The
Seven Out Superfund site is not in any of the severe aquifer
recharge zones in Ware County, fortunately,
but
drainage from it goes right across Waycross into the Satilla River,
carrying who-knows-what pollution with it.
It’s time to find out what pollution, where it comes from, and
what plume of toxic chemicals it is making underground. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Floridan Aquifer
Moody Family Housing is in aquifer recharge zone @ LCC 2013-08-27
The
Moody Family Housing just rezoned is in a recharge zone for
our drinking water supply, the Floridan Aquifer.
What will keep runoff from this subdivision from feeding through
the wetlands and sinkhole into the aquifer?
Should we depend on county engineering, which never put in
the traffic calming measures
required for nearby Nelson Hill, or other county staff,
who gave waivers for other required items there, or just didn’t
require them to be implemented?
What assurances can we get from our county government that Moody Family
Housing won’t pollute our drinking water?
The above map is a detail from
Lowndes County’s own
Water Resource Protection Districts
Ordinance (WRPDO) overlay Map.
Here’s an even more detailed view courtesy
VALOR GIS (turn on Streams and Waterbodies, NWI Wetlands, Muncipal Boundaries, and Groundwater Rechard Areas): Continue reading
Landfill is in aquifer recharge zone
In a recharge zone for
our drinking water supply, the Floridan Aquifer,
is the Pecan Row Landfill
with its
PCBs and
coal ash.
That proposed
landfill pipeline requiring cutting through the vegetative buffer
along an unnamed tributary to Spring Branch?
Also at least partly in the recharge zone. Continue reading
Fukushima has contaminated its aquifer; what about our aquifer?
Fukushima is dumping radioactive water into its aquifer.
Plant Hatch is the same design and sits above the Floridan Aquifer
we drink out of.
Can’t happen here?
On 19 December 2001
TEPCO said there was no possibility of a tsunami large enough to knock
out Fukushima Daiichi.
Plant Hatch is the same design as Fukushima, and while a tsunami
really is unlikely at Hatch, for all we know Hatch
still has substandard fire protection
and the risk if Hatch does go bad is like the risk if a French reactor
goes bad:
soil contamination the size of France and Germany
(or larger than Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and north Florida) plus radioactive contamination of
the aquifer we drink out of.
Harvey Wasserman wrote for the Progress today, The Fukushima Nightmare Gets Worse, Continue reading
Clean Green Metro Florida by Brookings Institution
Amy Liu spoke about globalization last week in Orlando,
about clean industries leading economic growth.
Even though she was talking linear growth,
her Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings Institution
has some interesting points that mesh with the exponential growth like compound interest
Georgia can get on with in solar and wind power.
The Florida Economic Development Council 2013 FEDC Conference 26-28 June 2013 was the venue for Amy Liu’s A Globally Competitive Florida: Regional Opportunities in the Next Economy. To summarize her slides (which are in a format not easily linkable, she bashes Congress to motivate cities leading. In particular, Florida’s 20 metro ares have 61.75 of land area, 94.1% of population, and 95.9% of output. Nothing surprising there: cities are densely populated. Two of the biggest in Florida are in our Floridan Aquifer: Orlando and Jacksonville. (She didn’t mention the aquifer; I did.)
The national economic recovery is slow, the middle class has been hard-hit, and Florida is recovering faster, except on unemployment. The U.S. population is rapidly getting older and by 2050 53.7% will be minorities, each of which have very different educational achievements, and much of this is happening in metro areas.
Her solution is Continue reading
Ask Georgia Power to conserve our water –Garry Gentry for WWALS @ GA PSC 2013-06-18
Garry Gentry read the
WWALS Watershed Coalition letter
at
the Georgia Public Service Commission meeting Tuesday 18 June 2013.
The recent rains have swollen our blackwater rivers, Withlacoochee, Willacoochee, Alapaha, and Little, under our longleaf pines and Spanish-moss-covered oaks, and filled up the tea-colored tannin waters in our frog-singing pocosin cypress swamps here in central South Georgia. But that was only a dent in our protracted drought that ranges from mild to extreme, with projections not much better….
There is no need to use our Floridan Aquifer water to build more baseload power plants while Georgia lags behind Michigan, Massachusetts, and even tiny New Jersey and Maryland in solar power.
