Tag Archives: Sabal Trail Transmission

Cross the Suwannee River: Sabal Trail permit application with FL-DEP

After an application for an exemption for the Withlacoochee River and the Santa Fe River, here’s Sabal Trail’s application to drill under the Suwannee River in between. Should we also expect an “HDD CROSSING” permit application for the Withlacoochee and Suwannee Rivers? And watch out, The Villages in Sumter County, Florida! Sabal Trail has applied for a permit in your county, too. Continue reading

Moultrie Observer: WWALS op-ed against Sabal Trail pipeline

Bigger type than the rest of the page, and in the editorial column position: Haley Hyatt, who took these pictures, noticed that about how the Moultrie Observer printed the WWALS op-ed Friday 1 August 2014, as “Much opposition”.

So that’s at least two newspapers so far, the other being the Ocala StarBanner. Continue reading

WWALS op-ed against Sabal Trail pipeline published

The Moultrie Observer printed the WWALS op-ed Friday 1 August 2014; that’s still not online. But the Ocala StarBanner has it online, Sunday 3 August 2014, Water, property rights over pipeline profits. Several more newspapers are considering it.

-jsq

Video: Withlacoochee River and springs where Sabal Trail pipeline would cross

Chris Mericle’s introducation says this video:

shows some of the springs, sinkholes, and other karst features that lie in close proximity to the proposed Sabal Trail gas pipeline where it crosses the Withlacoochee River in Hamilton and Madison County, Florida.

Including active sinkholes right next to the proposed pipeline route. And a karst window a couple of hundred feet from the pipeline.

Here’s the video:

The video is about the part of the Withlacoochee River where Continue reading

Water and property rights more important than methane pipeline profits

This is a long version of the op-ed sent to many newspapers in WWALS’ watersheds; there is also a short version. -jsq

Protesters drove as far as nine hours to Leesburg, GA July 10th, where Spectra Energy lost its eminent domain demand for its Sabal Trail 36-inch, hundred-foot right-of-way natural gas pipeline, and local landowners countersued. Spectra hobbled back to Houston, Texas bound by strict conditions for surveying that one Mitchell County property, and bound to haunt south Georgia again for a trespass jury trial.

The ensuing flurry of newspaper op-eds by Spectra’s Andrea Grover plus a page-long Sabal Trail interview in the Valdosta Daily Times (VDT), didn’t mention numerous Sabal Trail downsides. Continue reading

Water and property rights over methane pipeline profits

This is an op-ed submission sent to many newspapers in WWALS’ watersheds and beyond. There is also a longer version. -jsq

Protesters drove up to nine hours to Leesburg, GA July 10th, where Spectra Energy lost an eminent domain demand for its Sabal Trail 36-inch, hundred-foot right-of-way natural gas pipeline, and local landowners countersued. Spectra hobbled back to Houston, Texas, bound by strict conditions for surveying that one property, and bound to haunt south Georgia again for a trespass jury trial.

Spectra bragged in op-eds about 50 public meetings, never mentioning overwhelming public opposition in Moultrie, Valdosta, Clyattville, Madison and elsewhere to that gash through our fields, forests, and wetlands, and under our Withlacoochee River twice.

Sabal Trail’s air quality permit application with Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division met immediate Continue reading

EPA hearings Tuesday and Wednesday in Atlanta and Climate Rally by Sierra Club

Mercury in the Alapaha River probably comes from coal Plant Scherer near Macon. EPA is holding public hearings on its proposed Clean Power Plan next week, 29-30 July 2014, in Atlanta. You can also comment online until 16 October 2014 on Docket ID EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0602. And you can express your opinion outside with Georgia Sierra Club at the Atlanta Climate Rally Tuesday at high noon. Maybe you want to mention shifting from coal to “natural” gas (fracked methane) actually may make matters worse here, so EPA needs to go further.

While that proposed carbon rule may help clean up coal plants like Scherer, it says nothing about methane, which EPA says is Continue reading

Suwannee Bioregion Coalition?

Related to population centers in the Suwannee River watershed, someone asked, “Do we need an interstate Suwannee Bioregion Coalition to guard the waters that feed into the Suwannee River?” We’ve got pieces of it already cooperating to some extent in opposing the Sabal Trail pipeline. There are many other even larger issues that everyone in the Suwannee River basin faces.

In south Georgia and north Florida we have Continue reading

Avoid our area –Florida’s Suwannee River Water Management District to FERC

What they told FERC today was more subtle than just “avoid our area”, but after the Sabal Trail methane pipeline avoid karst limestone, any unconfined areas of our Floridan aquifer, caves, springs, wetlands, drilling under rivers, blasting, or using groundwater for testing pipes or disposing of it afterwards, where can that pipeline go?

The Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) covers the Florida parts of WWALS’ watersheds, and our Withlacoochee River is named in the SRWMD comments. Unlike Georgia’s Suwannee-Satilla Water management District, SRWMD has state funding and staff that produced some very interesting comments.

This is the first I’ve heard of this point about source and disposal of testing water: 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