Update 2025-01-17: OK Little and Withlacoochee Rivers, Dirty New River, Filthy Sugar Creek 2025-01-15.

GA-EPD has updated the Valdosta Sugar Creek spill to 15,000 gallons. That’s more than 10,000 gallons, which is a major spill. Valdosta’s state-required reporting after it shows Sugar Creek still filthy for Saturday.

Sugar Creek still filthy in Valdosta testing 2025-01-11, follow-up after Major Sewage Spill

Valdosta’s new web page on 2025 Sugar Creek Spill Testing shows 5,300 Fecal coliform and 5,500 cfu/100 mL E. coli at Gornto Road for Saturday. That’s 5.5 times the 1,000 alert limit.

Valdosta Sugar Creek Spill Testing still filthy 2025-01-11

As usual, results upstream at Gornto Road are not as bad: 350 FCOLI and 450 E. coli, although 450 is higher than the one-time test limit. That might be because there was about a third of an inch of rain on Friday, which may have washed some residual contamination into the creek upstream.

Valdosta’s web page shows “Date Spill Occurred: 01/06/2025 01/10/2025”. I don’t know how an end date of Friday squares with sky-high Gornto Road results for Saturday.

Both Valdosta’s web page and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (GA-EPD) Sewage Spills Report show the start date for the spill as January 6, 2025.

Valdosta Sugar Creek Spill 15,000 gallons –GA-EPD 2024-01-13

I guess that must be the date Valdosta Utilities identified the sewer line leak. Sugar Creek has been showing filthy in WWALS testing since November 8, 2024, and in Valdosta’s own testing since November 11, 2024.

I suspect the real start date of this Sugar Creek spill was November 6, during the flash flood.

It’s good they finally found the break, after two months, and after WWALS testing narrowed it down to within 2,000 feet.

The GA-EPD report shows “OVERFLOW LOCATION” as “near S Sherwood Dr (based on coordinates provided)”. S Sherwood Drive does not narrow down the location much, since that street paralells Sugar Creek from Baytree Road almost all the way to Gornto Road.

I don’t know what coordinates Valdosta provided (maybe GA-EPD should publish those).

But I know where I saw the break: at 30.8537894, -83.31538.

Open sewer line, 2025:01:07 15:26:00, 30.8537951, -83.3152965

That location is highlighted on this map.

Map: Sugar Creek from Baytree Road north to the Withlacoochee River in the WWALS map of the Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail (WLRWT).

That’s about 700 feet north (downstream) from the railroad trestle, and about halfway between Baytree Road and Gornto Road.

Open sewer line and Sugar Creek, 2025:01:07 15:26:06, 30.8537951, -83.3152965

I look forward to when Valdosta’s contractors RPI, on the job at Sugar Creek, get the sewer line moved across the tracks and out of Sugar Creek.

Valdosta’s weekly Withacoochee River testing shows good results downstream at GA 133 and US 84, so apparently the river water is diluting the contamination coming in from Sugar Creek. I still wouldn’t want to be in Sugar Creek or on the river near it.

Maybe you’d like to join us far away from that this evening, at our Full Wolf Moon paddle on Banks Lake, just west of Lakeland, Georgia, 5-7 PM.

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can help with clean, swimmable, fishable, drinkable, water in the 10,000-square-mile Suwannee River Basin in Florida and Georgia by becoming a WWALS member today!
https://wwals.net/donations/

Short Link: