Tag Archives: natural gas

Come to the hearing, WWALS v. Sabal Trail & FL-DEP, Jasper, FL 2015-10-19

We aim to win through evidence and argument! If we can stop either the Environmental Resource Permit (ERP) or the Easement to Use Sovereign Submerged Lands (Easement) that the Florida Department of Environmental Resources (DEP) intends to issue for Sabal Trail, there may be no pipeline.

Witnesses can still come forward to testify for the Suwannee or other Rivers, the Florida Aquifer, or their own land, water, and air against Sabal Trail. WWALS invites the public to attend; This is a court of law, so please be polite, and silent while proceedings are in progress.

Here’s some background on the case. Below is Judge Canter’s order of this morning about place, date, and time (PDF): Continue reading

AES Port of Palm Beach LNG export at end of Transco → Sabal Trail → FSC pipeline chain

A company from Wyoming based in Chicago was rubberstamped in November 2013 to export liquid natural gas (LNG) from the Port of Palm Beach, and it can transport LNG “over highways and/or by rail”. Advanced Energy Solutions (AES) intends to get its fracked methane from Floridian Natural Gas Storage Company (FLiNG), which is conveniently located right where the Transco → Sabal Trail → FSC pipeline chain goes in Martin County, FL. This LNG approval was done without public hearings, with public input hidden, and with a clause to hide LNG export contract details. This they claim is “consistent with the public interest”. And this only one of four LNG export operations right where this pipeline chain goes. Yet neither Sabal Trail nor FERC ever said anything about LNG export until questioned by local citizens. And then they had little or no comment.

This AES LNG export operation was approved for Martin County, Florida 14 November 2013, one month after Continue reading

Sabal Trail Withlacoochee River Alternative and Jasper Open House 21 Oct 2014

Due to fine work by WWALS members Chris and Deanna Mericle in Hamilton County, Florida, 300x391 Withlacoochee River Crossing Route Alternative, Hamilton and Suwannee Counties, Florida (bare), in Sabal Trail Notice of EIS Intent, by John S. Quarterman, for SpectraBusters.org, 15 October 2014 Sabal Trail proposes to move its fracked methane pipeline off of the Withlacoochee River in Florida, and invites the public to an Open House in Jasper, FL Tuesday October 21st about that and other matters. We can ask them to move it off the Withlacoochee River in Georgia, too. And it’s still possible to file ecomments with FERC, and to contact your local, state, and national elected and appointed officials.

In FERC’s 15 October 2014 Sabal Trail Notice of EIS Intent and Route Alternatives, Continue reading

Aquifer Conference, Monticello, FL, 2014-10-2,3,4

Update 2 Oct 2014: WWALS will have a table at the conference. See you there!

This conference coming up next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday looks quite interesting. I wonder if they know they’re directly on the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline Alternative 3 which would gouge through the Floridan Aquifer from Albany, GA through Monticello and then east and south across the Ochlockonee, Aucilla, Ecofina, Suwannee, and Santa Fe Rivers?

Sharing Water:
The Floridan Aquifer in Alabama, Georgia and Florida
Continue reading

Billboard for Withlacoochee Paddle Event 2014-04-19

This billboard has already been spotted on Bemiss Road in Valdosta.

Please join us at 7:30 AM Saturday 19 April 2014 on the Withlacoochee River between Valdosta and Quitman, to put in at Old Quitman Road on the Brooks County side (just south of US 84) and paddle past where the proposed Sabal Trail methane pipeline would cross the Withlacoochee River, Continue reading

Cancelled! Paddle Against the Pipeline on the Withlacoochee River: 19 April 2014

Update 9PM 16 April 2014: Cancelled due to flood-stage water levels in the Withlacoochee River, with more rain expected Friday. To be rescheduled.

7:30 AM Saturday 19 April 2014 on the Withlacoochee River between Valdosta and Quitman, put in at Old Quitman Road on the Brooks County side (just south of US 84): Paddle past where the proposed Sabal Trail methane pipeline would cross the Withlacoochee River, digging into our fragile karst limestone, above our drinking-water Floridan Aquifer. This is a joint event of Continue reading

Pipeline would cross Withlacoochee River twice

The detail maps in the General Project Description in the 15 November 2013 update to FERC by Sabal Trail Transmission reveal that the proposed path would cross the Withlacoochee River both where the river is the border of Brooks and Lowndes County and where it is the border between Hamilton and Madison County near Ellaville. In between, the pipeline would run through many wetlands near the river and through quite a few recharge zones for our drinking water source, the Floridan Aquifer. Then it crosses our downstream river, the Suwannee, into Suwannee County, Florida.

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