Tag Archives: WWALS

WWALS signs on to Global Frackdown

Ban fracking before it spreads, and ban it quickly enough to stop new pipelines! WWALS signed the Global Frackdown organized by Food and Water Watch:

Fracking threatens the air we breathe, the water we drink, the communities we love and the climate on which we depend.

The specific message WWALS added when signing 29 June 2015 was:

Fracking is driving a company from Houston, Texas to try to gouge a pipeline across our fragile watersheds and drinking water aquifer. Georgia is already the fastest-growing U.S. market for solar power, and just passed a solar financing law that will make it grow even faster. Meanwhile, a shale gas basin has been discovered under south Georgia and north Florida. Ban fracking before it spreads, and ban it quickly enough to stop new pipelines!

Remember, WWALS supports a fracking ban in Floirida, and Continue reading →

Annual Report, Board and Officer Elections, and Committee Appointments at Two Meetings 2015-07-08

Everyone is invited to two meetings Wednesday evening July 8th, both at IHOP, 1200 W 4th St, Adel, GA 31620, (229) 896-2662.

  • At 7PM, the Annual Member Meeting (Agenda) with the Annual Report and election of board members. There are two open slots, and you can still apply. All WWALS members who attend can vote for board members.
  • At 7:30 PM, the Quarterly Board Meeting (Agenda) with the annual election of officers, plus Committee Chair and member appointments, this time with missions for each Committee, including the new Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail Committee. We’ll be tuning and explaining the WWALS Mission, celebrating becoming a WATERKEEPER® Affiliate, and talking about outings, events, speakers, native and invasive species, wastewater, pipelines, fracking, and many related topics.

You can help support WWALS by becoming a member today. To be on the board or a committee, you must be a member of WWALS.

-jsq

Agricultural land bought by west coast investors

Investment firms owned by Bill Gates have bought thousands of acress of agricultural land in counties in or near WWALS watersheds in south Georgia and north Florida, all above the Floridan Aquifer, near the Alapaha, Alapahoochee, Withlacoochee, and Suwannee Rivers, as part of a nationwide buying spree of a quarter million acres.

Here’s a summary of what we’ve found thus far. Any more recent posts should be found through this search.

These purchases of hundreds and thousands of contiguous acres are all after Bill Gates announced in 2012 he was going to “fix” agriculture in conjunction with Monsanto and Syngenta.

And it’s not just Bill Gates. Continue reading →

EPA coal plant emission limits still in place during legal cost review

Justice Scalia never said the EPA emissions rule was struck down, rather the Supreme Court sent it back to a lower court to get a cost analysis from EPA. 300x305 Mercury, in Improving Air Quality in Georgia, by Georgia Power, 30 June 2015 Meanwhile, many of the emissions controls are already in place on coal plants (including Plant Scherer), other coal plants have closed or are closing, and investors are abandoning coal in droves. So what Scalia wants may or may not be impossible for EPA to deliver, but EPA actually already has helped sink dirty coal. Meanwhile, Georgia Power finally is helping the sun rise on Georgia. So the prognosis is good for less mercury in the Alapaha River.

Emily Atkin, ThinkProgress Climate, 29 June 2015, What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About The Supreme Court’s Mercury Pollution Ruling, Continue reading →

Supreme Court rules on cost against EPA coal plant emission limitations

The EPA should account for all costs before making a ruling on mercury or other coal plant emissions, according to a 5:4 majority of the Supreme Court. The dissenting minority points out not only are costs usually figured in during the follow-on process for specific limits, but that actual costs can’t even be computed without knowing those limits. So Coal Plant Scherer mercury in the Alapaha River can’t be limited without figuring all the costs first, says the SCOTUS majority, although EPA and the Court minority point to numerous well-known medical problems caused by mercury. Are profits for a few big utilities and coal companies more important than clean water and public health, especially now that there are cleaner, safer, faster-to-build, and less expensive renewable energy sources available in solar and wind power?

According to today’s SCOTUS ruling, Continue reading →

Burnt Church in Lakeland to Hotchkiss in Stockton –Chris Graham 2015-06-20

Alapaha River Water Trail Committee Chair Chris Graham went with a few friends down the middle section of this Blueway:

Which is roughly 12 river miles. It was amazing epic river trip. Continue reading →

First Withlacoochee River Water Trail Committee meeting tonight 2015-06-22

We just added another member to this committee, and we’re looking for more (see press release, for multiple committees, and for the WWALS board. If interested, please fill out the application form.

Withlacoochee River Water Trail Committee
Meeting Agenda
7:30 PM, Monday, 22 June 2015
by telephone
Contact Committee Chair Chris Mericle for details
mericle@gmail.com, 386-855-5096 cell, 386-938-5943 home

  1. Review Proposal that was accepted by the WWALS Executive Board for this new committee.
    Create a working document from the proposal: a blueprint for the water trail
  2. Discuss the water trail name:
    • Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail
    • or Withlacoochee River Water Trail
    • or something else?
  3. Review material on the WRWT web page (to be continued in further meetings)

-jsq

This sister earth now cries out to us –Pope Francis

Pope Francis makes a religious, ethical, humane, scientific, and practical case for stewardship of this earth and its waters, with moral and ethical bases for “the choices which determine our behaviour”. His case does not require any reader to be Catholic or Christian, as the Pope integrates his faith with the science of an integral ecology. You don’t have to agree with everything he wrote (I don’t) to agree with the gist of it, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

“all life is interrelated”

Tiber River, vatican.va

Pope Francis’ letter to the world is long but well worth reading in full, and these excerpts I hope will encourage everyone to do that.

ENCYCLICAL LETTER LAUDATO SI’ OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME, 18 June 2015, Vatican City. Continue reading →

Suwannee River Basin watershed organizations and Suwannee-Satilla Regional Water Planning Council

300x243 HUC 031102 Suwannee Basin, in Suwannee Region HUC, by USGS, for WWALS.net, 14 June 2015

Update 2015-06-22: SOS will remain focused on the Lower Suwannee.

Can’t tell the players without a card, and there’s a new player at Monday’s Suwannee-Satilla Regional Water Planning Council 2015-06-15, in between south of Satilla Riverkeeper and WWALS Watershed Coalition: Save Our Suwannee.

Also, WWALS is now WWALS Watershed Coalition, a WATERKEEPER® Affiliate, conserving the Alapaha and Withlacoochee River basins, including the watersheds of all their tributaries.

In Florida, Continue reading →