Category Archives: River

Valdosta rains sewage down Sugar Creek into Withlacoochee River 2015-08-28

Valdosta can’t blame this one on rain upstream: it fell directly on Valdosta, and once again the same Meadowbrook Drive neighborhood that’s been getting doused in sewage since 2009 saw it surging out of a manhole, after three other streets got it. Valdosta says it reported all this to GA-EPD, but good luck finding it (or anything else) on EPD’s website. Once again Valdosta on its own website didn’t even say which river Sugar Creek dumps into, US 41 (North Valdosta Road), Withlacoochee River but Florida figured it out, and ain’t happy. The Florida Department of Health advisory is findable, and news media and SRWMD picked that up. Maybe Valdosta’s ongoing force main project will fix these overflows: bids were requested earlier that same month for more parts of that project. Maybe Valdosta could try to explain itself better in its own press releases?

Valdosta News, 29 August 2015, Update: Overflows Stopped, Continue reading →

Pictures: Withlacoochee River and Sabal Trail @ US 84 2015-08-28

A paddle so brief we went past and had to float back WWALS at the proposed Sabal Trail pipeline crossing 30.7955398, -83.4526749 down the Withlacoochee River to where the Sabal Trail pipeline proposes to cross.

Winnie Wright of WCTV interviewed us at the US 84 bridge median while we were preparing to put in; don’t know if it aired.

Update 2015-08-28: WCTV story online.

See previous post for pictures of the put-in. It has everything: steep rocks, thorny Smilax vines, poison ivy, and wasp stings! Yes, this is Continue reading →

Filing petition with Florida Friday against Sabal Trail

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 27th, 2015, Hahira — Continuing to oppose the unnecessary, destructive, and hazardous invading Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline, WWALS Watershed Coalition will file Friday an amended petition with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FL-DEP) opposing that agency’s intent to issue a permit for Sabal Trail Transmission to bore its 36-inch pipeline from Hamilton County to Suwannee County under the Suwannee River in Florida.

Update 2015-08-28: Here is the amended petition filed today.

WWALS originally filed a petition on August 7th. FL-DEP denied that petition on August 14th, giving a list of reasons and fourteen days to amend. WWALS will file an amended petition at the end of that fortnight, on Friday August 28th. Numerous residents of Florida have become WWALS members, and some will be named in the new filing.

Deanna Mericle, of Hamilton County, Florida, notes, Continue reading →

Withlacoochee River and Sabal Trail @ US 84 –WWALS Field Trip 2015-08-28

A very brief paddle (or walk, depending on water level) a few hundred feet up the Withlacoochee River from US 84 to see where the Sabal Trail pipeline proposes to cross. Facebook event.

When: 10AM, Friday,
August 28th 2015

Where: Meet in the parking lot at
Agri-Supply
2825 US Hwy 84W
Valdosta, GA 31601

We will carpool from there to US 84 and to where we will leave most of the vehicles.

Fallback: Continue reading →

Withlacoochee River at US 84, 2015-08-28

Halfway between Quitman and Valdosta, the Withlacoochee River forms the border between Brooks and Lowndes Counties, Georgia.

Parking on the median on the east, Lowndes County, side, you can climb down the highway rocks and down a creek bed to the river. Continue reading →

Scott backs environmentally dubious pipeline from firm he invested in –Miami New Times

Adding a video from the Arkansas River pipeline geyser, another Miami paper picked up last week’s Florida Bulldog story.

Tim Elfrink, Miami New Times, 17 August 2015, Scott backs environmentally dubious pipeline from firm he invested in, Continue reading →

Chattahoochee River Polluter Fined $10 Million

A big win from a Waterkeeper member in Georgia! CRK Press Release 17 August 2015:

Atlanta — US District Court Judge Orinda Evans levied a $10 million penalty on American Sealcoat Manufacturing LLC (Sealcoat) for unlawful discharge of toxic pollutants into the Chattahoochee River near Fulton Industrial Park. The Judge ruled in a Clean Water Act complaint brought by Chattahoochee Riverkeeper (CRK), which discovered and reported the dumping.

CRK filed its lawsuit against Continue reading →

FL Gov. Scott’s blind trust isn’t opaque

Federal disclosure laws require revealing some information Florida’s blind trust law supposedly hides, and there are other cracks in that state law that let a reporter see some of what’s in Florida Governor Rick Scott’s blind trust, including last year that he owned stock in Spectra Energy and its subsidiary DCP Midstream Partners LP, as well as in Williams Co. and a flock of other pipeline and fossil fuel companies.

Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org, 19 August 2015, You don’t need X-ray vision to see through Gov. Rick Scott’s blind trust, Continue reading →

Video: Steam engine, bridges, trees, beaches, and trash: Alapaha River by Diane Shearer

Also boating, deadfalls, steam engine, and rapids. Diane Shearer presented slides about the Alapaha River of her homeland, 31 March 2012 at Georgia River Network Weekend for Rivers, and said:

Right there at Alapaha, where it’s been clearcut behind it. This is one of the main problems of the river: there used to be nothing on that shore there but huge cypress trees and tupelo trees, and that’s almost gone everywhere. And that’s one of the great dangers to this river, is agricultural runoff, the fact that people can suck all the water out of it they want to, for irrigation and those sorts of things.

The video starts Continue reading →