting down any new interstate natural gas pipeline approvals.
Here’s a telephone script by Waterkeeper Alliance.
Demand new appointees to the vacant 3 out of 5 FERC Commissioner seats are better than recently-resigned Norman Bay, who bragged about pipeline and LNG export approvals.

FERC Reform is a winning political issue

Remind your state legislators that the Georgia House in March 2016 voted 128 to 34 to deny river-drilling easements for Sabal Trail. It turns out the legislature doesn’t legally have to confirm decisions of the Georgia Land Commission, so Sabal Trail sued in county Superior Courts and got the easements anyway, but the point was made: water and property rights are not partisan issues; they are winning issues.
Ask the Georgia legislature to pass a resolution demanding Congress reform the rogue agency FERC, as requested in the Georgia Water Coalition Dirty Dozen 2016.
Here is a petition for that: Protect Private Property Rights and Water from Gas Pipelines.
The resolution was introduced in the Georgia House in 2016, but did not get out of committee. Ask your Georgia House member to reintroduce it in 2017 and to pass it. GA HR 289: Recommend Congress remove eminent domain from Federal National Gas Act.
Ask your Florida (or Alabama or other) state legislators to demand Congress reform the rogue agency FERC.
Contact Congress directly and demand FERC reform: WWALS and 182 Organizations from 35 States Call for Congressional Review of FERC 2016-09-21
Lobby Congress to pass H. R. 2649: Safer Pipelines Act of 2017, which would force FERC to have an evidentiary hearing before an administrative law judge on any challenge to the need for a pipeline; to conduct a cumulative review of the purpose and need for pipelines vs. renewable energy throughout the entire affected region; to do a serious review of cumulative environmental effects of related pipelines; and:

(5) The Commission shall require all approved and constructed natural gas pipeline projects to undertake a five-year monitoring program to confirm that the environmental impacts identified in any environmental impact statement or analysis conducted with respect to the project have been mitigated.
Lobby Congress to pass H.R. 2656: Public Engagement at FERC Act, to “amend the Federal Power Act to establish an Office of Public Participation and Consumer Advocacy.” Rep. Schakowsky, Janice D. [D-IL-9] introduced a similar bill in 2015, which did not pass, and there was a previous attempt through a different channel to establish such a FERC Office back in 2003. The time has come for this mild Office, and for more radical FERC reform.
The chances of any FERC reform legislation passing in the current Congress may be slim, but the issue should be raised in every Congressional (and other) campaign so we can get a Congress that will rein in the rogue agency FERC.