Category Archives: VWW

Florida counties Task Force about Valdosta Sewage meeting in Lake City 2019-01-24

Received via email today. Most recipients got this notice Friday, but NCFRPC had a typo in my address. Yes, this is 4PM the same day as the 5:30 PM Valdosta City Council meeting. Each county has only one delegate to the Task Force, so maybe they can also send somebody to the City Council meeting.

MEETING NOTICE

MIDDLE AND LOWER SUWANNEE RIVER
AND WITHLACOOCHEE RIVER
TASK FORCE

There will be a meeting of the Middle and Lower Suwannee River and Withlacoochee River Task Force on January 24, 2019, The meeting will be held at the Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites, 213 Southwest Commerce Boulevard, Lake City, Florida, at 4:00 p.m.

[Holiday Inn, Lake City, FL]
Holiday Inn, Lake City, FL
PDF

A rather vague agenda is included, as well as minutes and slides from the previous meeting.

The only item I don’t recall from the previous meeting is this table, which appears to be Continue reading

WWALS invites downstream counties to Valdosta City Council meeting 2019-01-16

Update 2019-01-22: Yes, that’s the same day as the 4PM meeting in Lake City, Florida of the Task Force of the downstream counties. Since each county only has one Task Force delegate, maybe they can send other people to the Valdosta City Council meeting. Or, if Valdosta is too far for you, maybe you’d like to go to Lake City Thursday.

WWALS Watershed Coalition board member Eileen Box invited downstream counties and residents to come speak to the Valdosta City Council this Thursday. Suwannee Riverkeeper John S. Quarterman added, “Every Valdosta City Council agenda has Citizens to be Heard. They’re tired of hearing from me about sewage spills. Maybe if some of the affected parties downstream spoke to them directly they would notice. Come on up and give it a try!“

Eileen Box, WWALS Board Member, Suwannee Democrat
Photo: Jamie Wachter, Suwannee Democrat, Youtube video, 2019-01-14.

Jamie Wachter, Suwannee Democrat, January 16, 2019, ‘IT’S A SHAME’ Residents, officials share wastewater spill concerns with legislative delegation,

[Eileen] Box, who is a board member of the Suwannee Riverkeeper, said North Florida residents may need to expand the reach of their complaints. She said those concerns need to be directed at the people who can do something about it — the Valdosta City Council.

“If they start hearing from Suwannee County and Hamilton and Madison and all these counties that are affected, when you come and talk, it does have an effect, she said. That may be one little thing that we can do.”

The next Valdosta City Council meeting is this Thursday:

When: 5:30 PM, Thursday, January 24, 2019

Where: Council Chambers, 2nd Floor
Valdosta City Hall
216 East Central Avenue, Valdosta, GA 31601

What: Agenda Item 5. Citizens to be Heard Continue reading

Water Quality Testing, Troupville Boat Ramp 2019-01-06

You can learn how to do water quality testing, and help WWALS test our waters. We have Florida training coming up this Monday, January 21, 2019, at noon, at Suwannee River State Park. We’ll be scheduling another Georgia training soon.

[Air]
Air

Here is Sara Jay testing Little River water at Troupville Boat Ramp, Sunday, January 6, 2019.

[Continue titrating with Sodium Thiosulfate ONE DROP AT A TIME, swirling thoroughly after each drop,]
Continue titrating with Sodium Thiosulfate ONE DROP AT A TIME, swirling thoroughly after each drop,

Pictures of the whole test procedure are Continue reading

Rochelle details, and Tifton spills at Agrirama Lift Station 2019-01-15

Tifton, and any other cities: if you keep spilling from the same place whenever there’s a big rain, maybe it’s not the rain that’s excessive. Maybe your sewage infrastructure is inadequate and you should fix it.

Map: Agrirama Lake, Spills
One day a week ago GA-EPD included latitude and longitude in the spreadsheet, with this for Tifton’s Agrirama Lake Lift Station: 31.464770, -83.530532, shown here on the WWALS map of the Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail (WLRWT).

In yesterday’s GA-EPD Sewage Spills Report we have a little more detail on the 300-gallon Rochelle, GA spill: Continue reading

Quitman spill amount 2019-01-14 for 2019-01-03

Finally we see in the GA-EPD data from yesterday a total for Quitman’s spill of the third of January:

120,000 gallons of raw sewage, Diff

120,000 gallons of raw sewage. That’s far more than my previous guess.

Maybe you’d like to join the new WWALS water quality testing program. Or maybe you’d like to join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!

Let’s add up Quitman’s recent spills: Continue reading

Top of the Alapaha River Basin: Rochelle, GA, spilled 2019-01-10

First time we’ve seen this: 300 gallons of raw sewage spilled from Rochelle, Georgia, in Wilcox County, at the top of the Alapaha River Basin.

Spill, Rochelle, GA

Rochelle is nestled between Continue reading

Tifton spilled again into Agrirama Lake 2019-01-06

Yet again into Agrirama Lake, Tifton spilled 8,500 gallons of raw sewage yesterday (Sunday, January 6, 2019). And, finally, a number of gallons Valdosta spilled from its Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant back on December 15, 2018.

Tifton (and Dekalb, Fulton, and Clayton Counties), Spreadsheet

As you can see, cities in the Atlanta Metro Area spilled more. And in the table below you can see many more of them spilled.

Not that that makes Tifton’s spill Continue reading

Still below the limit: fecal coliform in Valdosta river data 2019-01-02

Three weeks in a row! The Valdosta river water quality testing data WWALS obtains through a weekly open records request shows all stations tested below the Georgia state limit last Wednesday.

Graph, Withlacoochee River Basin, Withlacoochee

However, like the week before, there are no data for Continue reading

Quitman LAS spills again 2019-01-03

Quitman spilled raw sewage again yesterday, January 3, 2019, from its Land Application Site (LAS) east of town, south of US 84, next to Okapilco Creek. GA-EPD in its Sewage Spills Report of today finally got the river basin right (Suwannee), but seems to have forgotten which creek that LAS is near.

Quitman Land Application Site, Map
Quitman LAS on the WWALS google map for the Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail (WLRWT).

No amount is reported yet, but Quitman usually spills between 20,000 and 80,000 gallons of raw sewage. We shall see.

Spills reported to GA-EPD through 2019-01-03

That Quitman spill is the only new one in the Suwannee River Basin for the past 30 days.

GA-EPD spreadsheet 2019-01-03, Report
WWALS diff of 2019-01-03 and 2019-01-04 GA-EPD Sewage Spill Reports.

A bunch of other reports are rolling off the end, as indicated by Continue reading

No new Suwannee River Basin Spills in Georgia 2018-12-31

No new spills reported in the Suwannee River Basin in Georgia! We do have some clarifications on old spills, some even with raw sewage totals.

Since the Sewage Spills Report GA-EPD posts each day replaces the previous one, WWALS has started picking up those reports daily and parsing out differences.

Diff 2018-12-20 and 2018-12-21, Tables

This has revealed a total for a Quitman report, some Smithbriar Drive spelling corrections, a total for one Valdosta spill location, and where it goes (spoiler: into the Alapaha River Basin).

We don’t see any new spills in the past two weeks in the Suwannee River Basin in Georgia.

We also don’t see Continue reading