Sierra Club Campaign Organizer Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson has taken the Lake City pipe yard ball and run with it. Monday she got TV coverage at that illicit Sabal Trail storage yard for 36-inch fracked gas pipe, and today she’s called a press conference and protest there. Plus Sierra Club has filed two legal actions. Here’s how you can help.
Haley Wade, WCJB-TV, Gainesville, Florida, 15 August 2016, New pipeline has protestors,
There is something you can do: you can say no.
They didn’t even bother to fill in the year on the date, and “File with original letter”. Here’s what the Corps wrote (PDF) in response to Madison County’s request for a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) about Sabal Trail.
File with
original letterDEPARTMENT or THE ARMY
JACKSONVILLE DISTRICT CORPS 0F ENGINEERS
POST OFFICE BOX 4970
JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA 32232-0019July 29, 201
Reply to attention of
Regulatory Division
North Permits Branch
Jacksonville Permits Section
SAJ-2013-03030Madison Board of County Commissioners
Attn: Mr. Brian Kauffman, County Coordinator
Post Office Box 539
Madison, Florida 32341Dear Mr. Kauffman:
Please accept this correspondence as Continue reading
This request for a Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS), mentioning Madison Blue Spring in particular, was sent July 18th or 19th 2016, one copy to each of the Corps addresses. (PDF). That’s the fourth Florida county to make such a request, after Hamilton, Suwanee, and Marion Counties. The Corps already responded to Madison County.
Board of County Commissioners
Madison County, Florida
Jacksonville Permits Section
U.S.A.C.E. Regulatory Division
Attn: Mark R. Evans,
Senior Project Manager,
Post Office Box 4970
Jacksonville, Florida 32232Commander, U.S.A.C.E.,
Savannah District
Attn: Mr. Terry C. Kobs
1104 N. Westover Boulevard, Unit 9
Albany, GA 31707U.S.A.C.E.
Mobile District Reg. Div.
Montgomery Field Office
Attn: Mr. James S. Cherry II
605 Maple Street
Building 1429 Room 105
Maxwell AFB, AL 36112-6017
Norman C. Bay, Chairman Continue reading
Tomorrow this morning (Thursday July 14th 2016) Sabal Trail is on the agenda
of the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD)
for permission to use conservation easements
Sierra Club facebook event
for its fracked methane pipeline.
How does this square with Sabal Trail’s assertions that it already has all the permits it needs?
The irony of meeting for this in West Palm Beach, a stone’s throw from
four already-approved LNG export operations at the end of the Sabal Trail pipeline chain in Martin County.
How does profit for a pipeline company from Houston and LNG export to Asia square with the mission of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection?
If you’re in the area, please write, call, or go, before or by 9AM tomorrow morning to oppose these easements and put a kink in Sabal Trail’s pipeline. Continue reading
Jasper, Florida, July 1st 2016 — Another independent
professional geologist reveals more omissions and discrepancies in pipeline company reports and faults in federal oversight of the Sabal Trail pipeline:
groundflow actually goes the other way,
drilling under a river will change water
flow in the Floridan Aquifer, and there is very high risk of
sinkhole collapse. An indigenous Floridian commissioned this scientific report to protect his mother, the living earth.
This geological report provides compelling additional reasons for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)
to open a new process to evaluate this and other new information.
Bobby C. Billie, one of the Clan Leaders and Spiritual Leader, Council of the Original Miccosukee Simanolee Nation Aboriginal Peoples, asked professional geologist and hydrologist Peter Schreuder, P.G. to conduct investigations at the proposed Sabal Trail crossing under the Suwannee River from Hamilton County and under U.S. 90 in close proximity to the Falmouth Cave System in Suwannee County.
This Schreuder report concludes about the Floridan Aquifer System (FAS): Continue reading
See press release, New hydrology report exposes Sabal Trail pipeline risk to Floridan Aquifer, and this report is also available in PDF.
