John Muir, who founded the Sierra
Club in 1892, had hiked from Gainesville to Cedar Key in the late 1800s when he
had the insight that our natural systems have value in and of themselves, apart
from any benefits they provide for humans. Muir wrote about that idea in the
journal that was later published in his book, “A Thousand-Mile Walk to the
Gulf”:
…Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit—the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge
I like to think that Muir would be
pleased with news that in June 2016, the Sierra Club hired Merrillee
Malwitz-Jipson, former president and policy director of Our Santa Fe River, to
lead a new effort to protect Florida’s freshwater springs from pollution.
Before Christmas—as American
Indians at Standing Rock were making headlines to protect water from damage by
the Dakota Access Pipeline—I sat down with Merrillee to talk about our springs,
Florida’s Sabal Trail Pipeline, and her new role with the Sierra Club.
“The Sierra Club hired me because they
needed a grassroots organizer in North Florida to work for springs protection,”
Merrillee explained. “The club is concerned about the amount of pollution that
is damaging our springs, so I’m focused on that. My job also includes
complementing the work that’s being done by the club’s Suwannee-St. Johns
Chapter.”
The new Sierra Club office is located
at Merrillee’s family-run business, Rum 138 in southern Columbia County.
Geographically the largest Sierra
Club chapter in the eastern United States, the Suwannee-St. Johns (SSJ) group
has close to 2000 members and includes all or part of 16 counties in Florida’s
springs heartland.
One of Merrillee’s projects is to
assist with the creation of SSJ’s new North County Working Group. Designed to encourage
people to be the eyes and ears of Sierra in North Central Florida—to watch for
development, changes in water use or land use regulations or anything else that
might damage our springs—the group meets once a month on the third Saturday at
10 a.m. at Rum 138.
“The big effort is trying to get
better land use development on top of high aquifer recharge areas,” Merrillee
explained. “I’m working with groups to push for better land uses that do not
affect our aquifer and springs. Right now, I’m involved with people in Brooker
and other communities in Union and Bradford counties to stop new phosphate
mining that has the potential to pollute the Santa Fe River. I’m also working
with people around the state to try to stop the potential for destruction
caused by the Sabal Trail fracked gas pipeline that is coming through our
region.”
Designed to carry large amounts of
natural gas, the Sabal Trail Pipeline has received its required permits and is
under construction, boring through wetlands and sensitive areas that are prone
to sinkholes. To protect the springs and the Floridan aquifer, the Sierra Club
joined with the Flint Riverkeeper in Georgia and the Gulf Restoration Network
in a lawsuit challenging permits for the pipeline. At press time, the lawsuit
is still in the court system.
“The Sabal Trail Pipeline is
newsworthy because the power corporations involved are locking us into fossil
fuels rather than moving toward more sustainable energy sources such as sun and
wind,” Merrillee explained. “There is a statewide movement against the pipeline
because of that and because pipelines can leak, explode, and damage water
supplies.”
“Stopping the pipeline requires a
huge movement,” she continued. “We as citizens can stop this, even though it is
now being built.” To support that claim, Merrillee cites the stoppage of the Cross-Florida
Barge Canal in the 1960s and the recent actions at Standing Rock, where
American Indians have at least temporarily halted construction of the Dakota
Access Pipeline.
“Standing Rock put the wind in our
sails when we saw what they accomplished to delay a fossil fuel behemoth,”
Merrillee said. “The tribal network gave that movement its energy and people’s
motivation to get involved was their water supply, something they could all
stand behind.”
To learn more about the new North
County Working Group or other Sierra Club activities in the springs heartland,
email Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson at merrillee.malwitz-jipson@sierraclub.org or
call her at 386-454-1542.
To learn more about…
Sierra Club: http://www.sierraclub.org/
Sierra Club Suwannee-St. Johns Chapter: http://ssjsierra.org/
John Muir’s “Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf”: http://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/a_thousand_mile_walk_to_the_gulf/
This article originally appeared in the January 2017 issue of "The Observer," a free monthly tabloid (circulation 5000 copies) distributed in the High Springs/Alachua/Newberry/Jonesville/Fort White areas of North Florida. Many thanks to publisher Barbara Llewellyn for her kind permission to post it here.
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