Tag Archives: Okapilco Creek

Keep calling your GA House member to oppose SR 954: strip Sabal Trail easements

Your calls are working! Sabal Trail’s allies failed three times to whip up enough votes to pass this travesty. WWALS counties and districts for Georgia House of Representatives

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.

Who to Call

Continue reading →

Urge your GA House member to oppose SR 954: strip Sabal Trail easements

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 →

WWALS Watersheds google map

Update 2020-01-25: Superseded by WWALS Suwannee River Basin Map and All Landings in the Suwannee River Basin, now that Suwannee Riverkeeper territory includes the entire Basin plus Estuary, since Waterkeeper Alliance agreed to add the Ichetucknee and Santa Fe Rivers on September 26, 2019.

Update 2017-10-30: River flowlines.
Update 2017-10-08: Better colors plus a Suwannee River Basin map.
Update 2017-04-13: Since December 2016 WWALS Watersheds have included the Lower Suwannee River HUC 03110205 and the Suwannee River Estuary, approved by Waterkeeper Alliance the same time as the license for Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®.

Small, WWALS Watersheds Map Legend

Click on this link for an interactive google map of WWALS watersheds.

The images you see here are static screenshots of that google map. Follow the link above for the actual google map.

The watershed outlines are from Continue reading →

Online movie: At What Cost? Pipelines, Pollution and Eminent Domain in the Rural South

If you missed it in Live Oak last night, or in one of the previous premieres along the Georgia coast, you can see the movie online: At What Cost? Pipelines, Pollution and Eminent Domain in the Rural South, by Mark Albertin. And yes, he’s happy for it to be shown elsewhere; just ask.

Thanks to Push Back the Pipeline for getting this movie made about Kinder Morgan’s proposed petroleum products pipeline from South Carolina across the Georgia coast to Jacksonville, Florida. Special thanks to Eileen, Lori, and Debra and the Woman’s Club of Live Oak for the movie showing last night, and to SpectraBusters, Our Santa Fe River, and Gulf Restoration Network for helping promote it. Don’t forget the hike to the Suwannee River Sabal Trail crossing 8:15 AM Thursday 28 February 2016 with Suwannee and Hamilton County Commissioners.

Most of the issues are the same for the invading Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline which Continue reading →

At What Cost? Pipelines, Pollution and Eminent Domain in the Rural South –Movie in Live Oak, FL 2016-02-12

Please join us for a documentary about property rights and the environment vs. pipelines (PDF; facebook event; meetup event). Yes, FERC has issued certificates for Sabal Trail, but the fight is not over.

6:30 PM Friday 12 Feb 2016, Live Oak, FL

When: 6:30 PM Friday February 12th

Where: Live Oak Womans Club,
1308 11TH St SW, Live Oak, FL 32064

What: View the film:
“At What Cost? Pipelines, Pollution and Eminent Domain in the Rural South”
A documentary film by Mark Albertin
Video Trailer

Thanks: to Push Back the Pipeline for getting this movie made

This film is about the Kinder Morgan petroleum products Palmetto Pipeline proposed across coastal Georgia to Jacksonville, but the issues are the same for Spectra Energy’s proposed fracked methane Sabal Trail pipeline from 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,

001 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 →

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality -MLK

Our rivers, creeks, swamps, lakes, and the Floridan Aquifer are part of that web of mutuality described on the north wall of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in DC:


Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

It was the Alabama River they sought to cross on the Edmund Pettus Bridge when John Lewis, Continue reading →

FERC, EPA rubberstamp Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline: opposition continues –VDT

The FERC FEIS isn’t a permit, the Army Corps hasn’t issued a permit, GA-EPD is still considering an air quality permit for the Albany, GA air compressor, and it’s still possible to stop the GA-DNR easements for drilling under Georgia rivers including the Withlacoochee and Okapilco Creek. This is all regardless of whether FDEP issues its drilling permit for the Suwannee and Santa Fe Rivers. You can still help stop this invasion by the “Sinkhole Trail” of our local lands, water, and air.

Among the press recently by Politico, Law360, Natural Gas Intelligence, the Suwannee Democrat, the Ocala StarBanner, the Palm Beach Post, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Valdosta Today, and others, is this long local piece. Joe Adgie, Valdosta Daily Times, 20 December 2015, EPA reverses stand on impact pipeline would have on aquifer,

In addition, according to FERC, Sabal completed analysis of the subsurfaces where the pipeline is proposed.

That’s what FERC’s announcement of its Final Environmental Impact Statment (FEIS) said, but where is the LiDAR, as Continue reading →