Letters are crucial.  Urgent, important.  Write them to and call everyone.  Spend as much time on this a day as you can.  Get other people to write too.  DO a piece of art, a poem, a campaign with school children, be creative.  Write and call the Ichetucknee state park, the DEP, the Gov. and people in Tallahassee, The highway department, the local newspapers, anything.  Spend some time each day like a prayer to save the Ichetucknee River and our sacred earth.

Go to the lawsuits, see the suwannee newsletter for details, l take time to make a 30 second telephone call to Governor Bush 850-488-2272.  Register your dismay that he allowed Secretary Struhs to change his mind about the Ichetucknee Cement
Plant.  E-mail Governor your thoughts at JEB@JEB.org.

Wednesday December 1st begins Bill's Ogle appeal to Judge Kennon in the Live
Oak Court House at 9 AM.  He will argue that the Suwannee County
Commissioners violated the Comrehensive Plan in granting the cement plant
site approval.  Your presence will call attention to the importance of the
decision.  It is important that people are watching.

pummell Struhs with letters.

Secretary Struhs
3900 Commonwealth Blvd
Mail Station 49
Tallahassee, FL  32399-3000

Opponents of another air/water polluting cement kiln near the Ichetucknee
River are encouraged to telephone Governor Bush at   (850-488-2272), fax
(850-487-0801), or e-mail (JEB@JEB.org) Monday, November 22 and tell him to
Keep the Faith of the people with him.  Tell him that you care about the
pollution mounting with three cement plants within a 150 mile radius.  Tell
him that he is the protector of the Parks and of the health of the people,
and that you want him to STOP the Ichetucknee Cement Kiln.
 

donate and raise money for SOS to run the lawsuits.  Donation to SOS, PO Box 669, Bell, FL  32619, marking your check:  “For cement fund

Call Svenn at SOS and Virginia at SICK and volunteer, fundraise, march, write. This is to save the earth.

JOIN SAVE OUR SUWANNEE Dues are $15 for Individuals, $20 for Families.  SOS is a Florida 501(c)(3)non-profit corporation Editor:  S. Lindskold (904) 935-2960

Virginia Seacrist
SISTER turned SICK
352-378-6603 or 904-497-4471
 

PHONE AND/OR WRITE:

WHAT TO SAY

1.  Comment on heavy truck traffic -- 300 trips per day between the hours
of 5:00 AM and 7:00 PM.  Because of weight must use US Highways.  Consider
the congestion on US 129, the noise through town, the safety of school
children, the rapid road wear, and costly road repair showing up in your
taxes.

2.  Diesel trucks produce 40 times the Fine Particulate Matter pollution
produced by a car.  But none of it is counted in the DEP evaluation of the
Plant (i, e., only “stationary sources” are considered.)  Diesel trucks
produce 80% of all vehicle NOx (ozone precursor pollution).

3.  US 27 and the area surrounding the proposed site experience frequent
sink hole formation.   Renewed mining, dynamiting, factory vibrations and
rumbling trucks will make it worse.

4.  A Nature Conservancy property named Sims Sink is across US 27 from the
site.  This large sink is protected as one of three locations of a rare
blind cave crayfish, Procambarus erythrops.  Disruption of water level or
water flow into the caverns as little as 5 feet would have disastrous effects on the crayfish.

5.  The plant site is only three miles from the Ichetucknee State Park, one
of the State’s foremost natural attractions, with over 200,000 visitors per
year and featured on national television and in the National Geographic.

6.  Many local small businesses depend on park visitors to succeed.  Those
businesses represent jobs for local citizens, all of whom are concerned
with their environment and the County’s future.

7.  Mercury is one of the smokestack emissions.  The Ichetucknee and the
Santa Fe rivers are already under mercury advisories.  Science now
indicates that coal burning stacks are the prime source.

8.  Fine Particulate Matter is a major pollutant from the stacks.  These
microscopically fine particles find their way deep into the smallest
branches of our lungs.  They can reduce life expectancy two years on the
average.  They are disastrous to those persons, young and old, with
respiratory problems.

9.  Coal and tire-burning plants produce dioxins, one of the deadliest
atmospheric pollutants.  Without precise firing controls,  emissions can be
extreme.

10.  1175 tons per year of nitrous oxides (NOx) are estimated to be
emitted.  NOx becomes Nitrate in the atmosphere and will be deposited near
and far, on land and water.  This will add to the existing Nitrate
emergency in the Middle Suwannee Basin where millions of public and
farmers’ dollars are being spent to achieve any reduction in nitrates.

11.  Nitrates now producing algae growth in protected waters.

12.  NOx and other organic emissions become ozone when interacting with
sunlight.  Stratospheric ozone is good.  Ground-level ozone is bad.  At
ground level it is dangerous to health and agriculture.  Persons with
breathing problems suffer and must stay indoors.  Crops yields have been
shown to be reduced up to 10%, costing $500 million in the United States
yearly.  Suwannee County is an agricultural county!
There was an ozone alert last year throughout this region.  It will
probably happen again this summer.  Three years in a row and highway funds
are cut off, auto inspections are mandated, etc.