Category Archives: River

Alapaha River Boat Ramp

These are the maps Lowndes County Engineer Mike Fletcher presented at the Naylor Town Hall 2016-04-14. Bret Huntley asked him to send them, and he did.

These have more detail than Continue reading →

After Pennsylvania explosion, Ask your county commission to rescind Sabal Trail agreements or at least write the Army Corps of Engineers

A Spectra Energy pipeline blew up east of Pittsburgh, incinerating a man’s house and sending him to the hospital with burns. Spectra declared force majeure (Act of God) and is fiddling gas deliveries all over the east coast, as far away as Little Rock, where a branch of that same Spectra Texas Eastern pipeline blew up under the Arkansas River in May 2015. Do you want that under the Withlacoochee or Suwannee River or Okapilco Creek?

For Lowndes County, Georgia, you can write to commissioner@lowndescounty.com.

You can ask them to Continue reading →

Map of American Rivers by Nelson Minar

Here’s a map of all rivers in the U.S. by Nelson Minar. It actually covers the lower 48 states and is pretty impressive at that scale. Plus you can zoom in.

Gulf and south Atlantic

Here you can see rivers running to the Gulf start all the way up Continue reading →

WWALS asks Lowndes County to do three things more against Sabal Trail 2016-04-24

Sent yesterday to the Chairman, the other five elected Lowndes County Commissioners, and the County Clerk (PDF). They meet again 5:30PM Tuesday evening, April 25th 2016.

Dear Commissioners,
Thanks to Chairman Bill Slaughter for saying in the Valdosta Daily Times that the Commission signing an easement contract was not an endorsement of the Sabal Trail pipeline.^[1] Therefore I ask you to:

Invite the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to investigate on site and on paper the numerous omissions by Sabal Trail of springs and underground water transmissivity in what it told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; .please see the letter from WWALS to the Army Corps,^[2] attached with the letter from WWALS to you of April 12th.
Ask our U.S. Congress member Austin Scott (GA-08) to join the four Georgia Congress members who have already asked FERC to fix its processes or deny a permit for Sabal Trail.^[3]
Join the hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals who have already asked the U.S. Congress to call in the General Accounting Office (GAO) to review FERC’s permitting processes.^[4]

Please find appended further information about the issues the Chairman raised in the VDT of eminent domain, in differences in regulation of oil and gas pipelines, and in environmental and safety issues of natural gas pipelines.
Since I wrote to you on April 12th, two more major natural gas pipelines have run into serious problems.
On April 20th, Kinder Morgan shelved Continue reading →

A wonderful Paddle on the Alapaha 2016-04-23

HWY 84 to Mayday.

What a great day for a paddle! The current was moving us along nicely, about 12 miles in just under 4 hours. It is a very beautiful stretch of river, very wild, many birds could be heard in the forest canopy.

cjm

This was the Hotchkiss Road to Mayday Outing.

More from Chris’s details in the Outings spreadsheet:

Hotchkiss road was washed out, put in at Naylor park property. Cut about .5 mile off of the trip.
Water level 85 on the Statenville gage. Was in the banks and moving quick. Would not recommend paddling at levels much higher than this.
Features: canopy over much of the river.
Flora: Tupelo, birch, oaks, pine, wild azalea. No invasive species seen.
Fauna: wood ducks, great egrets, kingfisher, heard- barred owls, hooded warblers, and many other birds.
Assessment: Very nice paddle. Very beautiful stretch of river

And a bit more from Chris:

Water level was high, much higher would not be recommended. Looking at the water level in comparison with the Safe Water Level criteria, Item 3 stood out. It became very apparent why it is important that you should be able to paddle against the current for a short distance. One of our paddlers needed a rescue and the only way to reach her was to paddle upstream.

-jsq

You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!

Earth Day 2016, at VSU, on the Alapaha River, and worldwide

Noon to 3PM today, WWALS will be on the VSU front lawn with Students Against Violating the Environment (S.A.V.E.), celebrating Earth Day, recommending along with Waterkeeper Alliance: Keep it in the Ground, especially fracking for pipelines including Sabal Trail, and congratulating Lowndes County on progress on the new Naylor Boatramp and Valdosta on finally almost just about pretty soon finishing its fixes to stop spilling sewage into our rivers.

Tomorrow at 8AM, come paddle with WWALS from Hotchkiss Road in Lanier County to Mayday in Echols County, past the new park and boat ramp Lowndes County is building just north of US 84. Next month at Reed Bingham State Park between Adel and Moultrie, GA, it’s the BIG Little River Paddle Race, registration 8-9AM Saturday May 21, 2016. And in June come paddle on the Withlacoochee River from Florida Campsites Ramp to Suwannee River State Park, Saturday June 4, 2016. Before then we hope to invite everybody downstream from Valdosta’s sewage spills to attend the end-of-May signing ceremony for the new Valdosta force main and uphill Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant!

If you fall in on one of these outings, you could win Continue reading →

Fallers and Flag

Since falling out of boats into our rivers is popular during outings, Phil Hubbard made these nifty plaques for Fallers.

Phil also made a small WWALS flag. Continue reading →

Valdosta wastewater improvements ribbon cutting being scheduled for May

Valdosta seems serious about finally opening its new force main and uphill Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant: they’re scheduling a ribbon cutting for May, a year ahead of the original schedule. According to both City Council Tim Carroll and Engineering Assistant Director Emily Davenport, the EPA has already pressure-tested the relevant lines and the plant, and approved them.

People downstream are rightly concerned at the many years they’ve endured wastewater from Valdosta. And recent schedule slips haven’t helped their perceptions, which is why actually holding Continue reading →

No new sewer spills from Valdosta or Lowndes County 2016-04-14

Nothing new since April 4th is good news today from Utilities at both local governments, since the Valdosta spills into both the Withlacoochee and Alapaha watersheds of April 2nd and 3rd, and the Lowndes County spill into the Withlacoochee River of Aprll 4th. So Suwannee River people at the moment only have those spills, arriving downstream about now, to look forward to for the moment.

Valdosta is sometimes a little slow posting a report, and Lowndes County never posted one on its website last time, so I called both of them just now. Tuesday I asked Lowndes County to post such reports on its website and send them through their agenda alert system. It’s possible they may start doing that.