David B. Pharr sang this Traditional Folk song, “Care For the Waters,” at the First Annual Suwannee Riverkeeper Songwriting Contest, Saturday, June 23, 2018, at the Salty Snapper, Valdosta, GA.
As he sang about the Suwannee and the other rivers: “And you may cross my bridges, But you’ll never get over me.”
Here’s the video: Continue reading
Bring a rope in case we need to drag the boats across deadfalls, and expect low-hanging branches, as we experience the wilderness from Rowetown Church Landing to Willacoochee Landing, on the Alapaha River Water Trail, continuing Alapaha Quest.
When: 8 AM, Saturday, August 11, 2018
Put In: Rowetown Church Landing, 1291 Rowetown Church Road, Alapaha, GA 31622, River bank on private road back of cemetery, we have permission.
Take Out: Willacoochee Landing, GA 135, Atkinson County side, 2.8 miles south of Willacoochee, GA, Atkinson County.
Bring: the usual personal flotation device, boat paddles, food, drinking water, warm clothes, and first aid kit, and don’t forget the rope. Also trash pickers and trash bags: every WWALS outing is also a cleanup.
Movie: Under branches (1.0M), in
Alapaha deadfalls, by John S. Quarterman, for WWALS.net, 17 January 2015.
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!
Event: Continue reading
FERC filed its rubberstamp approval before filing Sabal Trail’s request for more time to finish its Suwannee County connection to FGT’s Jacksonville Expansion Project, which leads to Eagle LNG in Jacksonville, which can export liquid natural gas through Crowley Maritime. There’s no rubberstamp like the FERC rubberstamp.
FERC did delete the last “unpredictable” clause in this Sabal Trail sentence:
This coordination must occur while taking into account existing scheduled gas flows on each party’s respective system during the high demand of the summer cooling season, which makes the certainty by when this can occur unpredictable.
Since high seasonal demand has been touted as an excuse for this pipeline boondoggle, maybe FERC didn’t want to think about summer cooling season, “which makes the certainty by when this can occur unpredictable.”
We already saw last winter Sabal Trail couldn’t keep the gas flowing when it was so cold snow fell on Florida. Now Sabal Trail can’t finish construction because of summer heat.
You know what works find in the summer and winter sun? solar farms such as the one FPL is building right now 25 miles due north or that Duke already built about 55 miles northwest, both in Suwannee County, both by partners in Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC. Neither of those needed a FERC rubberstamp, because they didn’t need eminent domain. Continue reading
Let me echo a local resident: “I’m just saying where … is Echo River?” FPL’s new solar farm in Suwannee County just north of I-10 east of Live Oak actually straddles Rocky Creek, which runs north across I-10, through this FPL solar farm, and on into the Suwannee River just downstream of I-75.
Jamie Wachter, Suwannee Democrat, and Valdosta Daily Times, 18 May 2018, FPL plans for solar farm off I-10,
LIVE OAK, Fla. — An 800-acre property that once grew timber alongside Interstate 10 in northeastern Suwannee County may soon sprout solar panels.
This 2016 aerial map from the Suwannee County Property Appraiser does show Continue reading
Seven of the fourteen Florida Waterkeepers visited the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) to express our serious concern and a sense of urgency to protect and restore Florida’s rivers, coast, bays, estuaries, lakes, springs, and aquifer, especially about resiliency after hurricanes, harmful algal blooms, BMAPs, and phosphate mines. I congratulated Noah Valenstein on his meteoric rise: only two and a half years ago he was just starting as head of the Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD), and now he’s the head of FDEP.
L-R: Andy Hayslip (Tampa Bay Waterkeeper),
Georgia Ackerman (Apalachicola Riverkeeper),
Marty Baum (Indian Riverkeeper),
Jen Lomberk (Matanzas Riverkeeper),
Drew Bartlett (Deputy Secretary for Ecosystem Restoration, FDEP),
Whitney Gray (Administrator, Florida Resilient Coastlines, FDEP),
Rick Frey (St. Marys Riverkeeper),
Lisa Rinaman (St. Johns Riverkeeper),
Noah Valenstein (Secretary, FDEP),
Shannon Blankinship (Advocacy Director, St. Johns Riverkeeper),
John S. Quarterman (hat, Suwannee Riverkeeper),
Tom Frick (back, Director, Division of Environmental Restoration, FDEP); Photo: John S. Quarterman for WWALS
Georgia Power, local electric cooperatives, Duke Energy, FPL: all are spending on solar power. However, Georgia and Florida remain behind New Jersey and Massachusetts in deployed solar megawatts. It’s an election year, and this should be an issue.
