Monthly Archives: October 2017

Barber Pool, early 20th century

Update 2024-05-01: Fixed image links and a few typos, and added strip mine too near the Okefenokee swamp.

Floridians worried about springs drying up: it already happened to this one. A sad channel with no flow in Saunders Park once was a large and famous spring-fed pool, remembered by many in Valdosta, Georgia, both those who went there and those who were refused.

The man who built Barber Pool at that spring on River Street, E.R. Barber, was the first Coca-Cola bottler outside of Atlanta, an inventor, and also the builder of the current home of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce. The Barber-Pittman House is on the National Register of Historic Places. That big house on the main drag, Ashley Street, just north of downtown Valdosta, was willed to the citizens of Valdoosta by his daughter, Ola Barber-PIttman.

Here’s what Barber Pool looked like in its heyday.

Slide, Spring-fed

Thanks to Continue reading →

Skillet Festival

With cast iron raffle and kayak raffle

Agenda, WWALS Quarterly Board Meeting 2017-10-22

Draft Agenda
WWALS Quarterly Board Meeting
2-4PM, Sunday, 22 October 2017
Wooden Nickel, 3269 Inner Perimeter Rd, Valdosta, GA 31602
Kayak raffle, paddle races, songwriting contest, festivals, water trails, water quality monitoring, pipelines, phosphate mines, and more.

All WWALS members, especially committee members, are invited to attend, as is the general public.

All WWALS Board Members are expected to attend in person or by telephone.
The more done on the board list, the less time we’ll have to spend on them in this meeting.

Board Members:
Continue reading →

Alabama sends email for sewage spills 2017-09-01

Florida does it. Alabama does it. Maybe Georgia should do it: post pollution notices online as they are received, and send out email notices to those who have signed up. That way cities and counties would not have to notify anybody but the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (GA-EPD), and Riverkeepers wouldn’t have to poll each and every city and county to find out what is going on.

See below for the interactive map of sewage spills in Alabama in 2016 by Alabama Riverkeepers, and see also the Florida map I drew from Florida’s Pollution Notices.

Alabama also requires reporters to include latitude and longitude in their reports, and to use an electronic reporting system. Both are great improvements on Georgia’s current methods of telephoning in a number and responding to open records requests with records that do not have GPS coordinates.

Dennis Pillion, AL.com, 1 September 2017, ADEM rolls out email notifications for sewage spills, Continue reading →

Rubio should do solar panels for jobs and resilience, not LNG

Senator Rubio’s small-scale LNG export bill risks more Florida sewage spills in the next hurricane while getting in the way of good solar jobs and reduced power bills for Floridians.

It seems like they never intended to listen. Two days after WWALS submitted comments at the deadline for the Department of Energy’s small-scale LNG exports, Florida Senator Marco Rubio introduced legislation to implement that rule.

Solar power for the Sunshine State will generate jobs right where they’re needed, in rural planning, delivery, and installation. That will also reduce everybody’s power bills, while making Florida much more resilient to hurricanes.

Crowley Maritime is already exporting LNG from Jacksonville to Continue reading →

WWALS Against Small-Scale Natural Gas Exports

Submitted by WWALS in Public Comment Concerning Unregulated Small Scale LNG Processing Facilities.

Duke and two canals to the Gulf, Crystal River, FL, 28.9420800, -82.7818000

From: Wwals Watershed Coalition <wwalswatershed@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 4:21 PM
Subject: RIN 1901-AB43 and FE Docket No. 17-86-R
To: fergas@hq.doe.gov
Cc: WWALS Watershed Coalition <wwalswatershed@gmail.com>
WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc. Against Small-Scale Natural Gas Exports

The path to U.S. energy independence is to finish the conversion of energy production from obsolete fossil fuels and nuclear power to clean, safe, renewable, solar, wind, and water power. Any resources spent on LNG would be better spent on getting on with real renewable power.

Proponents of pipelines often claim new pipelines will reduce the amount of natural gas shipped by road or rail. The Sabal Trail pipeline through Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, under the Withlacoochee, Suwannee, and Santa Fe Rivers, demonstrates that is not the case.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE) has already authorized: Continue reading →

WWALS at Brooks County Skillet Festival 2017-10-21

The travelling WWALS booth will be in Quitman, Georgia, this Saturday at the Skillet Festival. We will have buttons and stickers (WWALS, Suwannee Riverkeeper, Water Trails, Water Is Life) and the raffle kayak. If you like, bring a piece of cast iron for WWALS to raffle off, as well.

When: 9AM-3:30 PM, Saturday, October 21, 2017

Where: Brooks County Courthouse, 100 Screven Street, Quitman, Georgia 31643

What: Brooks County Skillet Festival, quilts, cooking, fashion, dogs, clogging, skillet toss, race, and parade

Event: facebook, meetup