Update 2017-08-31: More maps and other information in the Phosphate Mining page.
Here’s a much better map:
Proposed Mining Areas, Application CPA 17-02, 2017-09-18
PDF of this map
I was confused by the mining areas map in the NCFRPC materials for the recent Union County Comprehensive Plan workshop Monday 21 August 2017. That map in the previous post appears to show almost all of Union County as mining areas. So I asked NCFRPC E.D. Ed Koons. He clarified: Continue reading
Update 2017-08-31: More maps and other information in the Phosphate Mining page.
Update 2017-08-30: Follow this link for a proposed new and much better mining areas map.
Here are copies of the original searchable and high resolution PDFs of the three main items presented by NCFRPC (a slide presentation, the evaluation amendments, and a draft mining text amendment) at the Union County Comprehensive Plan workshop Monday 21 August 2017.
Illustration A-X: Mining Areas on page A-25 of the
Evaluation Amendments.
PDF of this page.
Thanks to Scott R. Koons, Executive Director, North Centra Florida Regional Planning Council, for sending these documents in response to a public records request from Suwannee Riverkeeper.
The documents are (with links to the PDFs): Continue reading
“Once the court officially returns the matter to FERC, the pipeline should cease operations while FERC undertakes the new analysis,” wrote Elly Benson, lead attorney for the case Sierra Club just won against Sabal Trail.
She summed up: ”Instead of sacrificing our communities and environment to build unnecessary pipelines that “set up surefire profits” for pipeline companies at the expense of captive ratepayers, the focus should be on transitioning to clean renewable energy and energy efficiency—especially in the Sunshine State. Forcing federal agencies to grapple with the true climate impacts of dirty fossil fuel projects is a big step in the right direction.”
She leads off this fourth in a WWALS news roundup series (1, 2, 3) about that case, followed by Gordon Rogers, Flint Riverkeeper, another party to the case.
WWALS is not a party to that case and does not speak for the parties, so I can be a cheerleader for them. Shut it down! Let the sun rise!
How many pipelines do we want? None!
When do we want them? Never!
—WWALS at the Sabal Trail Suwannee River crossing, 15 August 2015.
Update 2017-08-29: Fourth news roundup: From pipelines to renewable energy and efficiency –Sierra Club 2017-08-29
“This is wind in our sails and could be the end of Sabal Trail,” Quarterman said, on the front page of the newspaper of record in the largest city in the Suwannee Basin, the Valdosta Daily Times.
We got sails no one can see.
Suwannee Riverkeeper Vessel on the Suwannee River protesting Sabal Trail 2017-01-14
As Frank Jackalone says (see below), FERC has been getting away with murder. And now maybe they can’t.
Thomas Lynn, Valdosta Daily Times, 23 August 2017, Court decision to impact Sabal Trail pipeline, Continue reading
Update 2017-08-29: Fourth news roundup: From pipelines to renewable energy and efficiency –Sierra Club 2017-08-29
Update 2017-08-24: Third news roundup: This is wind in our sails and could be the end of Sabal Trail —Suwannee Riverkeeper in VDT 2017-08-24
OilPrice.com calls it “a critical decision yesterday, that could jeopardize the future for pipeline projects across the country”; pipeline companies could be “spooked” and “…the court ruling raises the unsettling possibility that the project may be forced to shut down — after billions were spent putting it in into service.” Other stories say this ‘huge’ win could also affect the Atlantic Sunrise, Penneast, Atlantic Coast, and Rover Pipelines, among others.
(L to R) Lea Fox, 4, Finn Ryder Purdy, 4, and Mason Dana, 7, of Lake
Worth, sit with gas pipeline protesters outside of Florida Power and
Light headquarters on Universe Boulevard in Juno Beach on October
14, 2016. The Sabal Trail Pipeline began supplying FPL’s plants in
June. Groups opposed the pipeline that will start in Alabama and
bring fracked gas through several counties in Florida’s springs and
wetlands. (Richard Graulich / The Palm Beach Post)
Sad for FPL, Duke, Spectra, and all the other pipeline-building purveyors of fracked methane, maybe, but glad for all the landowners whose land was taken, local citizens who don’t want a 500+-mile IED next to their homes, schools, and waterways, and all people who want clean sun and wind energy, not more polluting fossil fuels.
It’s good the industry press agrees with what I told the VDT: “This is wind in our sails and could be the end of Sabal Trail.”
