Tag Archives: Safety

Homerville explosion from pipeline starting in Lowndes County 2018-08-17

Gas from a tiny pipeline demolished a business and sent three women to the hospital yesterday with third-degree burns, plus it shut down Homerville, Georgia, for a day.

Hosing down remains of Coffee Corner, Clinch County News
Hosing down remains of Coffee Corner, Clinch County News, photo by Laura Nipper.

First and most detailed with this story is Clinch County News, and it has been carried by the Associated Press all over the U.S. and beyond.

Apparently only WCTV thought to ask about the pipeline, which is owned by Atlanta Gas Light, aka AGL Resources, and since Southern Company bought that in 2016, Southern Company Gas. Unless Southern Company comes back with a different route, the maps say that pipeline starts in Lowndes County, Georgia, on my property.

Here is Noelani Mathews of WCTV reporting about the Sabal Trail pipeline in January 2016, from where that AGL pipeline takes off from the Southern Natural Gas (SONAT) pipeline to Nashville, Georgia, which was broken by Continue reading →

Bob’s River Place variances 2018-08-14

The Bob’s River Place agenda item on the SRWMD agenda for August 14, 2018 turns out to be the latest in year-long series. Every time I’ve stopped by it’s been closed, so I have no dog in this fight. I’m merely presenting what I’ve dug up in a few minutes by following leads backwards. This agenda-and-minute trail is probably incomplete, but what I’ve found tells a tale about SRWMD granting permits, then receiving citizen complaints including about safety. After which it seems SRWMD discovered numerous structures and other features that had been operational for years, yet had not been permitted.

[Slip and slide ramp removed from permit application 2/5/2013 yet constructed 4/7/2017]
Slip and slide ramp removed from permit application 2/5/2013 yet constructed 4/7/2017
PDF

FAR 2018-01-17

Starting with the earliest mention I’ve found in this series and going forwards, Florida Administrative Register, Volume 44, Number 11, January 17, 2018, Continue reading →

Packet, SRWMD Board, 2018-08-14

The many interesting items on the agenda for next Tuesday morning’s SRWMD board meeting in Live Oak, include a springs campaign discussion, water withdrawals, creek clearing in Bradford County, and the latest in a long-running series about Bob’s River Place in Dixie County.

When: 9AM Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Where: 9225 CR 49, Live Oak, FL 32060

See also the other post about Bob’s River Place.

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!

Hurricane Season Open House by Lowndes County, GA EMA 2018-07-26

Tropical Storm Alberto already caused two sewage spills from Tifton, the biggest of 36,000 gallons, both into the New River upstream from the Withlacoochee, and Valdosta spilled 300,000 gallons last month, uphill from the Withlacoochee River, without even a tropical storm to blame. So preparing for a hurricane or tropical storm seems like a good idea. Maybe the various utility managers would like to say a few words about how they’re not going to be asleep at the wheel.

When: 6-8PM, Thursday, July 26, 2018

Where: 250 Douglas St, Valdosta, GA 31601-5029

Event: facebook

Join local emergency responders and Meteorologist Kerri Copello, News Manager for WFXL/Fox 31, for a tour of the EOC and an informational session on the 2018 Hurricane Season to include preparedness information.

Lowndes County EOC facebook event cover picture
Lowndes County EOC facebook event cover picture

More in a LAKE blog post.

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!

Alapaha River Beauty should not be hidden 2018-04-07

Randy Patten used to say he’d never seen an alligator on the Alapaha River in Lanier County, but he just saw a log with eyes and a tail.

On Patrol, Stills

He also changed his mind about something else:

I have been against the publication and the making public of our river for people kayaking it, due to the fact that we couldn’t get people out of the river if they got in trouble.

Well, after a couple of years of planning with the assistance of the county commissioners, and volunteer firefighters, and everybody that would assist, we now have signs, 24 actually, up and down the river, from Atkinson County to Echols County. So every few miles you’ll see a sign with a phone number. And later on, when I get close to one I’ll go live again and show you what they look like.

But it makes it a lot nicer to know that if we have people looking at its beauty, which should never be kept a secret, but if something does happen, we have the ability to come get you. Continue reading →

Fossil fuels are a far bigger threat than the Russians

Leaks of hazardous materials, explosions, land takings, sinkholes, frac-outs: these are far bigger threats than Texas Rep. Lamar Smith’s Committee report “that states Russian agents were attempting to disrupt U.S. energy markets and using social media to purportedly stir up protests against pipelines such as Sabal Trail,” as a reporter asked me about recently. Smith’s report doesn’t mention that solar and wind power are growing far faster than his favorite, fracked methane gas.

