Filed Friday as FERC accession number 20160708-5096,
http://elibrary.ferc.gov/idmws/file_list.asp?document_id=14476452,
“Two new reasons for a USACE Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement and a halt to Sabal Trail permits; see also accession numbers 20160708-5089 and 20160708-5088, by WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc. under CP15-17.” (PDF) Continue reading
Tag Archives: Politics
Madison, FL BOCC tonight: WWALS on agenda about Sabal Trail 2016-06-22
Sabal Trail would go far too close to Madison Blue Spring and water wells in Madison County, it doesn’t have all permits, and the Madison BOCC could help stop this unnecessary, destructive, and hazardous fracked methane pipeline boondoggle. I have five minutes to say all that tonight to the Madison Board of County Commissioners.
Photograph by George Lansing Taylor Jr.
Anybody else who wants to speak, please sign up in advance, according to the Madison BOCC meeting rules. And the more people who come, the more likely they’ll pay attention.
When: 6PM Wednesday June 22nd 2016
Where: Courthouse Annex, 229 S.W. Pinckney Street, Madison, Florida 32340
Excerpt from the agenda. Continue reading
GWC win over Sabal Trail in Georgia Trend
Water and property rights are the same when fighting a natural gas pipeline: Georgia Trend understands what Georgia Water Coalition is doing to stop the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline.
Ben Young, Georgia Trend, June 2016,
Sustainable Georgia: Collecting Water,
…Nearly every county can claim scenic waterways — some 15 established water trails are highlighted by the Georgia River Network, with another 17 in the works.
But clean water is vital for more than tourism — as evidenced by the continuing news out of Flint, Mich., and the spectacle of that state utterly failing to provide basic services to residents in a way we are more used to seeing in the Third World.
Closer to home, Georgia lawmakers Continue reading
Joint Regional Water Planning Council Meeting, Dublin, GA 2016-06-23
Apparently we get dragged into a meeting of all regional councils with waters flowing into the Atlantic
because the Suwannee-Satilla RWPC includes much of the Satilla and
St Marys Rivers, even though most of the SSRWPC territory is in our Upper Suwannee watershed.
A tiny bit of our Little River Watershed is in Wilcox County,
which is in the Altamaha RWPC.
Received from GA-DNR May 25th 2016, NOTICE:
JOINT REGIONAL WATER PLANNING COUNCIL MEETING Continue reading
Sanford Bishop GA-02 requests Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement for Sabal Trail from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 2016-05-27
Rep. Sanford Bishop GA-02 just stood up again against the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline invader, for the Flint River, the Floridan Aquifer, and his constituents in Albany, and Dougherty and Terrell Counties, pointing out FERC shouldn’t have issued a certificate before all the state Clean Water Act Section 401 permits were in, and asking for a Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).
I’m sure we’re all looking forward to similar requests from Austin Scott GA-07,
in whose Congressional district Sabal Trail would cross Okapilco Creek and the Withlacoochee River, and in which Moultrie, Valdosta, and the counties of Colquitt, Brooks, and Lowndes passed resolutions against the pipeline.
And especially from Ted Yoho FL-03, in whose district Sabal Trail would cross the Suwannee and Santa Fe Rivers through the most vulnerable recharge area of the Floridan Aquifer in the Florida Springs Heartland, and in which the counties
of Hamilton, Suwannee, and Marion have already sent letters to the Corps,
like Rep. Bishop just asked for a Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).
We know the Corps did a SEIS for Keystone XL. The Corps should do a SEIS for Sabal Trail, so Continue reading
We have a right to expect waterways and groundwater to be clean –Dennis J. Price
Another letter against Sabal Trail and for the rivers and the aquifer in the paper Suwannee Democrat, May 5th 2016.
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.
WWALS is, Continue reading
Leadership is supporting the county’s own people against the Sabal Trail invader –WWALS in Suwannee Democrat
In the paper Suwannee Democrat, May 5th, 2016.
WWALS Watershed Coalition showed Suwannee County Commissioners sinkholes in the middle of the pipeline path that Sabal Trail didn’t mention to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). All of them, except Jason Bashaw, studied a report by a local geologist and showed leadership by voting to tell that “truth that exists in the middle” to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The quotation above is a reference to Continue reading
Lowndes County Chairman says accepting easement was not endorsement of Sabal Trail pipeline
So Lowndes County should have no problem asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to come investigate what Sabal Trail didn’t tell FERC.
And if the county is concerned about legal expenses, maybe it should pay attention
to the lawsuits happening right now in California about a natural gas leak
that went up into the air, closing schools, evacuating hundreds, and making many of them sick.
The VDT article today doesn’t mention writing a letter to the Corps was one of my requests to the county. It does quote the Chairman expresssing interest in details of eminent domain, in differences in regulation of oil and gas pipelines, and in environmental and safety issues of natural gas pipelines. Treating his statements as questions, I have provided some further information below on those points.
And he does say the county might have incurred legal expenses if it hadn’t accepted Sabal Trail’s money for the easement. He doesn’t mention how much money Lowndes County spent suing a local company on behalf of a trash collection company financed out of New York City, or how much money the county spent suing a local church about a minor tax matter. It seems when Lowndes County wants to do something, it doesn’t worry so much about legal expenses. And maybe the county should worry more about legal expenses if something does go wrong with that pipeline, especially considering what’s happening with the Porter Ranch leak in California.
Besides, writing a letter Continue reading
It’s the most votes I’ve ever gotten on anything. –Neill Herring, about GA House against Sabal Trail easements
Pipeline invaders go home to Houston, signed, Georgia legislature.
Georgia Sierra Club’s Neill Herring and Flint Riverkeeper Gordon Rogers at WWALS Watershed Conference in Tifton, 24 August 2013.
Kristi E. Swartz, EEnews, 28 March 2016, PIPELINES: Ga. lawmakers move to block 2 interstate projects,
Continue readingATLANTA — Georgia may be friendly to its own electric utility and natural gas companies, but the state Legislature sent a strong message last week to outside corporations that their pipelines are not welcome here.
Urgent call against fracking by Sierra Club Florida
Received today.
URGENT! — CALLS NEEDED TO STOP FRACKING BILL — SB 318
The fracking bill—SB 318—is scheduled for a vote in the Senate Appropriation Committee this Thursday, February 25.
We expect a close vote and need your help to stop the bill in this Committee.
If your State Senator is one of the 19 members of the Senate Appropriations Committee on the list below, please call him/her on now. Say that you live in the Senator’s district, and that you vote. Continue reading