They ran the op-ed last week online, and today the Valdosta Daily Times (VDT) put it on top of page 5A:
This newspaper op-ed has already resulted in a call about a water issue.
-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®
You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!
Op-ed in the Valdosta Daily Times today:
Thanks, VDT, for your Sunday solar story and editorial!
Your editorial’s “buyer beware” would better be directed towards the electric utilities, which set up the price mismatch that caused the problem for the customer in your story. The story says, citing John Kraft of Georgia Power, “The utility company offers to pay the producer only as much as it costs to produce solar power. If a utility company can produce solar energy at a solar farm for 5 cents per unit, it isn’t going to pay a residential producer a higher rate for energy it doesn’t need.”
If Georgia Power does not need new energy, why is it building two new nuclear units at Plant Vogtle and charging its customers in advance every month? Four years ago Google already bought more sun and wind power than that nuclear boondoggle would produce if it’s ever finished, and for less than the Plant Vogtle cost overruns. Those cost overruns keep going up, and the cost of solar panels keeps going down.
The story says Kraft asks people why they want solar power. Maybe to Continue reading
Part of this longleaf pine forest grant from a major utility is partly in WWALS watersheds, in the Okefenokee Swamp and Osceola National Forest, in the upper Suwannee River basin.
Southern Company PR, July 6th 2016, Southern Company and partners award 10 longleaf conservation grants,
Continuing its longstanding tradition of supporting natural resource conservation, Southern Company, in partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), today announced $4.3 million in grants to support, restore and enhance the longleaf ecosystem. The grants include funding for 10 projects in the Southeast states where Southern Company operates electric utilities.
Longleaf Pine Forest | Credit: Christine AmbroseThe 2016 grants will support 21 projects that are a part of Continue reading
Update 2016-03-28: “It’s the most votes I’ve ever gotten on anything.” —Neill Herring of Georgia Sierra Club.
Tuesday and today, Georgia’s elected legislators stood up for the people against a fracked methane pipeline invader:
Y’all! We don’t win votes on the House floor every day, and the effort to keep the state easements for the Sabal Trail pipeline was truly a joy to watch. R’s, D’s, lawyers, community folk, everyone pitched in and it “went down in flames” 34-128 — AJC [Atlanta Journal Constitution] reporter’s words, not mine! Congrats to all the Georgia Water Coalition….
That’s how Georgia Sierra Club’s Colleen Kiernan summed up what happened Tuesday to the river drilling easements for Spectra Energy’s fracked gas Sabal “Sinkhole” Trail pipeline. Yes, the same Spectra of the Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) Project, PennEast, Atlantic Bridge, South Texas Expansion, the West Coast Pipeline in British Columbia, and far too many other unnecessary pipeline invasions throughout North America.
Georgia Water Coalition organized this excellent result, including Continue reading
Here’s who voted which way when Sabal Trail lost in a landslide against its easements to drill under our Withlacoochee River and Okapilco Creek and other rivers and creeks in Georgia.
Thanks to Bentley, Harden, Houston, Pirkle, Powell, Rynders, Sharper, Shaw, Spencer, and Watson for voting Nay against that pipeline river-drilling boondoggle.
And Carter, Corbett, and LaRiccia, well, thanks for listening, I guess.
I’ve added Continue reading
Update 2016-03-22 10:30PM: The vote tally.
As reported by Georgia Sierra Club:
Thank you to everyone who contacted a legislator about SR 954 and their concerns about the Sabal Trail pipeline easements. The house voted down the bill 128-34 this afternoon!!! CONGRATULATIONS!
Thanks to everyone, especially Georgia Water Coalition, Georgia Sierra Club, Flint Riverkeeper, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, everybody else who helped, and of course all WWALS members and everyone else who called their state reps.
There still more you can do to stop Sabal Trail. See the op-ed blog post of today. Continue reading
Update 2016-02-22: We all won by a landslide in the Georgia House! There’s more to do tomorrow until Sabal Trail is ended for good; see below.
Please call your Georgia state representative and ask them to vote No today on SR 954 that would give Sabal Trail easements to drill under our rivers. Here’s why:
John S. Quarterman, VDT, 2016-03-22, Still possible to keep Sabal Trail out,
After two years going to Sabal Trail open houses and FERC scoping meetings, filing e-comments, guiding them to the river crossings and a legal hearing in Jasper, FERC still tells us customers for Spectra Energy from Houston, Texas, constitute a need that outweighs local property rights, environmental destruction, and hazards to our Withlacoochee and Suwannee rivers and the Floridan Aquifer, and to taxes, life, and limb.
Yet Georgia is the fastest-growing U.S. solar market, while solar Continue reading
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,
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
The Commissioners for the one county on every Sabal Trail fracked methane path ever proposed, Suwannee County, Florida, meet tonight at 6PM in Live Oak. I can’t go, so I sent them this letter (PDF). If you can go, please do, or you can send them a letter, too.
To: Suwannee County Board of County Commissioners,
Dear Commissioners,
Thanks again for your hospitality at your meeting of December 15th.
Solar and wind can make coal go away with no need for natural gas.
The FPL representative who spoke didn’t seem aware of what Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning said about solar power last June: “If somebody wants to buy distributed generation, I want to sell it to 'em." See Herman K. Trabish, UtilityDive, June 11, 2015, “Inside Georgia Power's move into the residential solar market: The utility says it will offer solar through an unregulated business, but installers fear possible anticompetitive impacts”:
http://www.utilitydive.com/news/inside-georgia-powers-move-into-the-residential-solar-market/400562/That meeting gave me deja vu about a few years ago when Georgia Power and Southern Company were claiming Continue reading
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