Army Corp Of Engineers Approves Yet Another ILLEGAL Pipeline Through Endangered Ecosystems

The U.S Army Corp of Engineers has OK’d the final permits for the Sabal Trail, a pipeline that traverses trough environmentally sensitive parts of north central Florida.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that some 1,200 acres would be destroyed or impacted during construction.

Later, the agency changed that projection to less than 900 acres.Then the EPA changed their minds again and dropped significant environmental concerns over the project that included whether the potential for sinkholes and damage to the aquifer had been downplayed by Sabal Trail and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

In some cases, the EPA claimed impacts to wetlands are considered temporary and by temporary meaning it could only 50 years to revegetate.

The complete Sabal Trail project will be a $3.2 billion, 516-mile with a 3-foot-wide pipeline that will move around 1 billion cubic feet of the natural gas daily from Alabama through south Georgia and Florida.

Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson of the Sierra Club vowed via text Friday evening: “We will use all legal means necessary to stop this fracked gas pipeline.”

Pamela Smith, president of Our Santa Fe River Inc., wrote in an email that “…there is no win for the citizens of Florida, only profits for the energy companies that will move compressed gas through our delicate and already overtaxed water ecosystem.”

This pipeline is one of many pipelines that feed America’s addiction to Natural Gas and Oil. This is another pipeline that runs through somewhere fragile, places that are more commonly becoming few and far between. There is no foresight with the people in charge of this or any pipeline. As long as it does not affect the corporation’s bottom line nowhere is pristine enough or vital to human survival. As long as another dollar can be sucked from the Earth, so be it.

“When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.” – Alanis Obomsawin