6-8PM Thursday 17 July 2014
Memorial Stadium, 715 Dewey St., Waycross, GA 31501
The Environmental Protection Agency, GA Environmental Protection Division, and Georgia Department of Public Health will be present to discuss sample collection and results from the Seven Out Tank site in downtown Waycross.
EPD will also be available to address issues and answer questions regarding CSX.
From Satilla Riverkeeper’s facebook event. Here’s a map: Continue reading
Emily Davenport, Valdosta Stormwater Manager, sent a letter 2 June 2014
to attendees of the 6 May 2014 Army Corps of Engineers presentations,
with paper materials attached, and a note that they are also online at
Stormwater Division, Regional Flooding. [Not there anymore, but see updated first bullet item below. 2018-01-28 -jsq]
This one is just the presentation by the Corps.
See also: Continue reading
Comment on facebook 10 May 2014 and he told me the same by telephone.
It is clear a full watershed wide study must be completed before any decisions can be made.
As established in this first study—The City of Valdosta is the recipient-not the origin- of the flood waters. While it confirms what we already knew, my job is to try and keep the ball rolling forward. Engage congressional leaders, secure funding and find long term, sustainable solutions that benefit all communities within the watershed basin. A levee by itself is not the answer.
–Tim Carroll
This was a comment on Continue reading
In these videos of
the initial flooding study
by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the Valdosta City Council Work Session,
you can see they’re the Corps, all right: they want to build a levee.
They did emphasize that this was just an initial study on
what could be done inside Valdosta, and their main conclusion
was that there was enough need to indicate federal interest,
as in possibilities of getting federal funding for solutions.
City Manager Larry Hanson got the Corps to confirm (several times)
that Valdosta alone couldn’t stop the flooding, since the vast
majority of floodwaters comes from upstream
on the Withlacoochee and Little Rivers.
Later that same evening in response to citizen questions
at the Valdosta City Hall Annex, the Corps clarified more that
they did understand there were issues of impervious surfaces
and development and loss of wetlands and they wanted to
do a much larger study of the entire watershed,
which could take several years to accomplish.
They kept emphasizing that the Suwannee River watershed
is one of the largest in the country, and there are also
flooding problems on the Suwannee River, which could be important
for obtaining federal dollars.
As we already knew, Valdosta has funded projects already started to move the Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) uphill and to add a force main to prevent manhole overflows. People downstream in Florida may be relieved to hear something is being done.
Here’s a video playlist, followed by images of the Corp’s slides and of the City Council, and some notes.
Continue reading
To the VDT the county government always smells like azaleas
and the city of Valdosta government always smells like sewage.
The local newspaper of record doesn’t seem to smell sewage
or landfill problems from Lowndes County.
Today’s VDT editorial complains about
environmental groups paying attention to “theoretical disasters”
(presumably referring to the Sabal Trail pipeline),
yet the VDT has never covered the group that has
most consistently followed the watershed-wide
flooding issues that cause Valdosta’s flooding problems:
WWALS Watershed Coalition.
The VDT recommends citizens get more involved
in sniffing out Valdosta’s sewage problems, yet it doesn’t seem
to cover Citizens Wishing To Be Heard anymore, nor has the VDT called
for the citizen participation sessions promised by
the local governments for the Army Corps of Engineers flooding studies.
Maybe the VDT could encourage citizen participation, rather than ignore it.
VDT editorial today, It just plain stinks, Continue reading
Now
EPA is convinced that the public wants answers, after dozens of citizens
turned out to ask questions at
Waycross City Hall 14 November 2013.
A study of contamination sampling is in peer review,
and
GA EPD and
GA Health Dept. are also involved.
Citizens and
silentdisaster.org and
Satilla Riverkeeper and
WWALS Watershed Coalition are watching.
Matthew J. Huyser, EPA (l. standing blue shirt),
Jim Brown, GA EPD (c. standing white shirt),
Ashby Nix, Satilla Riverkeeper (facing Brown, paper in hand),
Joan Martin McNeal, silentdisaster.org (r. in group)
Roger Naylor, Public Relations Director for Southeast Health District,
is quite familiar with
Janet McMahan’s discovery of arsenic in groundwater
and says Continue reading
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
The
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) didn’t know there was
a large water problem hereabouts, but now they do, and they want
to take a watershed-wide approach, from the headwaters to the Gulf of
Mexico, including both surface water and aquifer issues,
perhaps starting with redrawing FEMA’s flood maps,
and maybe even including once again funding the state water council.
Thursday 11 April 2013 there was a rather large governmental meeting
organized by USACE in response to
the City of Valdosta’s request of 11 March 2103.
Yesterday,
Valdosta City Council District 5 Tim Carroll sent the appended
list of attendees, augmented by a conversation with him on the phone 13 April
and a blog comment by him later that same day on
the original post on the WWALS blog,
in which he also remarked:
Very good preliminary meeting that hopefully will yield real action on our region wide water issues. Thanks for sharing this info with WWALS.We know little else, because no media or private citizens were invited.
Those state and national agencies were brought by:
Continue reading
Big Little River Paddle Racepostponed
on account of weather for one week until Saturday 29 30 March 2013.
Sorry about that; please come next week!
-jsq
Today is the last day of the $20 online registration for the
Big Little River Paddle Race, cosponsored by WWALS Watershed Coalition
and Friends of Reed Bingham, to be held Saturday March 23rd
at Reed Bingham State Park.
WWALS blog post; event flyer PDF, and much of the flyer text is below.
Continue reading