Valdosta has fallen down to only monthly water quality testing, instead of their former weekly schedule.
They’ve also dropped their two state line stations, so the GA-FL Line trace on this graph ends in December 2018.
Readings have risen since their January sampling, with Valdosta’s US 84 sampling station above the Georgia state limit at 265 cfu/100 ml of E. coli. Continue reading
Online today and in the paper Gainesville Sun this coming Sunday. To paddle the most-affected stretch of the Withlacoochee River, join us this Saturday morning.
A December upsurge of raw sewage spills from the city of Valdosta, Georgia, has a dozen downstream counties organized into a task force, demanding action from Florida state legislators. But what action?
I recommend first getting a grip on the extent of the problem, keeping that picture up to date and then funding fixes.
![[Water]](http://www.wwals.net/pictures/2019-01-06--wwals-troupville-testing/20190106_152703.jpg)
Photo: John S. Quarterman of Sara Jay, Water Temperature, TGroupville Boat Ramp, Little River, 2019-01-06
Valdosta spilled not just twice, but two dozen times in December, totaling more than 6 million gallons of raw sewage. Spills also happened in Tifton, Quitman and Lowndes County, Georgia.
We know this because Continue reading
Update 2019-01-25: Added an HTML table of all spills in the Suwannee River Basin in Georgia since the beginning of 2015.
WWALS Science Committee Chair Tom Potter made this committee report to the WWALS Quarterly Board Meeting of January 2019:
The Science Committee has focused on monitoring sewage spills from Municipalities in the region. The primary data is the online database provide by the GA EPD. The agency regularly compiles spill volume, date, and, location across the state and posts the information on-line.
WWALS played a central role in convincing EPD to provide this data in a timely manner and has regularly posted spill data on the WWALS website, wwals.net/issues/vww/ga-spills/. This a substantial improvement over prior reporting systems and is contributing to timely reporting of conditions that may adversely impact water quality and recreational uses of streams and rivers.
The following graph summarizes reported spill data in Quitman, Tifton and Valdosta and Continue reading
Well, it’s never happened before, but the weather is too cold for WWALS to paddle. Expedition leader Shirley Kokidko says it’s not a good idea to take people out on the open water after dark, when the prediction is 42 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill feeling like 40 degrees. So she’s cancelled the full moon outing formerly scheduled for Monday evening, January 21, 2019, on Banks Lake.
![[Boat light, double moon, 18:30:47, 31.0273566, -83.1061174]](http://www.wwals.net/pictures/2018-12-22--banks-lake-solstice-moon-paddle/20181222_183047.jpg)
Boat light, double moon, 18:30:47, 31.0273566, -83.1061174
Next: Our next scheduled paddle outing is Continue reading
Three tasks at once at Troupville Boat Ramp last Tuesday! Scotti Jay picked up trash, while Sara Jay did water quality testing (you, too can learn to do that). Then while Sara finished up Scotti and I replanted the signs for the Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail (WLRWT).
Sara Jay with water quality testing kit, Scotti Jay with trash bag, Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail signs.
You can learn how to do water quality testing, and help WWALS test our waters. We have Florida training coming up this Monday, January 21, 2019, at noon, at Suwannee River State Park. We’ll be scheduling another Georgia training soon.
Here is Sara Jay testing Little River water at Troupville Boat Ramp, Sunday, January 6, 2019.
![[Continue titrating with Sodium Thiosulfate ONE DROP AT A TIME, swirling thoroughly after each drop,]](http://www.wwals.net/pictures/2019-01-06--wwals-troupville-testing/20190106_155851.jpg)
Continue titrating with Sodium Thiosulfate ONE DROP AT A TIME, swirling thoroughly after each drop,
Pictures of the whole test procedure are Continue reading
Tifton, and any other cities: if you keep spilling from the same place whenever there’s a big rain, maybe it’s not the rain that’s excessive. Maybe your sewage infrastructure is inadequate and you should fix it.
One day a week ago GA-EPD included latitude and longitude in the spreadsheet,
with this for Tifton’s Agrirama Lake Lift Station:
31.464770, -83.530532, shown here on the
WWALS map of the Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail (WLRWT).
In yesterday’s GA-EPD Sewage Spills Report we have a little more detail on the 300-gallon Rochelle, GA spill: Continue reading
Yet again into Agrirama Lake, Tifton spilled 8,500 gallons of raw sewage yesterday (Sunday, January 6, 2019). And, finally, a number of gallons Valdosta spilled from its Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant back on December 15, 2018.
As you can see, cities in the Atlanta Metro Area spilled more. And in the table below you can see many more of them spilled.
Not that that makes Tifton’s spill Continue reading
Three weeks in a row! The Valdosta river water quality testing data WWALS obtains through a weekly open records request shows all stations tested below the Georgia state limit last Wednesday.
However, like the week before, there are no data for Continue reading
There’s good news in response to the weekly open records request from WWALS to Valdosta: all stations reporting are well within the Georgia state limit for bacterial levels. There’s also some puzzling news.
The puzzling news is that Continue reading
![[Air]](http://www.wwals.net/pictures/2019-01-06--wwals-troupville-testing/20190106_152646.jpg)