Schreuder, Inc. Water-Resources & Environmental Consultants
Directional Horizontal Drilling (HDD) under the
Suwannee River
At Suwannee River State ParkHydrogeologic Issues of Concern
In any review of potential environmental consequences related to the use of Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD), both the geotechnical and scientific communities can be expected to raise serious concerns when such drilling is done around karst areas, and in regions which over lie the Floridan Aquifer System (FAS), which includes the Upper Floridan Aquifer, and the karstic geologic subsurface features at the location proposed in Continue reading
August 6th in Gainesville, you can join groups and individuals in Gainesville to defend water and property rights from the invading Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline.
Picture by Jessica Bowman, Branford High School, 12 grade, Third Place in
Lime Run Sink Photography Contest organized by the Woman’s Club of Live Oak and WWALS Watershed Coalition.
You can register for the conference here, and soon we’ll hear the location and times of day. All of Florida and south Georgia drinks from the Floridan Aquifer, and the Suwannee, Santa Fe, and other rivers with their springs such as Lime Run (depicted here) are gems that also bring in substantial tourism revenue to Florida.
While Sabal Trail only aims at the southwest corner of Alachua County, Gainesville is near the center of the proposed pipeline path of destruction and hazard in Florida. WWALS will be there, and we welcome many new groups to the pipeline opposition which is water conservation and protection of property rights.
Below is what Johanna de Graffenreid of Gulf Restoration Network sent as background. I’ve added some pictures and some links for easy access. WWALS applauds Gulf Restoration Network for taking on the task of organizing this conference.
STOP THE SABAL TRAIL PIPELINE
Continue reading
You can see U.S. Congress member Ted Yoho FL-03 and a staffer for Sen. Bill Nelson
discuss water, air, energy, growth, and past and future generations with local citizens environmental groups, including Suwannee County residents plainly saying they’re in the incineration zone.
You can see for yourself sinkholes Sabal Trail omitted from what it told FERC.
Soon we hope to see letters from Ted Yoho and Bill Nelson to the Corps and to FERC.
Below are links to the WWALS videos of the event, with many notes. For handouts, still pictures, and more information about this event of Sunday morning May 15th 2016, see Continue reading
Rep. Sanford Bishop GA-02 just stood up again against the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline invader, for the Flint River, the Floridan Aquifer, and his constituents in Albany, and Dougherty and Terrell Counties, pointing out FERC shouldn’t have issued a certificate before all the state Clean Water Act Section 401 permits were in, and asking for a Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).
I’m sure we’re all looking forward to similar requests from Austin Scott GA-07,
in whose Congressional district Sabal Trail would cross Okapilco Creek and the Withlacoochee River, and in which Moultrie, Valdosta, and the counties of Colquitt, Brooks, and Lowndes passed resolutions against the pipeline.
And especially from Ted Yoho FL-03, in whose district Sabal Trail would cross the Suwannee and Santa Fe Rivers through the most vulnerable recharge area of the Floridan Aquifer in the Florida Springs Heartland, and in which the counties
of Hamilton, Suwannee, and Marion have already sent letters to the Corps,
like Rep. Bishop just asked for a Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).
We know the Corps did a SEIS for Keystone XL. The Corps should do a SEIS for Sabal Trail, so Continue reading
Sunday morning May 15th 2016, nine and more environmental organizations showed
U.S. Congress member Ted Yoho FL-03 and a representative from Sen. Bill Nelson
saw sinkholes much closer to Sabal Trail’s proposed drill path under the Suwannee River than the pipeline company told FERC, along with two reports by local practicing geologists explaining how fissures and caverns underground extend the problem far past the artificial distance of effects Sabal Trail claimed.
Update 2016-05-17: Thomas Lynn reported in the Suwannee Democrat and Valdosta Daily Times.
Both Rep. Yoho and Suwannee River Water Management District Executive Director Noah Valenstein said at the end of the expedition that Continue reading