Emmett Carlisle, from Gainesville, Florida, just outside the Suwannee River Basin, sang “Suwannee Harmony,” and won a prize for Best Florida Folk, at the First Annual Suwannee Riverkeeper Songwriting Contest, Saturday, June 23, 2018, at the Salty Snapper, Valdosta, GA.
Emmett Carlisle
(Bret Wagenhorst)
As he sang, “just like the river, together we flow.”
Here’s the video: Continue reading
As we’ve seen so often in the Sabal Trail docket, Spectra seems to be acting in place of FERC, responding yesterday to thousands of comments on FERC’s certificate rulemaking.
Spectra’s bottom line: a pipeline company’s bottom line matters more than the Fifth Amendment due process, or water, air, or safety. See page 25:
Contrary to some commenters’ arguments, the Commission’s public interest determinations are not rendered insufficient under the Fifth Amendment public use requirement because the Commission considers precedent agreements among applicants and affiliates to be evidence of public benefits.
Spectra repeatedly argues that FERC does not have authority to consider hardly anything other than whether the pipeline company has customers, yet FERC has authority to give eminent domain to private corporations and to let them gouge through our lands and under our rivers without local agreement or payment first.
In this election year, you can ask every candidate for statehouse or Congress whether they support Continue reading
Erica and I were so busy this is the only picture we took at The Happening at VSU yesterday afternoon.
Many students came by, and a surprising number of them took intern flyers. We shall see how many of them apply.
We have a sheet full of Continue reading
Kenneth Lowe, Assistant Plant Superintendent of the Mud Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, explained that plant’s that recent spill to the organizational meeting of the WWALS Water Quality Testing Committee.
Tom Potter, Kenneth Lowe, Ronnie Thomas, Erica McLelland, Shirley Kokidko, student
He apologized profusely several times for the spill. Continue reading
Here’s an update on the draft brochures for both WWALS Water Trails, after the recent meeting of the WWALS Water Trails Committee. We could still use more pictures.
Please email pictures to wwalswatershed@gmail.com. Please say who took each picture, when, where, and of what. High resolution, please.
If you want to join the WWALS Trails Committee to help continue organizing this work, actually editing the documents shown below, you must be a WWALS member and apply.
The Trails Committee is working on brochures for Continue reading
Update 2018-10-03: Due to low water in the Alapaha River, this outing is cancelled. Also, this is the same weekend as the Hahira Honeybee Festival, which takes a lot of WWALS resources; please come join us there.
Plus we’re doing a Cleanup at Troupville Boat Ramp on the Little River, Saturday, October 13, and the WWALS Boomerang on the Withlacoochee River from Langdale Park down to Sugar Creek and back, Saturday, November 3, and a paddle in the Okefenokee Swamp Saturday, December 8, 2018. Plus numerous festivals.
Next year the BIG Little River Paddle Race will be Saturday, April 27, 2019 at Reed Bingham State Park, and Paddle Georgia is starting at Troupville Boat Ramp for five days down the Withlaoochee and Suwannee Rivers in June 2019.
For more WWALS outings and events as they are posted, see the WWALS calendar or the WWALS outings and events web page. WWALS members also get an upcoming list in the Tannin Times newsletter.
-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®
You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!
Experience the wilderness of the Alapaha River Water Trail as we continue the Alapaha Quest. Location for this outing will be determined dependent on water levels.
When: 8 AM, Saturday, October 6, 2018
Put In: To be announced (TBA).
Take Out: TBA
Bring: the usual personal flotation device, boat paddles, food, drinking water, warm clothes, and first aid kit. Also trash pickers and trash bags: every WWALS outing is also a cleanup.
Free: This outing is free to WWALS members, and $10 (ten dollars) for non-members. We recommend you support the work of WWALS by becoming a WWALS member today!
Birds were singing,
2017-02-11.
Valdosta sewage discussed yesterday morning in Madison, and in the evening on TV and in the WWALS Water Quality Testing Committee meeting in Valdosta, and again this evening at the Madison BOCC. Emma Wheeler, WCTV Eyewitness News, 21 August 2018, Sewage spills prompt concern over Withlacoochee River safety,
MADISON, Fla. (WCTV) — A North Florida community is fighting for cleaner water.
Community members in Madison are pushing for safer waterways. It stems from concerns over sewage spills at Valdosta’s Withlacoochee Treatment Plant. The most recent of the spills happened in June.
Many of those concerned said their goal is to have no sewage spill into the river.
“These are public resources, they belong to us,” said Thomas Potter with the WWALS Watershed Coalition. “It’s our duty and our responsibility to make sure that they remain clean.”…
Emma Wheeler shot some footage Continue reading
Florida Bulldog reports on LNG exports right now from Fortress Energy’s Hialeah plant through Port Everglades via Florida East Coast Railway (FECR) through densely populated neighborhoods. The larger story includes FECR can export via Crowley Maritime from Jacksonville, and Pivotal LNG is already exporting LNG from Alabama and Georgia through JAX, arriving via truck down I-75 and I-10. Plus offshoot pipelines from Sabal Trail already go to both Jacksonville and Riviera Beach. Why should we let these corporations cash in on fracked methane now that solar power is already here?
An LNG export ship fueled by LNG.
Image:
Crowley Maritime;
“An artist’s rendering of one of Crowley’s LNGfueled, combination
container and roll-on/roll-off (ConRo) ships—El Coqui slated
for delivery in 2017.”
Ann Henson Feltgen, Florida Bulldog.org, 22 August 2018, Despite ‘disaster risk,’ trains haul hazardous gas cargo in South Florida,
About the same time Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) executives were convincing Florida’s east coast cities and counties to back its idea of privately owned passenger trains traversing downtowns and densely populated neighborhoods, it quietly sought and won permission to haul extremely flammable liquified natural gas along the same tracks.
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is a hazardous material Continue reading
Come join WWALS and 10,000 of our closest friends at VSU this Thursday:
When: 1PM to 4PM, Thursday, August 24, 2017
Where: Front lawn, VSU, 1500 N Patterson St., Valdosta, Georgia 31698
Event: facebook
Gretchen talking to students, picture by John S. Quarterman for WWALS, 2018-08-23.
Gretchen will not be back in time this year, so we really need volunteers. Come on down! It’s fun!
Jessica Pope, Newsroom, VSU, 15 August 2018, The Happening Returns to the VSU Front Lawn Aug. 23, Continue reading
Noelani Mathews of WCTV stopped off at the origin of the AGL pipeline that goes to Homerville, on her way to the site of the Friday explosion. Her story should be on the air at 5PM and 6PM tonight.
WARNING
HIGH PRESSURE
NATURAL GAS
Atlanta Gas Light,
An AGL Resources Company
She asked me pipeline context questions, which I answered as best I could, given that the origin is on my property in Lowndes County, Georgia.
She remembered reporting from that same location back in 2016. Continue reading