Here’s why you should ecomment to FERC and your elected officials right now. Sabal Trail filed key materials after FERC’s stated deadline, a Suwannee County, FL landowner points out in a FERC ecomment, also revealing Sabal Trail still didn’t address key springs upstream and down from its proposed new pipeline path, and said nothing about connecting caverns beneath the Suwannee and Withlacoochee Rivers.

Here’s a call to action from Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson:

Good Morning,

I realize many of you have seen me (and a few others) navigate through a enormous amount of meetings, letters, social media announcements to stop the Sabal Trail Gas (fracked)Transmission Pipeline cutting through one of our most vulnerable areas of our World, the Florida Springs Heartland.

You have watched and read from the sidelines for nearly 2 years. It is time for you to act. Call it my last ditch plea, but something has got to give in your resistance to step up and be accounted for in this effort to stop Sabal Trails. Putting this potential for an explosion through our area is a disaster for all the citizens of Florida not just the ones being forced to give up their land for a private corporation. I have asked all of you to get involved with this process and some of you have come through in surprising acts of protection of our culturally significant springs. I am now asking the rest of you to follow suit, in solidarity.

Recent reports from all over the country are piling in about gas pipeline explosions, nearly 2 a week, lately. We cannot afford to allow a private corporation to put their infrastructure through our area. A nationally syndicated TV show last week aired about the devastation sinkholes have made in the Florida landscape. Construction of this magnitude will only exacerbate our sensitive soils.

Please take a moment to read on the latest filings in the FERC portal that gives a really good explanation to the FERC that Sabal has it all wrong to come through here. This is a well written letter with documentation. It is what we all need to be saying about the path.

Here it is in web-readable form on the WWALS blog: Supplemental Comments of Proposed Intervener, Thomas S. Edwards, Manager, TSE Plantation, LLC Opposing Portion of Sabal Trail Route and Related Motion to Accept Late Comments. Thanks to Debra Johnson of Suwannee Alliance For Sustainable Growth for finding the original.

Back to Merrillee:

Although a deadline has passed, I think the attempt still can be made to make a statement in the FERC website. Do not delay, follow these instructions.

I also suggest that you get on the [FERC] listserve for updates on the esubscription.

Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson
president, Our Santa Fe River
2070 SW CR 138
Fort White, FL 32038
386-243-0322

Here’s how to send an ecomment to FERC.

Here’s how to file a motion to intervene with FERC.

Despite the “deadline” of 24 Dec 2014, FERC’s own John Peconom told me FERC will continue accepting comments and motions to intervene, and others say they have that in writing from FERC’s lawyers. In Docket CP15-17 you can see many of both.

It’s time to add your ecomment.

And don’t depend on FERC to stop this thing: six counties and two cities along Sabal Trail’s proposed gouge through our southland have passed resolutions against it. You can ask your County Commissioners and City Councillors to do the same.

If they’ve already passed a resolution, ask them to pass an ordinance about land-use or noise or air or water quality or well heads, rooted in their Comprehensive Plan. Ordinances have worked against fracking in New York State and against pipelines in Pennsylvania.

Four state representatives have already written letters to FERC opposing the pipeline. You can contact your state and national representatives and ask them to do the same. You can also ask your county commissioners and city councillors to do that.

Write letters to your local newspaper; call in to your talk radio stations; call your TV station and ask to be interviewed. Talk to your neighbors and ask them to do the same.

Local resistance recently caused the entire state of New York to ban fracking. Local resistance can ban unnecessary, destructive, and hazardous new pipelines in the great states of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.

-jsq

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