Someone inside FDEP has been brave enough for years to say the emperor has no clothes regarding contamination in the Suwannee River Basin.
Photo: John S. Quarterman for WWALS, of Thomas Greenhalgh suiting up at the
Alapaha Dye Test, 2016-06-22.
Dinah Voyles Pulver, The Daytona-Beach News-Journal, 24 November 2018, State geologist challenging springs action plan raised questions before, Continue reading
Best to test for arsenic, and maybe lead, radon, and uranium, in your well and hot water heater water. In March 2013, South Health District and the Georgia Department of Health recommended testing for arsenic. That was three years after Janet McMahan discovered the arsenic problem after her family members and pets got cancer. As we wrote a few months before the Health Departments finally made their recommendation, after Janet got Erin Brockovitch involved, you may also find lead and uranium. The problem has not gone away. Also, you may find radon.
Janet wrote Monday:
This Water is from Well on private property 3 miles from Willacoochee. Sample taken from Water Heater. Lady says she uses all of the hot water when taking a shower each morning. Looking for her Radon Level now.
Janet added:
Radon sample collected at Same Well. Continue reading
Update 2018-12-12: And the winner is….!
Thanks to Bret Wagenhorst for the raffle kayak, which he donated at the Berrien County Harvest Festival.
You can get your raffle tickets here:
We’ll be picking the raffle winner on Saturday, December 8, 2018, in the Okefenokee Swamp. Continue reading
Except for being a very unseasonable 102 degrees in the shade, it was a very fine day at Berrien County Harvest Festival in Nashville, Georgia, Saturday, 29 September 2018, next to the Withlacoochee River and in a county bordered on the east by the Alapaha and Willacoochee Rivers.
He likes wwals.net so much he wanted to be on it, and now he and she are, shown here with Gretchen Quarterman.
Here are some pictures from the last year, and we’ll be back today at the Berrien County Harvest Festival.
If California can do it, so can Florida. The petition deadline for FDEP’s Basin Management Action Plans (BMAPs) got pushed back to January 2019, so we shall see.
Sara Rubin, Monterey County Weekly, 20 September 2018, Victory for Monterey Coastkeeper as court rules regulations for ag runoff fall short,
Even California’s water quality law, the Porter-Cologne Act, recognizes the challenge. A 2004 addendum about nonpoint source pollution put it this way: “Current land use management practices that have resulted in nonpoint source pollution have a long and complicated physical, economic and political history… Therefore, it is expected that it will take a significant amount of time for the [regional water boards] to approve or endorse nonpoint source control implementation programs.”
Photo: Nic Coury, “Otter Project Director Steve Shimek stands near the Monterey County Water Resources Agency’s Blanco Drain, which conveys ag runoff exceeding state water quality standards to the Salinas River,” in Court slams Central Coast farm runoff rules as too weak, orders water quality improvements, by Sara Rubin, Monterey County Weekly, 14 August 2015.That time, according to the Court of Appeal for California’s Third District, has come. A Sept. 18 decision Continue reading
Join WWALS back again at the eighth annual Berrien County Harvest Festival in downtown Nashville, Georgia. Music, art show, craft and food venders, featuring The Puppies of Penzance.
When: 9AM – 3PM, Saturday, September 29, 2018
Where: Downtown Courthouse Square, Nashville, GA 31639
Free: No entrance fee.
Event: facebook
Flyer:
Berrien County Chamber of Commerce.
Berrien County PR, unknown date, 2018 Berrien County Harvest Festival,
Harvest Festival activities will also include Continue reading
We are fortunate in the Suwannee River Basin in not having this bad a problem, but are similarities. Greg Allen, NPR, 7 September 2018, Toxic Algae Seeps Into Florida Congressional Races,
For months now, mats of algae from Lake Okeechobee have been flowing down the river, bringing toxins that can affect people and animals. In beach communities east of the lake, the algae have had a big impact on tourism and businesses.
With more toxic algae blooms on Florida’s west coast and a red tide algae bloom causing massive fish kills in the Gulf of Mexico, water quality is increasingly having a big impact on key midterm races in Florida. While Democrats tend to be more outspoken on environmental issues, Republican candidates are also speaking up because they’re feeling the heat.
Seems to me all the candidates are dancing around the real issue, which is Continue reading
Here are Gretchen Quarterman and Dave Hetzel at Heather Brasell’s annual A Day in the Woods at the Gaskins Forest Education Center near Alapaha, Berrien County, Georgia.
How can there be soil mixing yet zero noncompliance incidents?
Randy Dowdy asked directly to FERC, following up his
call in AgWeb for an independent investigation of Sabal Trail’s
destruction of his
world-record-holding soybean fields in Brooks County, Georgia.
Dowdy doesn’t trust Sabal Trail or anybody it sends to investigate that soil mixing. He’s hardly the first to say Sabal Trail’s inspectors don’t; see for example FERC’s Moultrie Scoping Meeting 2015-09-29 where James Bell said pipeline inspectors stood around until they noticed him watching, Sandra Jones said the surveyors were not qualified, and Attorney Daniel Dunn said Sabal Trail operates under darkness of misinformation. Dowdy may be late to the opposition, but he is determined.
Sabal Trail is still a stagecoach line in an electric car world, except stagecoaches didn’t destroy farmers’ fields.
