Daniel Mayer, November 2006

Maybe growth, growth, growth alone isn’t any better than jobs, jobs jobs alone, and water remains one of the main issues. Kay Harris wrote in the VDT 17 Feb 2011 that Aging infrastructure, growth, and other issues contribute to city’s sewer woes:

Valdosta Utilities Director Henry … Hicks addressed the sewage spills, saying they are caused by excess rain which overloads the Withlacoochee River Water Pollution Control Plant. He said growth along the river and throughout the regional watershed area has contributed to the amount of excess water running into the river.

“When you have all this growth and you create more impervious surface area (through paving and development), more and more water is running into the Withlacoochee. On average, the plant handles six million gallons a day and is equipped to accommodate twice that, but in recent rain events, we’ve gotten upwards of 15 million gallons extra in stormwater runoff and the system can’t handle that,” Hicks said.

Some of the comments on the VDT page are also interesting. Guest remarked:

So let me get this right. After years and years of pandering to developers, Annexing county property, and building miles of underground water systems, the city has neglected to upgrade the old systems. Sounds like a tax increase in out future. This City and County are being constructively robbed by the developers in local government and the industrial authority. If your business model depends on growth, you have already failed.

Sam said:

This isn’t new. It is just new people giving the same old reasons and answers. All of us who have been around a while know that the treatment plant has been dumping sewage into the river for 40 years or even longer.

This reminds me of Ben Copeland’s points about growth and water. How much growth do we want? And how about we grow in a more sustainable way?

-jsq

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