Tag Archives: Union County

A year of opportunities to stop phosphate mining in Union County, FL

Union County, Florida apparently takes its duties to the public seriously, with a series of meetings through the next year about mining (including phosphate mining) in its Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Regulations (LDR). People in Union County and everywhere who don’t want another phosphate mine leaching into groundwater, rivers, and springs and driving away other jobs, please show up at the meetings or write to the Union Board of County Commissioners (BOCC). For example, start by advocating the Commissioners extend their moratorium against phosphate mining.

Jim Tatum of Our Santa Fe River (OSFR) has turned that schedule into an image, and I’ve included it below as text, with a link to Union County’s own PDF.

Union County, FL Mining Moratorium Schedule

Text version of Union County mining amendment schedule

Union County Continue reading →
Union County
Proposed Schedule
Mining Moratorium,
Comprehensive Plan Amendment &
Land Development Regulations Amendment
November 20, 2017
(PDF)

Rubio should do solar panels for jobs and resilience, not LNG

Senator Rubio’s small-scale LNG export bill risks more Florida sewage spills in the next hurricane while getting in the way of good solar jobs and reduced power bills for Floridians.

It seems like they never intended to listen. Two days after WWALS submitted comments at the deadline for the Department of Energy’s small-scale LNG exports, Florida Senator Marco Rubio introduced legislation to implement that rule.

Crowley Maritime truck

Solar power for the Sunshine State will generate jobs right where they’re needed, in rural planning, delivery, and installation. That will also reduce everybody’s power bills, while making Florida much more resilient to hurricanes.

Crowley Maritime is already exporting LNG from Jacksonville to Continue reading →

WWALS Against Small-Scale Natural Gas Exports

Submitted by WWALS in Public Comment Concerning Unregulated Small Scale LNG Processing Facilities.

Duke and two canals to the Gulf, Crystal River, FL,
Duke and two canals to the Gulf, Crystal River, FL, 28.9420800, -82.7818000

From: Wwals Watershed Coalition <wwalswatershed@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 4:21 PM
Subject: RIN 1901-AB43 and FE Docket No. 17-86-R
To: fergas@hq.doe.gov
Cc: WWALS Watershed Coalition <wwalswatershed@gmail.com>

WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc. Against Small-Scale Natural Gas Exports

The path to U.S. energy independence is to finish the conversion of energy production from obsolete fossil fuels and nuclear power to clean, safe, renewable, solar, wind, and water power. Any resources spent on LNG would be better spent on getting on with real renewable power.

Proponents of pipelines often claim new pipelines will reduce the amount of natural gas shipped by road or rail. The Sabal Trail pipeline through Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, under the Withlacoochee, Suwannee, and Santa Fe Rivers, demonstrates that is not the case.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE) has already authorized: Continue reading →

HPS II attorney at Union BOCC

Setbacks, he says.

The Commissioners voted unanimously to table the amendments to the Union County Comprehensive Plan, after attorneys for the opponents submitted many suggested modifications and attorneys for the proposed miners asked for more time.

WWALS videos of most of the numerous speakers will follow.

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

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

Aerial photographs of Phosphate Mine site: WWALS to Union BOCC 2017-09-18

Sent today (as PDF) before this afternoon’s 4:30 PM Union County BOCC meeting at Union County High School.

September 18, 2017

To: James Tallman, Chairman
Union County Board of County Commissioners
15 NE 1st Street, Lake Butler, FL 32054
(386) 496-4241
ucbocc@windstream.net

Cc: Scott R. Koons, Executive Director
North Central Florida Regional Planning Council
2009 NW 67th Pl, Gainesville, FL 32653
(352) 955-2200
koons@ncfrpc.org

Re: Aerial photographs of Phosphate Mine site

Dear Chairman Tallman, Commissioners, Staff, Director Koons, and NCFRPC,

Sometimes it helps to see the problem from a different point of view, so on September 1st Suwannee Riverkeeper organized an overflight of the proposed HPS II mine site. Here are a few aerials from that flight. I hope they help encourage you to rezone to prevent mining in Union County, regardless whether from the current proposals or from others.