Here’s a news roundup, in addition to Continue reading
Congratulations Sierra Club, Flint Riverkeeper, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, and witnesses, who just won their case against FERC about Sabal Trail! Florida landowner Robin Koon is called out by name in the court’s decision to vacate FERC’s order that approved Sabal Trail. Thanks to him and everyone else who for years have demanded to hold regulatory agencies accountable.
Still from WWALS video of
Robin Koon speaking in Tallahassee, 23 January 2017
The actual decision is:
The petition for review in No. 16-1329 is granted. The orders under review are vacated and remanded to FERC for the preparation of an environmental impact statement that is consistent with this opinion. The petition for review in No. 16-1387 is denied.
So ordered.
I am not an attorney, but if I’m reading that right, the court just vacated FERC’s February 2016 Order that approved the Sabal Trail pipeline. Continue reading
Sent in PDF via email today.
August 2, 2017
To:
Georgia Public Service Commission
244 Washington Street, SW
Atlanta, GA 30334-9052
Re: Electric cars and solar power are here now; South Carolina cancels its nuclear project
Dear Public Service Commissioners and Staff,
Since my letter of July 23, 2017, asking you to stop cost overruns for Plant Vogtle and to require Georgia Power again to buy more solar power,1 there have been major developments that further indicate the desirability of these actions.
Tesla is now shipping its Model 3, which many consider the Model T of the electric car industry, affordable not just to executives, but to the masses. New York City changed in thirteen years from all but one horse-drawn carriages to all but one automobiles in its Easter Parade: 1900 to 1913,2 and not much longer for the rest of the country, after the Ford Model T shipped in 1908.
We’re well past 1900 in the electric vehicle revolution, and that is a rapidly growing market for solar panels on business and house roofs.
In The Hill yesterday:3
South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. (SCE&G) and state-run Santee Cooper both said Monday they would suspend their plan to build two nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer power plant northwest of Columbia.
The companies cited Continue reading
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Hahira, Georgia, July 27, 2017 — On Monday, WWALS Watershed Coalition asked the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) to take Southern Company (SO) CEO Tom Fanning up on his suggestion that the PSC could affect the SO board’s August self-imposed deadline about the two new nuclear units at Plant Vogtle: to go ahead despite the bankruptcy of Toshiba, or not. WWALS also asked the PSC, like it did four years ago, to require Georgia Power to buy more solar power.
Suwannee Riverkeeper John S. Quarterman wrote to Georgia PSC: “The Mississippi Public Service Commission in June refused Continue reading
This Fourth of July holiday, you can help promote continued independence of clean water
by opposing the EPA’s attempt to repeal the Clean Water Rule and then undermine
the Clean Water Act.
FLoridians in
the seven counties that have asked the EPA to do something
about Valdosta’s wastewater:
here’s your chance to make sure the EPA can still do anything.
Georgians who don’t want coal ash in landfills or industrial waste in our waters:
you can help save the Clean Water Act.
Everybody in the Suwannee River Basin:
the water we drink from the Floridan Aquifer interchanges with surface waters,
and we need the EPA to help protect all those waters.
Update 2017-07-28: See also VDT op-ed and letter to GA-PSC.
Five years ago I asked Southern Company (SO) CEO Tom Fanning what was his exit plan when the Big Bets on Kemper Coal in Mississippi and the two new Plant Vogtle nuclear units on the Savannah River go bad. This Wednesday SO stopped using coal at Kemper Coal after the MS PSC refused to authorize further cost overruns. Thursday GA PSC staff said Plant Vogtle is no longer economical. It is time for GA PSC to do for Plant Vogtle what MS PSC did for Kemper Coal.
As Suwannee Riverkeeper at this year’s meeting in May, I told Fanning we don’t want SO’s coal ash in any landfill on any river in the Suwannee River Basin; I asked him for solar panels at Moody Air Force Base to shut down a natural gas pipeline; and I questioned SO’s acquisition of Pivotal LNG with its deal to ship liquid natural gas in bomb trucks down I-75 and I-10 to Jacksonville, Florida.
I reminded our genial host of my question five years ago, with the handwriting already on the wall since the Atlanta Journal-Constitution had then just referred to Plant Vogtle as a financial quagmire. This time I asked Fanning to lead us all to sun and wind power.
In SO’s own video you can see them Continue reading