Once again, Valdosta famous into Florida again for wastewater spill, and Florida residents are tired of it.

WCTV 1 March 2014, Georgia Spill Leads To Warning In Florida

[Matt] Meersman and his friends enjoy visiting the Suwannee River to train for canoe races. According to the City of Valdosta, heavy rains have caused about 7.5 million gallons of highly treated waste water to wash into the Withlacoochee River, which connects to the Suwannee. Signs are posted around the Suwannee River State Park to let people know about the possible dangers of swimming in the water.

“When it’s impacted by stuff like this, it makes it hard on us to think about it as the pristine place that we like to think of it as,” said Meersman.

Meersman says there are other rivers around the area they can practice on in the meantime, but he says he’s tired of the spills.

“It’s bad enough to see trash, but when you know there are things in the water that can hurt you that shouldn’t be there, that makes it pretty frustrating,” said Meersman.

Here’s the City of Valdosta PR of 28 February 2014, City Reports WWTP Permit Violation,

On Feb. 27, 2014, the Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) notified the Environmental Protection Division of a violation to the facility’s discharge limits for Total Suspended Solids (TSS). The incident followed a peak flow of 13.47 million gallons into the treatment plant which resulted from the heavy rain from the previous day.

After utility managers investigated the cause of the violation, it was determined that excess solids building up in the secondary clarifiers caused some solids to wash out and pass through the remaining treatment processes. It is important to note that the spill volume reported was highly-treated wastewater meeting all permit requirements with the exception of the allowed limit for TSS only.

The reported TSS measured for the effluent sample collected for Feb. 26 was 107 milligrams per liter, which is greater than 1.5 times the seven day average allowed by the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit. The reported volume of this spill is the approximately 7.5 million gallons into the Withlacoochee River.

Again, while this constitutes a major spill under regulatory guidelines, the total volume reported for the permit violation was highly-treated wastewater and met all other permit requirements, with the exception of TSS.

Upstream and downstream sampling of the Withlacoochee River was initiated on Feb. 27, and public notice signs were posted downstream of the spill location.

Contact Environmental Manager John Waite at (229) 259-3592 or at jwaite@valdostacity.com.

And on Fiscal Year 2015 Valdosta Mayor-Council Goals the first two items are sewage-related:

1. Bid, award contract and begin construction of the Force Main Project.
2. Bid, award contract and begin construction of the WWTP.

We shall see. Meanwhile, Florida is tired of Valdosta’s….

-jsq

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