It looks awful strange when EPA chooses to name and believe Florida Audubon,
which agrees with Sabal Trail, but doesn’t even name Sierra Club, when discounting
SC’s much larger concerns.
Why should EPA, or we, believe Sabal Trail’s “intent” when Sabal Trail’s
parent company, Spectra Energy, has repeatedly not even followed federal law or its own corporate procedures?
Bruce Ritchie, Politico, 16 December 2015,
EPA reverses course on several Sabal Trail pipeline issues,
TALLAHASSEE — The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency has reversed itself on numerous points in opposition to a proposed natural gas pipeline that would extend from Alabama across Southwest Georgia and North Florida.
In October, the
EPA said in a letter
to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that it had “very significant concerns” that the proposed route posed a threat to the Floridan Aquifer, the drinking water supply for much of the region. The agency also raised concerns about the pipeline’s impact on wetlands, conservation lands, and minority communities in the region.
But in a
Dec. 11 letter
sent to the Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA’s James D. Giattina said the agency had met with representatives of Sabal Trail Transmission LLC and reviewed the company’s comments sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. As a result, the EPA has come to different conclusions on several issues.
The EPA’s change of heart raises suspicions for Frank Jackalone, senior organizing manager for the Sierra Club in Florida.
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In response to Jason Bashaw’s, Chairman of the Suwannee County Commission, article in the Suwannee Valley Times, I have this to say. Why is it that if people are concerned about the environment they live in, they are automatically placed into this environmental left category? Like many, many people in our surrounding counties, I hunt, fish, hike and paddle our local rivers. I use the environment as do we all.
So, for working and paying taxes all my life — as a Vietnam Veteran, as a person who chose to live in this rural part of Florida and raise his kid, as a person who is not now nor ever will be wealthy — I count our public lands, our woods and rivers as a reward for doing the right thing. I do not mind my tax dollars going towards public lands. Mr. Bashaw uses the environmental left in a derogatory manner as a means of denigrating them, and he is including me in it and I resent it. I resent it for my friend’s in WWALS and others who show concern for the pipeline route. I have not met an environmental lefty among them.