WWALS calls on the PSC to ask Georgia Power to conserve our water and to bring jobs to south Georgia through solar power and wind off the Georgia coast.
You can read the complete letter. Here’s the video:
Ask Georgia Power to conserve our water –Garry Gentry for WWALS
Georgia Power proposed closing of coal plants,
Administrative Session, GA Public Service Commission (GA PSC),
Doug Everrett (1: south Georgia), Tim Echols (2: east Georgia), Chairman Chuck Eaton (3: metro Atlanta), Stan Wise (5 north Georgia), Bubba McDonald (4: west Georgia),
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
244 Washington Street SW, Atlanta, GA, 30334-9052, 18 June 2013.
-jsq
What causes sinkholes?
Fake and real sinkholes form in the same porous limestone underground
here in the Floridan Aquifer, and we get an explanation of that from
another limestone area in western New York.
Nalina Shapiro wrote for WIVB.com yesterday, What’s behind sinkholes in WNY?
So what causes these sinkholes to form?
University at Buffalo Geology Professor Dr. Marcus Bursik says there are two types of sinkholes. One type is caused by aging infrastructure, like old pipes that burst underground and eventually cause a collapse on the surface. This is more common and is sometimes called a “fake sinkhole.”
Like the Sinkhole on US 82 near Tifton August 2012, caused by a broken water main, and since filled in. The other type is much more common: Continue reading
When contamination gets into the watershed
Underground may be out of sight, but it just keeps seeping farther,
getting into more wells, poisoning more wetlands, and getting into the air,
causing cancer and other diseases.
Katie Leslie and Shannon McCaffrey wrote for the AJC 13 April 2013, 20 years later, Fort Gillem contamination still spreading,
In the early 1990s the U.S. Army discovered hazardous chemicals dumped at Fort Gillem seeping into residential wells in neighboring Forest Park. The finding prompted the military to pass out bottled water and convert many residents to a county water system from their private wells.
But two decades and a base closure later, state officials say the Army still hasn’t done enough to clean up known and suspected carcinogens that are migrating from groundwater into surface water and, potentially, into the air residents breathe.
We might want to think about that before importing coal ash; oh, wait, we already did! Maybe at least we should not import any more of it. We already have cancer-causing arsenic in some of our wells; we don’t need more. And what about that Continue reading
South Ga. officials expecting sinkholes after rain while NYTimes plays down the risk
Sinkholes aren’t just
for Florida anymore: Albany’s got them.
Are sinkholes risky?
You may think so if one is under your house.
And here above the Floridan Aquifer you probably won’t know that
until your foundations starts cracking.
Maybe we should do something to prevent the problem,
and to help people who are affected by it.
Perhaps the Lowndes County government till pay attention when
somebody’s house falls into a sinkhole.
Jim Wallace wrote for WALB 9 March 2013, Expect more sinkholes,
Some sinkholes have opened up in South Georgia since the recent heavy rains.
And engineers and public works experts say they expect more sinkholes to develop in the coming weeks. It’s just nature at work, but it can really cause some problems.
Really? Does “nature at work” include sinkholes predictably forming after massive water pumping to sprinkle strawberries during a cold snap?
The WALB story pooh-poohs the possibility of anything like that Sefner sinkhole showing up in south Georgia, and then details two Albany sinkholes:
Continue readingSuwannee County sinkholes —WCTV
Sinkholes in
Seffner, Fort Myers,
Tallahassee,
and now even closer.
Follow the Withlacoochee River south to the Suwannee River,
and two counties south of us in Suwannee County, Florida,
they’ve got dozens of sinkholes,
one of them massive, with another one this month,
including apparently a cavern under some yards.
This is in the same Floridan Aquifer that underlies Lowndes County,
where we had
a road drop into a sinkhole three years ago
and sinkholes were discovered under a man’s garage and yard last year.
Greg Gullberg 4 March 2013, The Science Behind Sinkholes,
Continue readingMikell Cook says he and his neighbors have learned more about Geology than they ever cared to since last summer when Tropical Storm Debby swept through much of Florida leaving Live Oak and surrounding areas peppered with sinkholes.
He and his neighbors live in the town of McAlpin, where