In addition to the few examples below, a few hundred more pictures are online here:

http://www.l-a-k-e.org/issues/phosphate/2017-09-01–southwings-phosphate/

The Howard mine site at the corner of CR 231 and the New River includes Five Mile Creek and other wetlands. Between there and the Pritchett mine site many people own land that could be affected. Just beyond is Worthington Springs, downhill and thus downstream from the mine.

W across Howard mine site, Five Mile Creek, SW 48th Path, CR 18A, Pritchett mine site, Worthington Springs
W across Howard mine site, Five Mile Creek, SW 48th Path, CR 18A, Pritchett mine site, Worthington Springs, 09:53:54, 29.9461300, -82.3565700

From the air, Union county looks Continue reading →

WWALS over Phosphate mine site, Union and Bradford Counties, FL 2019 2017-09-01

See from the air the land the Union County, Florida, Commissioners will be voting on tomorrow.

When: 4:30-9PM, Monday, September 17, 2017

Where: Union County High School, 1000 S. Lake Avenue, Lake Butler, FL 32054

What: Voting on Union County Comprehensive Plan with much stronger restrictions on mining

Event: Two facebook events, by Citizens Against Phosphate Mining in North Central Florida (CAPM)
and by Our Santa Fe River (OSFR).

WNW from Compressor Station up FGT pipeline to Columbia Co., 10:18:14,
WNW from Compressor Station up FGT pipeline to Columbia Co., 10:18:14, 29.9114200, -82.3324080

I took these pictures in Union and Bradford Counties, Florida, of the proposed HPS II phosphate mine site, on a Southwings flight for WWALS Watershed Coalition 1 September 2017. You can help figure out what some of them show.

The main conclusion, already published in much briefer form by Jim Tatum with a few pictures he took, is that Continue reading →

Bradford County, FL Comprehensive Plan 2012-04-19

Apparently you can mine almost anywhere in Bradford County, Florida, according to the Bradford County Comprehensive Plan:

Illustration A-X Bradford County MINING AREAS
Illustration A-X Bradford County MINING AREAS

That map is about as bad as the one in Continue reading →

Union County Proposed Mining Areas 2017-08-30

Update 2017-08-31: More maps and other information in the Phosphate Mining page.

Here’s a much better map:

Proposed Mining Areas, APplication CPA 17-02, 2017-09-18
Proposed Mining Areas, Application CPA 17-02, 2017-09-18
PDF of this map

I was confused by the mining areas map in the NCFRPC materials for the recent Union County Comprehensive Plan workshop Monday 21 August 2017. That map in the previous post appears to show almost all of Union County as mining areas. So I asked NCFRPC E.D. Ed Koons. He clarified: Continue reading →

Mining change drafts for Union County Comp. Plan 2017-08-21

Update 2017-08-31: More maps and other information in the Phosphate Mining page.

Update 2017-08-30: Follow this link for a proposed new and much better mining areas map.

Here are copies of the original searchable and high resolution PDFs of the three main items presented by NCFRPC (a slide presentation, the evaluation amendments, and a draft mining text amendment) at the Union County Comprehensive Plan workshop Monday 21 August 2017.

Mining Areas Map
Illustration A-X: Mining Areas on page A-25 of the Evaluation Amendments.
PDF of this page.

Thanks to Scott R. Koons, Executive Director, North Centra Florida Regional Planning Council, for sending these documents in response to a public records request from Suwannee Riverkeeper.

The documents are (with links to the PDFs): Continue reading →

FGT natural gas pipeline through HPS II site

Update 2017-08-31: More maps and other information in the Phosphate Mining page.

A couple of 24″ and 30″ natural gas pipelines run west to east across the New River right through the HPS II mine site, turning at the Brooker FGT compressor station to head northeast as 16″ and 20″ pipelines to Jacksonville, carrying Sabal Trail fracked methane from Suwannee County for export from Duval County through Eagle LNG and Crowley Maritime. What could possibly go wrong there with massive mining equipment?

FGT drawn on HPS II annotated map

I’ve drawn Florida Gas Transmission (FGT)’s pipeline routes in blue onto the HPS II map Citizens Against the Phosphate Mine (CAPM) already annotated.

FGT drawn on HPS II annotated map

Those FGT routes came from the maps below of Florida Gas Transmission (FGT) through Union and Bradford Counties from the Public Map Viewer of the Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA).

FGT through Union County

Continue reading →