WWALS was this year’s Watershed Group of the Year at Georgia River Network’s
annual
River Celebration Awards,
presented at Little Ocmulgee State Park, 28 April 2017.
Photo: Joe Cook for GRN
On hand to receive the award were Gretchen Quarterman, WWALS Executive Director,
John S. Quarterman, WWALS President and Suwannee Riverkeeper, and Dave Hetzel,
WWALS Ambassador.
Presenting the award were Dana Skelton, GRN Executive Director
and Gwyneth Moody, Director of Programs & Outreach. Continue reading →
Apparently Charlie Dean has one more day left on an FDEP permit to build
a dock at Nichols Spring on the Withlacoochee (south) River
at
Lat: 28° 50′ 23.6438″ Lon: -82° 12′ 9.8242″ (28.839901, -82.202729),
at SR 44 on CR 251 West, Wildwood, in Sumter County, Florida.
The nearest house, maybe his, is at
5927 CR 251W,
Lake Panasoffkee, FL 33538.
Possibly this is
former Florida State Senator Charlie Dean (R-District 5),
who represented parts or all of Baker, Citrus, Columbia, Dixie, Gilchrist, Lafayette, Levy, Marion, Suwannee, and Union Counties, Florida,
but curiously not Sumter County.
A primary objective of the WWALS Science Committee is to compile
published scientific literature for the Suwannee basin. We are doing
this using online search engines including the
University of Georgia System Galileo program
and
Google Scholar.
Remarkably,
our searches have identified thousands of published scientific
papers and reports that link to the keyword, “Suwannee”.
Examination of many revealed that they describe research using
dissolved organic matter isolated from the Suwannee River near
Fargo, GA. This is the material that gives the water its special
color.
Apparently that wet area I saw
March 20, 2017 at Sabal Trail’s Suwannee River HDD access in Suwannee County
was
a “depression”
they had just
logged
the previous day.
Two more recent ones show up in Sabal Trail’s latest bi-weekly report,
along with a couple of earlier ones they still haven’t even attempted to fix.
Why should we expect these sinkholes will stop happening if Sabal Trail finishes and takes all their workers back to Houston, leaving us to deal with the damage?
I also wondered what they were up to a bit southeast of that drill site,
beyond the dirt berm where I could only see their heads and hats.
Apparently that was another sinkhole from January at the
Suwannee River HDD in Suwannee County.
Or maybe it was in Hamilton County in Suwannee River State Park;
their description is so sloppy it’s hard to tell.
You can still comment by tomorrow, Monday, May 8, 2017
on
Georgia Power’s NIMBY plan for the coal ash it generated,
to send it away from Plant Mitchell to local landfills, maybe yours.
You don’t have to hire an attorney;
you can send in
written comments by tomorrow, May 8, 2017, according to
the the GA-EPD announcement of March 31, 2017: Continue reading →
With the Suwannee River low, you can see the effluent coming out of the pipe
west of Live Oak, FL.
Pilgrim’s Pride just rejected a shareholder resolution to
curb water pollution from its operations.
And Aviagen is opening a chicken breeding operation in Brooks County, GA,
in the watershed of the Withlacoochee River, upstream of the Suwannee.
“We’ve got loss of production for the future that will take not my
lifetime, not my kids’ lifetime, but my kids’ kids’ lifetime to
recover from,” Randy Dowdy
Randy Dowdy is a major corn and soybean producer. In fact, he holds
a world’s record for soybean production and a U.S. record for corn
production but now he says his award-winning farm is in jeopardy.
Daniel Demersseman (VDT), Randy Dowdy (farmer), photo by John S. Quarterman for WWALS Watershed Coalition
Environmentalists held a press conference this week alongside Dowdy
to say their worst fears about the pipeline have been realized.