Tag Archives: Georgia Power

Coal ash protection legislation pending in Georgia legislature

The Georgia Water Coalition (of which WWALS is a partner) notes the city of Brunswick, Georgia passed a resolution agaionst coal ash 21 September 2016, and legislation is about to appear in the Georgia House of Representatives. There is already TVA and JEA coal ash in the Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County, just outside Valdosta, and in WWALS watersheds other landfills likely to be targetted are in Cook, Tift, Atkinson, Ben Hill, and Crisp Counties (see GWC map), all upstream of the Withlacoochee or Alapaha Rivers, and all upstream of the Suwannee River, all above the Floridan Aquifer from which we all drink. We don’t want the utility company coal ash problem exported to our landfills. The companies that produced this toxic pollutant should be responsible for disposing of it safely at their expense without foisting it on the rest of us.

Coal Ash in Your District — Ash Ponds & Municipal Solid Waste, Published by the GA Water Coalition
See also the GWC position on coal ash.

WWALS recommends all Georgia legislators, especially those in WWALS watersheds, join in to prevent further coal ash contamination. See as an example the PR below by Rep. Jeff Jones of Brunswick, which concludes: Continue reading →

Georgia legislature overwhelmingly rejects river easements for Sabal “Sinkhole” Trail fracked methane pipeline

Update 2016-03-28: “It’s the most votes I’ve ever gotten on anything.” —Neill Herring of Georgia Sierra Club.

Tuesday and today, Georgia’s elected legislators stood up for the people against a fracked methane pipeline invader:

Y’all! We don’t win votes on the House floor every day, and the effort to keep the state easements for the Sabal Trail pipeline was truly a joy to watch. R’s, D’s, lawyers, community folk, everyone pitched in and it “went down in flames” 34-128 — AJC [Atlanta Journal Constitution] reporter’s words, not mine! Congrats to all the Georgia Water Coalition….

That’s how Georgia Sierra Club’s Colleen Kiernan summed up what happened Tuesday to the river drilling easements for Spectra Energy’s fracked gas Sabal “Sinkhole” Trail pipeline. Yes, the same Spectra of the Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) Project, PennEast, Atlantic Bridge, South Texas Expansion, the West Coast Pipeline in British Columbia, and far too many other unnecessary pipeline invasions throughout North America.

Georgia Water Coalition organized this excellent result, including Continue reading →

Tally of votes smashing Sabal Trail easements in SR 954 2016-03-22

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 →

We all won! Sabal Trail SR 954 easements lost in a landslide at GA House 2016-02-22 2016-03-22

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 →

Still possible to keep Sabal Trail out –WWALS in VDT 2016-03-22

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 →

Sabal Trail risks drinking water –Gordon Rogers in Georgia Sierran

Apparently fracked methane is Sierra Club Georgia’s next fight now that Keystone XL is dead, since almost its entire January/February/March issue of Georgia Sierran is about opposing natural gas: PDF.

See for example “Why Natural Gas Is Not a Climate Solution”, by Joshua Hanthorn. And “LNG Puts Savannah at Risk”, by Karen Grainey and Stacey Kronquest. Karen is chair of the Coastal Group of Sierra Club Georgia. Pretty much everything in that article also applies to Jacksonville, and quite likely to Palm Beach and other locations in Florida very soon.

Mentioning WWALS is “Pipeline in Southwest Georgia and Central Florida Risks Drinking Water,” by Gordon Rogers, Flint Riverkeeper,

The Sabal Pipeline, a joint venture of Spectra Energy, Duke Energy, and NextEra Energy, poses threats to Georgia and Florida communities on multiple fronts. For southwest Georgia and north Florida residents it’s all risks and no rewards. However, so far federal and state authorities have thus far been unmoved by arguments against it.
During the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) public comment period, the agency received more than 1,000 written comments, mostly opposing the project, including resolutions against it from seven counties in Georgia and Florida, and three of the largest cities in its path (Albany, Moultrie and Valdosta).

The article talks about FERC’s FEIS, EPA, GA-EPD, and other matters, before turning to WWALS and Florida. Continue reading →

Solar and wind can make coal go away with no need for natural gas. –WWALS to Suwannee BOCC 2016-01-19

The Commissioners for the one county on every Sabal Trail fracked methane path ever proposed, Suwannee County, Florida, meet tonight at 6PM in Live Oak. I can’t go, so I sent them this letter (PDF). If you can go, please do, or you can send them a letter, too.

To: Suwannee County Board of County Commissioners,

Dear Commissioners,

Thanks again for your hospitality at your meeting of December 15th.

Solar and wind can make coal go away with no need for natural gas.

The FPL representative who spoke didn’t seem aware of what Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning said about solar power last June: “If somebody wants to buy distributed generation, I want to sell it to 'em." See Herman K. Trabish, UtilityDive, June 11, 2015, “Inside Georgia Power's move into the residential solar market: The utility says it will offer solar through an unregulated business, but installers fear possible anticompetitive impacts”:
http://www.utilitydive.com/news/inside-georgia-powers-move-into-the-residential-solar-market/400562/

That meeting gave me deja vu about a few years ago when Georgia Power and Southern Company were claiming Continue reading →

EPA hearings Tuesday and Wednesday in Atlanta and Climate Rally by Sierra Club

Mercury in the Alapaha River probably comes from coal Plant Scherer near Macon. EPA is holding public hearings on its proposed Clean Power Plan next week, 29-30 July 2014, in Atlanta. You can also comment online until 16 October 2014 on Docket ID EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0602. And you can express your opinion outside with Georgia Sierra Club at the Atlanta Climate Rally Tuesday at high noon. Maybe you want to mention shifting from coal to “natural” gas (fracked methane) actually may make matters worse here, so EPA needs to go further.

While that proposed carbon rule may help clean up coal plants like Scherer, it says nothing about methane, which EPA says is Continue reading →

Ask Georgia Power to conserve our water –WWALS to GA PSC

Approved 12 June 2013 by unanimous vote of the WWALS board, Dave has mailed a signed copy to the Georgia Public Service Commission, and I will go read it to the PSC Tuesday morning at 10 AM 18 June 2013, at their hearing about

Docket 36498, Georgia Power Company’s 2013 Integrated Resource Plan and Application for Decertification of Various Units

and

Docket 36499, Application for the Certification of Amended Demand Side Management Plan

Y’all come! -jsq

From: WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc.
3338 Country Club Road #L336
Valdosta, GA 31605
12 June 2013

To: Georgia
Public Service Commission
244 Washington Street, SW
Atlanta GA, 30334-9052

Dear Public Service Commissioners and Staff,
The recent rains have swollen our blackwater rivers, Withlacoochee, Willacoochee, Alapaha, and Little, under our longleaf pines and Spanish-moss-covered oaks, and filled up the tea-colored tannin waters in our frog-singing pocosin cypress swamps here in central South Georgia. But that was only a dent in our protracted drought that ranges from mild to extreme, with projections not much better.

We do not need more traditional big baseload power plants gulping down our river or aquifer water when solar and wind power use far less, and those renewables are now at grid parity with coal, natural gas, and nuclear.
Power plants are thirsty, as the Union of Concerned Scientists pointed out in a 2011 report, “Freshwater Use by U.S. Power Plants: Electricity’s Thirst for a Precious Resource”.
Much of the water used to cool power plants evaporates, and is Continue reading →

WWALS Watershed Coalition (WWALS) is Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

A healthy watershed with clean, swimmable, fishable, drinkable water.