Update 2018-12-21: GA-EPD has started publishing online each business day a Sewage Spills Report! So that’s item 1 from the Petition. We thank GA-EPD and we await items 2 and 3.
By popular demand, here is a petition to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (GA-EPD): Tell everyone when anyone spills.
This petition is for individuals. Organizations can still sign the Continue reading
Someone inside FDEP has been brave enough for years to say the emperor has no clothes regarding contamination in the Suwannee River Basin.
Photo: John S. Quarterman for WWALS, of Thomas Greenhalgh suiting up at the
Alapaha Dye Test, 2016-06-22.
Dinah Voyles Pulver, The Daytona-Beach News-Journal, 24 November 2018, State geologist challenging springs action plan raised questions before, Continue reading
Unlike FDEP’s BMAP plans, “When a new building code is final in Florida, [Rusty] Payton [CEO, Florida Home Builders Association] said, “there’s always six months between the final rule and the date the rule takes effect.” Because of his organization’s petition for more time to file a protest, none of Florida’s new Basin Management Action Plans (BMAPs) have gone into effect yet, which gives spring and river advocates (and FDEP) more time to try to fix them.
Dinah Voyles Pulver, Daily Commercial, 30 July 2018, Groups protest new Florida springs action plans,
A sweeping effort to adopt action plans to improve water quality in 13 springs systems across the state is on hold after a dozen groups and individuals asked to intervene with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, including one of the department’s own springs experts.
Thomas Greenhalgh, a hydrogeologist with the department’s Florida Geological Survey, is one of two people who asked for an administrative hearing on one of the 13 “basin management action plans” signed by Noah Valenstein in late June.
Thomas Greenhalgh suiting up before releasing dye into the Dead River of the Alapaha River to go into the Dead River Sink, 2016-06-22, Picture by John S. Quarterman for WWALS.“There are many claims and statements in the BMAP that I believe are inaccurate and unsubstantiated,” wrote Greenhalgh in seeking a state hearing on the plan for the Suwannee River, where he owns property.
He’s not alone.
In addition Continue reading
The agency most responsible for pushing new greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) is “not aware of” and “could not find a suitable method to attribute discrete environmental effects to GHG emissions.” That epitomizes the lack of seriousness of the five-page Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) FERC issued last month for Sabal Trail and the rest of the Southeast Market Pipelines (SMP) Project. If “the ability to determine localized or regional impacts from GHGs by use of these models is not possible at this time,” FERC should take Sabal Trail out of service and stop approving any more pipelines until such models are possible.
Maybe the agency pushing the most GHG should create such a model if it does not exist.
Maybe it could at last get the history straight about which coal plants FPL claimed Sabal Trail was needed to “modernize”.
Until then, this alleged SEIS is junk and Sabal Trail should be shut down.
You can sign Sierra Club’s petition against this fake SEIS, even though FERC can’t be bothered to hold public hearings. If you need reasons, read on below.
Susan Salisbury, Palm Beach Post, 1 April 2014,
FPL’s Riviera Beach plant goes online Tuesday.
It’s already built, even though in 2013 FPL said Sabal Trail was needed to do that.
Now FERC’s SEIS names different plants as excuses.
Filed 28 August 2015 (PDF). -jsq
You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!
STATE OF FLORIDA
DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
|
WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc., Petitioners,
vs.
SABAL TRAIL TRANSMISSION, LLC and STATE OF FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION,
Respondents. |
: : : : : : : : : : : |
OGC Case No.: 15-0468 |
Petition for Administrative Hearing:
Florida Department of
Environmental Protection’s intent to issue Environmental Resource Permit
|
Petitioner: |
WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc. P.O. Box 88 Hahira, GA 31632 wwalswatershed@gmail.com |
WWALS Watershed Coalition Florida Inc.
|
Permit applicant:
Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC.
400 Colonial Center Parkway, Suite 300
Lake Mary, FL 32746
Department Permit file number: 0328333-001
Counties affected by the permitted activity: Hamilton, Suwannee, Gilchrist, Alachua, Levy, Citrus, Marion, Sumter, Lake, Polk, Orange, Osceola. Affected counties represented by WWALS: Hamilton, Suwannee, Madison.
Date Petitioner became aware Continue reading
Who could have suspected that
corrosion caused the crude oil pipeline rupture still pollution
California’s coastline from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles,
according to PHMSA’s amended corrective order
as reported by Giana Magnoli, Noozhawk, Santa Barbara, 3 June 2015?
Right after TransCanada Keystone 1 Pipeline Suffered Major Corrosion Only Two Years In Operation, 95% Worn In One Spot, as reported Julie Dermansky, Desmogblog, 30 April 2015?
Both pipeline companies claimed they used cathodic protection, which is supposed to detect and prevent such leaks.
Kinder Morgan, proposing to gouge its Palmetto petroleum products pipeline across South Carolina and the Georgia coast to Jacksonville, also claims to use cathodic protection and other measures, yet is no stranger to many incidents of corrosion and leaks.
There’s lots more evidence that such preventative measures don’t work, and often aren’t even applied, not for oil pipelines and not for fracked methane (“natural gas”) pipelines. You can sign the petition to help stop Texas pipelines from invading Georgia. Continue reading
Please sign this petition to
Please Ban The Sabal Trail Fracked Gas Pipeline.
Congratulations to Push Back the Pipeline for convincing GA Gov. Deal and Lt. Gov. Cagle to oppose Kinder Morgan’s Palmetto Project and the Georgia Dept. of Transportation to deny KMI a permit.
Now it’s time for the same for the Sabal Trail Pipeline. The permitting process is different, but opposition from the state of Georgia could stop this invader, too.
While Sabal Trail has moved off our Withlacoochee River in Florida,
it still wants to
cross the Withlacoochee in Georgia
at the Continue reading
There’s a bill in the Florida House to drill for oil
in a state park in the same aquifer we drink out of.
A group is organizing through facebook and reddit and elsewhere to oppose this bill:
Continue readingSave Blackwater River State Forest
An alliance of citizens committed to protecting the beautiful Blackwater River State Forest from proposed House Bill 431, that would allow oil and mining in the forest.