FPL is making a big show of solar power in Florida, but are it and sibling utilities actually moving ahead very fast? Jay Koziarz, miami.curbed.com, 30 July 2018, City vote clears path for retractable ‘solar halo’ atop Bayfront Amphitheater: The urban installation will be one of the largest of its kind in the country
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Bayfront Park Management Trust
Miami city commissioners have backed a move to construct a Continue reading
The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Mosaic Co., market cap $11.5 billion, just lost to DeSoto County, Florida, annual budget $84.3 million. Maybe this will help Bradford County to do the right thing about phosphate mines.
Craig Pittman, Tampa Bay Times, 26 July 2018, Mosaic spent 20 years planning new phosphate mine. DeSoto County has rejected it,
Mosaic Co., the world’s largest phosphate company, has spent two decades lining up a new mine in DeSoto County as part of a broader effort to move its operations south.
Photo: Jim Tatum on Southwings flight for WWALS, 2016-10-22: W across PCS Phosphate Mine, 30.4429360, -82.7851800But DeSoto County commissioners last week slammed the door in the company’s face, voting 4-1 against rezoning 18,000 acres from agricultural to mining.
A major concern: Continue reading
Unlike FDEP’s BMAP plans, “When a new building code is final in Florida, [Rusty] Payton [CEO, Florida Home Builders Association] said, “there’s always six months between the final rule and the date the rule takes effect.” Because of his organization’s petition for more time to file a protest, none of Florida’s new Basin Management Action Plans (BMAPs) have gone into effect yet, which gives spring and river advocates (and FDEP) more time to try to fix them.
Dinah Voyles Pulver, Daily Commercial, 30 July 2018, Groups protest new Florida springs action plans,
A sweeping effort to adopt action plans to improve water quality in 13 springs systems across the state is on hold after a dozen groups and individuals asked to intervene with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, including one of the department’s own springs experts.
Thomas Greenhalgh, a hydrogeologist with the department’s Florida Geological Survey, is one of two people who asked for an administrative hearing on one of the 13 “basin management action plans” signed by Noah Valenstein in late June.
Thomas Greenhalgh suiting up before releasing dye into the Dead River of the Alapaha River to go into the Dead River Sink, 2016-06-22, Picture by John S. Quarterman for WWALS.“There are many claims and statements in the BMAP that I believe are inaccurate and unsubstantiated,” wrote Greenhalgh in seeking a state hearing on the plan for the Suwannee River, where he owns property.
He’s not alone.
In addition Continue reading
Pipelines and rivers run through and by farms, and many farmers have solar panels, so it’s interesting to see what Farm Bureau has for energy policies.
Farm Bureau is for fixing FERC by revising the laws that let the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reimburse Congress from fees and charges on the companies it supposedly regulates. Many of Farm Bureau’s pipeline policies are good and sound like it listened to Randy Dowdy. It gets hardcore about eminent domain. There are even a couple of items that, if law, would have been very useful in the recent and upcoming Sabal Trail eminent domain jury trials.
It has some very good solar energy policies, and it is for renewable energy, including incentives; even an electric car policy.
Not all is good. Farm Bureau is for “clean coal”, fracking, nuclear power, and oil and gas exploration everywhere. It never mentions wind power without mixing it with dirtier energy sources.
Some of the policies are weirdly categorized: Continue reading
Venus gleamed through the fires of sunset as the full moon and Mars hid behind clouds.
The sound of frogs brought out swoops of bats, as a dozen or two paddlers braved the placid flat waters of Banks Lake Friday evening in the least strenuous yet one of the most enjoyable of all WWALS outings. As one new participant remarked, it’s one thing to see it from the road, but out on the water the size, the lucidity, and the sunset are startling while calming.
Bret Wagenhorst, who brought a crew of new people from Tifton and paddled out with them first, reports: “Got to see: ospreys and nest, eastern kingbirds, egrets, ibises, bats, gators and hear Continue reading