Energy source growth by sector
Business Council for Sustainable Energy by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, February 2018, 2018 Sustainable Energy in America.

Elsewhere I already looked behind Lamar Smith’s fossil fuel smoke and mirrors, and found I post more on social media than the tiny Russian numbers that horrify him.

His actual examples are seriously rolling-on-the-floor laughable, such as this: Continue reading →

FGT pipeline noise, Suwannee County 2018-02-25

It sounded like a jet engine Wednesday evening, said a WWALS member as a pipeline let loose in Suwannee County. (Hear it for yourself in WWALS videos four days later.) Was it a leak? A planned release? A road construction break? We get no answers, just runarounds, from the federal and state agencies that permitted all the interstate natural gas pipelines into Florida. They passed the buck to Suwannee County Fire Rescue. At least Suwannee BOCC opposed the Sabal Trail pipeline and approved a solar farm.

Photo: John S. Quarterman for WWALS 2018-02-25 of FGT pipeline at Suwannee Oaks Drive.
Photo: John S. Quarterman for WWALS 2018-02-25 of FGT at Suwannee Oaks Drive.

Neighbors preparing to evacuate February 21, 2018, confirmed the location: just north of 208th Street, at Continue reading →

Mosquito spray Naled: worse than Dicamba

Apparently Suwannee County, Florida, sprayed for mosquitos in October, as reported by some WWALS members who got sick from that. Probably what was sprayed was the usual Naled such as is used in Miami and elsewhere, but there is some confusion as to what Naled is. It’s not Dicamba: it’s worse.

aerial mosquito spraying
An Air Force Reserve aircrew performing a mosquito control aerial spray mission in North Dakota back in 2011 Photo by U.S. Air Force/Tech. Sgt. Johnny Saldivar

WWALS Science Committee Chair Tom Potter, Ph.D., writes:

See Pesticide Properties Database (EU). Best general data source on pesticides. As indicated below exposure to humans (e.g. getting is sprayed) is a primary concern. Likely to produce headaches and nausea. To be clear Naled is not dicamba. They are very different. Dicamba is much less toxic (acute) to humans.

“Naled is mainly used for Continue reading →

Cattle, sinkholes, and digups vs. Sabal Trail: Janet Barrow 2017-11-20

Sabal Trail apparently doesn’t know cattle.

cattle go rogue over Sabal Trail pipeline markers

The pipeline company claimed they know restoration, but that’s not what the ground looks like now, with sparse vegetation and erosion. They say they love wildlife, but they drove off a heron and who knows what else. They’re driving down property values. What are those bubbles? Which milepoint is which, anyway? Janet Barrow lives in Marion County, but she also reports on Citrus County. For 54 pages, with a summation.

For the rest of FERC Accession Number 20171120-5026, “Comment of Janet L Barrow under CP15-17, et. al.; A Citizen’s Supplemental Information Regarding Sabal Trail’s October, 2017 Monthly Report” on the WWALS website, follow this link.

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!

EPA perfunctory Lack of Objections to FERC Sabal Trail DSEIS 2017-11-20

EPA doesn’t even remember when it sent its own greenhouse gas (GHG) comments to FERC, forgets that it already told FERC nevermind, and now says, despite copious evidence filed by Senators, professors, Riverkeepers, and environmental organizations from multiple states as far away as Colorado, that FERC’s incorrect and inadequate Draft Supplementary Environmental Impact Statemen (FSEIS) rates “Lack of Objections or “LO””.

EPA to FERC, Re: SMPP This latest EPA letter is dated November 20, 2017, but FERC didn’t inform intervenors about it until today, two weeks later. The EPA letter claims:

The EPA commented on the FEIS on January 25, 2016. In those comments the EPA provided several recommendations including that the FERC consider a detailed evaluation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in future analyses.

Yet FERC’s Docket CP15-17 shows no comment by EPA in January 2016. It does show this same G. Alan Farmer, Director, Resource Conservation and Restoration Division, EPA, wrote a letter to FERC filed 1 December 2015 as Accession Number 20171201-0034 (see also WWALS blog post), in which he said nothing I can see about greenhouse gases, but he did basically say “nevermind” to EPA’s extensive letter of October 26, 2015, filed as Accession Number 0151102-0219 (clean text on the WWALS website), which October letter did include: Continue reading →