The springs have been taking a beating in our recent history and now
they are poised to brace for another blow. Spectra Energy Corp. and
NextEra Energy Inc. have teamed up to build a $3 billion gas highway
that will connect an Alabama natural gas bulk transfer station, cut
through Georgia and bisect Florida’s springs heartland.
It would extend down to Orlando, where the gas will be dispersed
into two more pipelines, ultimately benefiting Florida Power and
Light. The two corporations have created Sabal Trails LLC for the
surveying and construction team. Spectra Energy Corp. constructs
pipelines and created Sabal Trails to get the job done, while
Florida Power and Light wants the gas and is a subsidiary of the
electricity supplier NextEra Energy Inc.
The Florida citing commission has ruled to allow NextEra and Spectra
the right to survey and build another gas transmission pipeline
through Florida’s vulnerable landscape. Land impacts will be
plentiful; protected animal and plant species will have to suffer
losses by being destroyed, relocated or uprooted.
In terms of the Santa Fe River and the Ichetucknee River, Sabal
Trails has been in our neighborhoods for the past several months
trying to survey a 100-foot-wide corridor. Homeowners in Three
Rivers Estates Property Owners, Ichetucknee River Estates Property
Homeowners Association, Cypress Shores, Waccasassa Flats, Springs
Ridge, Columbia County, Suwannee County and Gilchrist County have
all received letters from the company to access their private
properties to survey.
Many homeowners have not signed the permission slip to allow entry.
Homeowners have been fighting for their property values and safety
since they first began receiving letters.
There is a glimmer of hope here. There will be no digging under the
Ichetucknee River. As the result of a concerted effort of many
individuals, elected officials, organizations and Florida Power and
Light officers, the pipeline has been moved completely out of
Columbia County.
And recently, Sabal was showing maps at a Gilchrist County
Commission meeting in which the proposed pipeline path running
parallel to the Santa Fe River has been moved south through the
center line of the Waccasassa Flats. What has not been moved is the
company’s “preferred route” that is planned to run
through a Santa Fe River springshed, about a half-mile from the
confluence of the Ichetucknee River, an old riverbed slough, a
neighborhood wildlife sanctuary — all in and around a
canopied road leading up to a community park called Davis Landing on
the Santa Fe River.
As a matter of concession, because we really do not want this
destruction at all in our area, Our Santa Fe River Inc. suggested
that Sabal move this project to the existing Florida Gas
Transmission pipeline under the Santa Fe River near the SR 129
Bridge. Unlike Sabal, Florida Gas Transmission developed its
corridor so far under the radar several years ago that by the time
we were made aware of the construction in that corridor, it was too
late to do anything in opposition to it.
We are wiser now. Springs culture has arrived in our great state.
Citizens are dangerously close to losing one of the most valued
cultural phenomena, the Florida springs, magical windows into our
ever flowing Floridan Aquifer. Environmental, moral and ethical
burdens are at an all-time high in our great state.
Do we bisect the entire springs heartland to allow energy companies
to capitalize on the unsustainable business of
“fracking” our Earth’s crust? Or do we make them a
responsible energy behemoth and demand only sustainable energy
growth found in sun, wind and hydrological powers?
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is the final say-so on the
gas highway project. Scoping meetings begin this month in our area,
starting March 24 at 6 p.m. in Live Oak City Hall. Additional
meetings will be held March 25 at 6 p.m. at Bell High School and
March 26 at 6 p.m. at Rainbow Springs Country Club in Dunnellon.
These are important meetings where they will take depositions from
the public. Plan to come bearing facts and knowledge of our area and
explain to our federal government, in your own words,
why putting a
trench into the springs heartland, where our very water supply is
manifested from the Floridan Aquifer, will scar us for generations
to come.
Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson is president of Our Santa Fe River Inc., a
nonprofit group working to protect the aquifer, springs and rivers
within the watershed of the Santa Fe River.
Merrillee did it, and so can you: write a letter to your local newspaper,
or to a state or national one, for that matter.
What happened
in Georgia at this week’s FERC Scoping Meetings
in Albany, Valdosta, and Moultrie.