
Advocacy/Upcoming Events
Earth Day on the Square: April 22, 1-4 PM
Why This Matters
The noise is bad, but the really huge problem is that air particle pollution hurts us all. Local governments should be able to decide, especially in more densely populated areas, if gas blowers are too harmful for their residents. You can contact members of the House Rules Committee to ask them to vote NO on SB-145. Emails and calls can be quick and to the point. It is the numbers of emails and calls not the content that is important at this point!
Why This Matters
The Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is one of the largest intact freshwater ecosystems in the country and is considered an icon of the southeast. The swamp is home to hundreds of species of plants and animals, including the gopher tortoise and the gopher frog, two species that are protected by law.
Twin Pines Minerals, LLC, out of Birmingham, Alabama, is seeking to set up a mining operation in the wetlands just outside the Okefenokee NWR. Twin Pines intends to mine heavy metals such as titanium dioxide, a mineral used to create a white pigment in paper and paint, at the proposed mine.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge, has expressed that the project poses “substantial risks for significant effect” to the environment and that “should impacts occur, they may not be able to be reversed, repaired, or mitigated…” Mining in these wetlands, which form the natural barrier of the swamp, could have catastrophic impacts on the Okefenokee.