Update 2025-08-01: OK Withlacoochee River, Cleaner Sugar Creek, Dirty Beatty Branch 2025-07-30.

Buried in the middle of a reminder of the cancellation of the previous workshop:

“The Joint Workshop has been rescheduled for August 14, 2025 at 6:00 p.m.”

That message doesn’t say where, but I have confirmed with Scott Koons that it will be in the same place:
Valdosta City Hall Annex, 300 North Lee Street, Valdosta, Georgia.

Florida River Task Force and Valdosta City Council, Joint Workshop, Rescheduled: 2025-08-14, 6 PM

As I noted when the meeting was originally scheduled, back in 2020, this Task Force of the dozen downstream Florida counties was instrumental in getting a Consent Order on Valdosta by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (GA-EPD).

Here are a few stills from the WWALS videos of the January 8, 2020, meeting of the Task Force with the Valdosta City Council.

Detection and notification, 2025-01-08 –jsq for WWALS

Since then, Valdosta has a different Utilities Director, a different City Engineer, a different City Manager, a different Mayor, and some different City Council members. Notification of sewage spills to other government agencies is much more timely now, as are press releases, which are more informative. Sewage spills are fewer and stopped faster, so less spilled.

Manhole inspection, 2025-01-08 –jsq for WWALS

However, nobody is going to be satisfied until there are no more sewage spills. Given that this problem started decades ago when Valdosta was growing rapidly and insufficient attention was paid to its sewer system, it’s going to take years yet to fix it. Valdosta has already spent probably $150 million and this year approved $67 million in municipal bonds to fund water and sewer projects, some of which are already in progress. But it won’t happen overnight.

But Valdosta can get a better grip on its contractors, as in the most recent case of the Sugar Creek sewer spill where the contractor let the bypass pump fail in the heat and nobody noticed for at least one day, until a WWALS tester found TNTC (Too Numerous to Count) E. coli. To their credit, Valdosta Utilities got the pump running as soon as notified. But sewage had already spilled out of a nearby manhole.

Movie: Where the sewage came out from Manhole W0057, 2025:07:16 13:49:12, (45M) –jsq for WWALS 30.8520830, -83.3148764

The Task Force was dormant for a while, but recent Valdosta sewage spills have caused it to be reactivated. Some of its members already met privately with several Valdosta City officials a month or more ago.

Members of the River Task Force are:

Rick Davis, Madison County, Chair
John Hale, Suwannee County, Vice-Chair
Anthony Adams, Lafayette County
Mary Alford, Alachua County
Thomas Demps, Taylor County
Rocky Ford, Columbia County
William Martin, Gilchrist County
Melissa McNeal, Union County
Desiree Mills, Levy County
James Murphy, Hamilton County
Daniel Riddick, Bradford County
Jody Stephenson, Dixie County

Unlike the announcement of the previous meeting, this one does not have the ritual RSVP request that was apparently held over from announcements of meeting of the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council (NCFRPC).

Since probably a quorum of the Valdosta City Council will be present, this will be a public meeting, which any one can attend. And by Georgia law, anyone can record video, audio, or by other means.

 -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/

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