Tag Archives: Georgia Water Coalition

Moratorium on Palmetto Pipeline goes to GA Gov. for signature on HB 1036

We all won twice against invading pipelines this week in the Georgia legislature. Yes, pipeline companies, advocates of water, air, and property rights work together, too A smashing 34-128 defeat of Spectra Energy’s invading Sabal “Sinkhole” Trail natural gas pipeline, by WWALS, Flint Riverkeeper, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Georgia Sierra Club, Georgia Water Coalition, SpectraBusters, and many others, wasn’t the only win for landowners, environmentalists, and the people in the Georgia legislature this week. Push Back the Pipeline‘s petroleum products moratorium passed the final legislative hurdle in the House and is on its way to Gov. Nathan Deal to sign. You know, if Deal had stood up for the people against Sabal Trail, too, its easements to drill under Georgia rivers including our Withlacoochee River and Okapilco Creek, would have been defeated in the State Land Commission of which he is chair before they ever got to the legislature. But we all won, and won again! Spectra, Kinder Morgan, and even ALEC lost this time.

Walter C. Jones, jacksonville.com, 23 March 2016, Bill to stall pipeline from Belton, S.C., to Jacksonville awaits Georgia governor’s signature: Georgia House adopted moratorium that would impose moratorium on licensing and permitting until July 2017, Continue reading →

Sabal Trail disappointed in GWC Dirty Dozen; locals disappointed in Sabal Trail –WCTV

Spectra’s Andrea Grover is “disappointed” in Sabal Trail being on the Georgia Water Coalition Dirty Dozen; does she also find it “hard to believe” like Sabal Trail’s well-documented eminent domain threats?

300x166 Harm --Chris Manganiello, in GWC Dirty Dozen Sabal Trail on WCTV, by John S. Quarterman, for WWALS.net, 26 November 2014 Winnie Wright, WCTV, 26 November 2014, Sabal Trail Pipeline Environmental Concerns Cited In Annual ‘Dirty Dozen’ Report,

Recently, The Georgia Water Coalition put the Sabal Trail Pipeline on their Dirty Dozen Report for 2014.

300x167 Winnie Wright of WCTV, in GWC Dirty Dozen Sabal Trail on WCTV, by John S. Quarterman, for WWALS.net, 26 November 2014 You can see Cherry Creek sinkhole behind her as she reported. She was navigated there by VSU professor Can Denizman.

She also interviewed several locals, including me at the Withlacoochee River.

Continue reading →

China, U.S., and Russia energy deals: bad news for Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline?

The U.S. and China made a historic deal on climate change this week. Here’s the good (it’s real, it’s huge, and it’s positive economically for both countries), the bad (nuclear is first on the list of those “clean energy” sources), and the ugly. Also this week China made a second huge natural gas deal with Russia: what does that mean to the current U.S. push for LNG exports, including the proposed Sabal Trail pipeline gouge through Georgia?

The Deal

Rebecca Leber, The New Republic, 12 November 2014, The World Has Waited for the U.S. and China to Take Action on Climate Change. They Just Did.

President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced on Wednesday commitments to reduce both countries’ greenhouse gas emissions. The surprise announcement, which came while Obama visits Beijing this week, is the clearest sign yet the two countries are serious on climate change.

After months of negotiations Continue reading →

Sabal Trail in GWC Dirty Dozen –VDT

Joe Adgie wrote for the VDT today 23 October 2014, Coalition: Sabal one of Dirty Dozen,

VALDOSTA — The Georgia Water Coalition has named the proposed Sabal Trail pipeline as one of its Dirty Dozen for 2014, which highlights “12 of the worst offenses to Georgia’s waters,” according to the organization.

The pipeline is proposed to run under the Withlacoochee river, near Valdosta.

Joe Adgie also took the first picture above, of Logan Hulsey and Blake Clark of Students Against Violating the Environment (S.A.V.E.) at yesterday’s protest in front of the Valdosta Sabal Trail office. The other illustrations here are from WWALS Watershed Coalition about that Dirty Dozen item #9, Sabal Trail pipeline threatens Withlacoochee River and Floridan Aquifer,

In a press release, the GWC cited the risk of contaminating southwest Georgia’s well water, rivers and streams, as well Continue reading →

Putting conservation into conservatives —John S. Quarterman

My op-ed in the VDT today. -jsq

Gov. Deal (WABE, 14 Nov 2012) temporarily forgot that “conservative” includes conserving something, like Theodore Roosevelt and national parks, or when Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge which also administers Banks Lake, when Richard Nixon started the EPA, and when Jimmy Carter signed the Soil and Water Conservation Act. If Gov. Deal wants to call conservation “liberal”, I’m happy to be a liberal working for water for our state!

Georgia Water Coalition’s Dirty Dozen

listed the biggest boondoggle of all as #11: the nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle suck up more water from the Savannah River than all local agriculture and almost as much as the city of Savannah.

If the new Plant Vogtle nukes are ever completed, all four will use more water than Savannah. In 2009 the legislature approved and Gov. Deal signed a law letting Georgia Power charge its customers in advance for building that boondoggle, to the tune of about $1.5 billion so far!

Let’s not forget

Continue reading →