If you care about water and sewage and water quality in wells and rivers,
many county commission and city council decisions affect all of those.
Here are some examples this week from the Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
which represents the most populous county in the Suwannee River Basin,
upstream from Florida.
Also, WWALS board member Phil Hubbard was appointed to Continue reading
GA-EPD’s Atlanta office sent
their entire sewage spill database for January 2017 in response to an open records request from WWALS.
For the Suwannee River Basin,
I see only the known ones by Valdosta, plus a spill from Moultrie’s
Carlton Woods Lift Station into the Ocholockonee River,
with 36000 gallons, which matches
the amount we got directly from Moultrie.
That Ochlockonee spill is still not in the Suwannee River Basin.
The Georgia Environmental Protection Division (GA-EPD) Southwest office in Albany handles the other sewage treatment operations in the Suwannee River Basin in Georgia, and that Albany office already told us by telephone that they had no reported spills other than the Tifton spill into the New River which I had gotten directly from Tifton. So I think we can conclude there were no other sewage spills into the Suwannee River Basin in Georgia in January 2017 other than the ones from Valdosta and Tifton.
Interestingly, Valdosta with its 2.2 million gallon Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) leak (and three manhole spills) was not the winner. Continue reading
Pipe
apparently not connected at Suwannee County HDD (only
two caterpillars there, and
many odd markings on pipe),
pipe
apparently already buried at Hamilton County HDD,
paddling
on the Suwannee River in between, and
a guard at Sabal Trail’s CR 141 access even after dark, Sunday February 12, 2017 to show a visiting videographer.
For where these pictures were taken, see the Google map.
-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®
Continue reading
See also some
previous pictures
of
Walk for Water & Speak for the Springs,
which was organized by Our Santa Fe River (OSFR), Sabal Trail Resistance,
and Dylan Hansen.
Below are links to each of the WWALS videos (including the earlier android phone videos), with a few notes, followed by a video playlist. Continue reading
12 + 4 boats and about 18 paddlers went even faster down the Alapaha River than we expected: six hours on the water between GA 168 and GA 122, including a lunch stop. That’s about 3 miles per hour on a chilly morning and a fine breezy warm day. And there were bon-bons and kumquats!
WWALS banner at lunch stop; picture by Gretchen Quarterman for WWALS.
Lots of native vegetation, no invasive species, some birds (buzzards, ducks, heron, flycatcher, cardinals), no animals on the land or in the water. People fishing at Lakeland said they didn’t even get a nibble. I did see a few fish beds below a creek confluence.
The water level was Continue reading
Molly Minta, The Fine Print, 5 February 2017, Rise Against the Machine: In 2013, Marion County residents began to receive letters from Sabal Trail Transmission. Now, they’ve made it their mission to save their land, and stop Sabal Trail.
Photo: Molly Minta.
An oak tree is felled by Sabal Trail construction workers.…
Months before the town considered bankruptcy in 2013, residents of Dunnellon began to receive letters from a company called Sabal Trail Transmission. The letters were an introduction and explained why the company was coming to the area: to build a natural gas pipeline and compressor station. The letters were part of the first step in the process of getting a pipeline approved.
Only landowners within 600 feet of the pipeline received a letter, so not many people in Dunnellon are aware of it. But the ones who are fear it could completely disrupt their way of life.
The pipeline will pass within a mile of the Rainbow River; residents fear Continue reading
More about that in a previous post.
-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®
You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!
Gators, herons, hawks, and a very hard-to-see bittern, all before
Billy’s Island in the Okefenokee Swamp,
on a WWALS monthly outing, 10 December 2016.
A few WWALS videos and many pictures and a google map below: Continue reading
Harriet Heywood, Op-ed, Citrus County Chronicle, 2017-02-03, Stop Sabal Trail pipeline
Today Sabal Trail Inc. is pounding a 36-inch pipe under the Withlacoochee River to force-feed us Marcellus Shale fracked gas. The powers who own decision-makers have made sure laws and regulations designed to protect the planet don’t apply to themselves. Twentieth century mindset — 21st century reality notwithstanding, they’ll offer a few hundred temporary jobs, conduct corporate social responsibility PR programs before moving on to other ventures, enabled by government agencies and politicians eager to board the fracked-gas crony capitalist bullet train, while the people, our waters and health are classified acceptable risks.
Mission accomplished while taking land through eminent domain with an unknown (by the public) quantity for export — unsurprising since there are Continue reading
First on the list of Areas Requiring Special Attention in Brooks County, Georgia:
- Areas of significant natural or cultural resources, particularly where they are likely to be intruded upon or otherwise impacted by development; such as wetlands, groundwater recharge areas and river corridors.
![/pictures/2007-01-01--brooks-compplan/[Map D-4 Water Resource Protection Districts]](/pictures/2007-01-01--brooks-compplan/small/Brooks_County_Community_Assessment-0091.jpg)
Map D-4 Water Resource Protection Districts
The next workshop for the Brooks County Comprehensive Plan will be:
Thursday, February 7th, 2017
9:30 a.m
Brooks County Commission Offices
610 South Highland Street, QuitmanIn this workshop we will work on the Land Use Maps and Character Areas.
We are inviting you to participate to ensure Continue reading