Here’s who voted which way when Sabal Trail lost in a landslide against its easements to drill under our Withlacoochee River and Okapilco Creek and other rivers and creeks in Georgia.
Thanks to Bentley, Harden, Houston, Pirkle, Powell, Rynders, Sharper, Shaw, Spencer, and Watson for voting Nay against that pipeline river-drilling boondoggle.
And Carter, Corbett, and LaRiccia, well, thanks for listening, I guess.
I’ve added Continue reading
Update 2016-03-22 10:30PM: The vote tally.
As reported by Georgia Sierra Club:
Thank you to everyone who contacted a legislator about SR 954 and their concerns about the Sabal Trail pipeline easements. The house voted down the bill 128-34 this afternoon!!! CONGRATULATIONS!
Thanks to everyone, especially Georgia Water Coalition, Georgia Sierra Club, Flint Riverkeeper, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, everybody else who helped, and of course all WWALS members and everyone else who called their state reps.
There still more you can do to stop Sabal Trail. See the op-ed blog post of today. Continue reading
Update 2016-02-22: We all won by a landslide in the Georgia House! There’s more to do tomorrow until Sabal Trail is ended for good; see below.
Please call your Georgia state representative and ask them to vote No today on SR 954 that would give Sabal Trail easements to drill under our rivers. Here’s why:
John S. Quarterman, VDT, 2016-03-22, Still possible to keep Sabal Trail out,
After two years going to Sabal Trail open houses and FERC scoping meetings, filing e-comments, guiding them to the river crossings and a legal hearing in Jasper, FERC still tells us customers for Spectra Energy from Houston, Texas, constitute a need that outweighs local property rights, environmental destruction, and hazards to our Withlacoochee and Suwannee rivers and the Floridan Aquifer, and to taxes, life, and limb.
Yet Georgia is the fastest-growing U.S. solar market, while solar Continue reading
Here’s the letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that the Hamilton BOCC voted unanimously 15 March 2016 to send. Other counties in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama may want to send similar letters.
BETH BURNAM
District 1 — Jennings
JOSH SMITH
District 2 — Jasper
ROBERT E. BROWN
District 3 — Jasper
RANDY OGBURN
District 4 — White Springs
BUSTER OXENDINE
District 5 — JasperHAMILTON COUNTY
FLORIDA
Office of
Board Of County CommissmnersGREG GODWIN
Clerk of Courts
JOHN H. MCCORMICK
County Attorney207 Northeast First Street
Room 106
Jasper, Florida 32052
(386) 792-1288
FAX (386) 792-3524
March 18, 2016
Attn: Mark R. Evans, Senior Project Manager,
Jacksonville Permits Section
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Regulatory Division
Post Office Box 4970
Jacksonville, Florida 32232RE: Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC
FERC Document No. CP15-17-000Dear Mr. Evans:
The Board of County Commissioners of Hamilton County recently received the Environmental Geology report prepared by Dennis Price and dated 10/25/2015, a copy of which is attached hereto.
If you will note, the findings of Mr. Price directly contradict Continue reading
Your calls are working!
Sabal Trail’s allies failed three times to whip up
enough votes to pass this travesty.
Now please keep calling your state legislators and ask them to stay strong voting against SR 954 until Sabal Trail and Transco easements are taken out of it. It’s currently postponed until next Tuesday, March 22nd, so there’s time to call them through the weekend.
If Georgia Power, the EMCs, and GDOT want their easements, they should also be helping us strip Sabal Trail and Transco out of this bill. A fracked methane pipeline drilling under Okapilco Creek and the Withlacoochee, Ochlockonee, Flint, and Chatthahoochee Rivers is no advantage to anybody in Georgia. Or the Suwannee River in Florida: if you’re in Florida, you probably know somebody in Georgia you can ask to call their Georgia legislator.
Thanks to the Hamilton Board of County Commissioners for standing up for its people,
and for all those affected by the invading Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline.
Debra Johnson, SpectraBusters, 15 March 2016, Hamilton County takes exception with Sabal Trail,
Tonight, Tuesday March 15, 2016, Hamilton County unanimously voted to request that the Army Corps of Engineers perform an independent study on site concerning the ommisions and discrepancies contained in the final environmental study that FERC and Florida DEP used to issue the[ir] permit[s] for the Sabal Trail pipeline.
These ommisions in the EIS were discovered by Mr Chris Mericle when Continue reading
Update 2016-03-17: Your calls are working! Please keep calling: details.
You can help stop Georgia eminent domain easements for Sabal Trail from passing the statehouse! (PDF handout)
Photo: TONY CASSADY, 31 May 2015, in Arkansas River pipeline blowout occurred on Sunday morning, cause still unknown, by Benjamin Hardy, Arkansas Blog, 3 June 2015
Sabal Trail (a project of Houston-based Spectra Energy) is a methane frack-gas pipeline that would run from east central Alabama to south-central Florida. Multiple route choices exist. The company has chosen one, despite massive amounts of public objection, that maximizes the public and private impact. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has granted a permit for the particular one the company wants, one which that places a large number of Georgian’s private property under threat of (federal) eminent domain, for private profit. The FERC permit process is under appeal by property owners and advocacy groups. The pipeline still does not have several major state and federal permits (water quality, air, and wetlands).
Yet the Deal Administration seeks Continue reading
Sinkholes, springs, and caves abound where Spectra Energy wants to gouge
its yard-wide Sabal Trail pipeline
through the heart of the Florida Springs Heartland, wrote a Practicing Geologist WWALS member to FERC, following up on his
testimony in WWALS v Sabal Trail & FDEP.
Here is the text of the report by Dennis Price, followed by the images (PDF in FERC accession number 20151027-5034), all about the same area where WWALS board member Chris Mericle recently guided Hamilton and Suwannee County Commissioners to see for themselves. -jsq
Continue reading
Despite being on FDEP’s permit announcement list,
I never got anything about a Sabal Trail permit.
After much digging, the other day I found that
FDEP went ahead and issued the Sabal Trail permit 22 January 2016
(PDF),
conveniently before
FERC issued certificates 2 February 2016.
That FDEP permit was also before the appeal deadline of 15 February 2016 in WWALS v Sabal Trail & FDEP. They did not copy the petitioner in that case, namely WWALS. They did copy Audubon Florida, which, as you may recall back in October sent FERC a letter supporting Sabal Trail (and then tried to walk back part of it). A letter that EPA chose to mention by name to the Army Corps of Engineers, while not naming Sierra Club or WWALS in opposition. Apparently if you go along with FDEP you get preferential notification.
And that, that’s nothing. FDEP issued Continue reading
Even as
Our Santa Fe River and others held a
demonstration in Gainesville yesterday against fracking bills in the Florida
legislature, especially Senate Bill 318 now that
House Bill 191 passed,
Audubon Florida published a letter concluding:
“So my request to you right now: hold off of the emails to the committee, they know you are paying attention.”
This has not sit well with many opponents of fracking in Florida. WWALS is among the members of Floridians Against Fracking that call for Floridians to call their state legislators.
WWALS remembers when Continue reading