Custom
SING - Save It Now Glades - Mission Statement
SING: Vision for the Everglades
Save It Now, Glades!, Inc. (SING) originally formed in response to the threat of Florida Power & Light’s proposal to site a coal fired power plant in Moore Haven, Florida. SING recognizes the inextricable connection between electric power generation and environmental quality, particularly in the Everglades ecosystem. Since our first organizational meeting in December 2006, we have broadened our mission to other regions of Florida, the country and the globe in opposition to unsustainable power generation proposals. We have formed alliances with many environmental and social justice organizations with which we share the common goal of clean, sustainable electric power generation.
Our societal energy demand is also a demand on our shared natural resources. Some methods of generating electricity place a heavier burden than others on water quantity, water quality, air quality, and wildlife and human habitat quality and availability. (Solutions to national security issues related to dependence on fossil fuels and distributed power generation in general are concomitant benefits we hope will follow, although they are not our direct focus.) Perhaps the most devastating impact on the Everglades would be from sea level rise. Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion, especially with no demonstrated carbon sequestration ability in the region, must be weighed carefully against the comparatively mild personal impact of changes in technological preferences and lifestyle that reduce demand for power.
The pre-drainage Everglades ecosystem was a low-lying composite of rivers, marshes and swamps underlain by highly permeable geologic strata, surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean and Florida Bay marine environments. Drainage systems created to facilitate the current human habitation has also rendered us vulnerable to the transient water shortages of the past and the longer term water shortages of the foreseeable future. Water availability is also reduced by compromised quality. The stagnant canal segments and diked marshes cannot oxidize the pollutants they receive, aquatic vegetation requires chemical addition for control, and mosquito larvae molt into disease vectors for which we spray additional chemicals.
Coal fired power plants draw enormous volumes of water for cooling and other processes, re-inject the contaminated brine to the deep aquifer while releasing tremendous volumes to evaporative loss. Even equipped with the “best available control technology” required by the Clean Air Act, and limited to emit only that amount of pollution which “prevents significant deterioration” of the surrounding air quality, these plants emit sufficient quantities of nitrogen oxides, mercury, sulfur oxides, particulates, volatile organic hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide to be of serious concern. Our current Everglades is too compromised with respect to water quality and quantity to be resilient in the face of such threats.
Mercury is one contaminant of which SING feels the Everglades should tolerate no addition. The open marsh system, with its resident sulfate reducing bacteria, serves to methylate and render available for bioacculation that mercury which is emitted even after pollution control devices. Emission of sulfur dioxide which is converted to nutrients for these very bacteria upon atmospheric deposition adds insult to injury.
Oxides of nitrogen rained down as nitrate feed algal blooms in the near coastal waters and are implicated in blue baby syndrome as a groundwater contaminant. When combined with VOCs and sunlight, nitrogen oxides form ozone, an unwelcome addition to communities already inundated with smoke from cane and other burning.
For these and other reasons, SING’s mission statement remains:
Save It Now Glades opposes the construction of any new coal fired power plants due to the negative impacts on public health and its contribution to global warming and climate change. We are concerned about the deterioration of our pristine natural heritage and treasured places such as the Everglades, Fisheating Creek and the Caloosahatchee River. Further, we find there are viable alternatives to coal which include conservation, energy efficiency and clean, renewable sources of energy that must be employed as the primary means of meeting our societal energy demand.
From this position we were able to compose the resolution passed by the Everglades Coaliton at its January meeting, and attached hereto in the form of a petition already signed by more than 1000 Florida residents.
And furthermore, we don’t make any money by holding this view.
Rhonda Roff, President
Save It Now, Glades!
PO Box 1953
Clewiston, FL 33440
863.983.4639