Every few years Banks Lake gets drained is an effort to stymie unwanted aquatic vegetation.
Hydrilla verticillata forms dense mats at the surface of the water. The dense mats can Continue reading
Tag Archives: Alapaha River
Global Croplands, Suwannee River Basin
You can see on these maps that the Suwannee River Basin is massively agricultural, except where it’s forestry or swamp or other wetlands. Thus it’s no wonder that most of the nitrate runoff problem here is due to agriculture, as shown in the Basin Management Action Plans (BMAPs).
WWALS Science Committee Chair Tom Potter points to this Global Croplands map to illustrate the BMAP issues. The question remains of whether agricultural best management practices as advocated in the recent BMAP meetings will be sufficient to deal with the problem, considering they haven’t decreased it in the past decade.
Global Croplands About: Continue reading
WWALS to FWC BAC against paid permits for paddle boats 2017-11-27
Sent today. See also PDF, and previous posts about what you can do. -jsq
To:
Nick Wiley, Executive Director
Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
620 South Meridian Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-1600
850-488-2975
nick.wiley@MyFWC.com
Emily Herschman Davis: 850-617-9577
emily.herschman@MyFWC.com
Colonel Curtis Brown, Chairman
Boating Advisory Committee (BAC)
Curtis.Brown@MyFWC.com
Captain William Griswold, Chairman
Non-Motorized Boat Working Group (NMBWG)
WSGriz@aol.com
Re: Paid permits for non-motorized boats
Dear E.D. Wiley, Chairman Brown, and Chairman Griswold,
As the head of an organization that holds many paddle outings in Florida, I thank you for holding a public meeting tomorrow of the Boating Advisory Council that could finally put to rest the ill-advised idea of charging permit fees for paddle boats or boards. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend, so I am sending this letter.
Stean Rayer, Ying Wang, Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR), University of Florida, 30 October 2014, Measuring Population Density for Counties in Florida
Thank you, FWC Executive Director Wiley, for saying back in February Continue reading
NMBWG and BAC going for paydirt of paid paddle permits
Remember, you can object to paid paddle boat permits before the Tuesday morning meeting of the Florida Boating Advisory Council (BAC). More below on what you can do, plus still more apparent term limit overruns, paddle boaters represented by a yacht business owner, the last NMBWG meeting, the paydirt of paddlers pay (for marinas), and what that would cost.
After a decade of BAC attempts to charge people for paddling (see yesterday’s installment), in 2015 the BAC decided it needed a sub-group:
“The Non-Motorized Boat Working Group (NMBWG) was created by the Boating Advisory Council at its May 18, 2015 meeting. The purpose of the working group is to address four core areas of non-motorized boating: access, education, safety, and user pay/user benefit.”
It doesn’t take much reading of the NMBWG minutes to infer that the whole goal of this group was not access, education, safety, nor (non-motorized boater) user benefit, but “user pay”.
Yacht Octopus by Peter Sleeckx, 2 December 2006,
CC BY-SA 3.0.
Term limits apparently don’t apply
Continue readingMore than a decade of attempts to charge permits for paddle boats
Remember, you can object to paid paddle boat permits before the Tuesday morning meeting of the Boating Advisory Council.
For more than a decade, at least half its lifetime, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), Boating Advisory Council (BAC) has been trying to find a way to charge permit fees for registration of non-motorized boats. Here’s the story so far, which will make clear there’s no reason to believe such efforts will stop. Also including not one, but two BAC members mysteriously serving longer than state-mandated term limits would seem to allow. Is it really about the children? Or is it about marinas, that paddle boaters don’t use? With a special appearance by the Florida state rep. who sponsored the law that expedited WWALS vs. Sabal Trail & FDEP.
The Boating Advisory Council (BAC) was created Continue reading
Paid permitting of paddle boats and boards Tuesday? 2017-11-28
One group wouldn’t do it, so its parent may: require paid permits for paddle boats and boards in Florida.
When: 9AM, Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Where:
Mission Inn,
10400 County Road 48,
Howey-in-the-Hills, 34737
That’s a golf club resort halfway between The Villages and Orlando,
rooms $179 to $246 for Monday night.
Who: Boating Advisory Council (BAC) of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC)
Event:
On the agenda
under “Unfinished Business / Updates”:
“Non-Motorized Boat Working Group Recommendations Review — William Griswold”
TripAdvisor, Mission Inn Resort & Club, 10400 County Road 48, Howey in the Hills, FL 34737-3000
How to Comment: Continue reading
Capt. Henry Will Jones Bridge, Alapaha River, Lakeland, Lanier County, GA
Nobody seems to know the bridge just east of Lakeland has a name: Captain Henry Will Jones Bridge. Just below it is Lakeland Boat Ramp on the Alapaha River Water Trail (ARWT). We’ll be going by there in a few months on the Alapaha Quest.
Scott Thompson, Pieces of Our Past, November 30, 2015, CAPTAIN HENRY WILL JONES,
Henry Will Jones was born about 1917 in what became Lanier County just as our country was entering World War I. After Continue reading
Suwannee River Basin Maps
Update 2019-02-13: And a version with Landings. See also Water Trails, with more detailed maps and access points.
Nobody seems to have done this, so we did:
a map of the Suwannee River Basin, with the major watersheds and the Estuary
shaded, and all the major rivers, plus many of the creeks.
Bonus: springs!
Click on this link for an interactive google map of the Suwannee River Basin.
The river traces come from USGS and Chris Graham. The watershed boundaries are from USGS. The springs are from the Florida Springs Institute, plus four Georgia springs collected by WWALS.
The eight-digit hydrologic unit codes (HUC8) for the Suwannee River Basin are: Continue reading
WWALS at Alapaha Station Celebration 2017-11-11
Update 2018-11-09: Pictures.
We will have the WWALS festival booth at the Alapaha Station Celebration on Saturday November 11, for the fourth year running. Join us for a fun day of outreach to members of our community.
When: 9AM – 5PM, Saturday, November 11, 2017
Where: Alapaha Station, 245 NE Railroad St, Alapaha, Georgia
Miss Alapaha Station Mini Supreme at the WWALS booth last year.
The station is only a few miles from Continue reading
Pictures: WWALS at Alapaha Station Celebration 2016-11-12
Last year at Alapaha Station Celebration we met a lot of people ad had a good time. We’ll be back there this Saturday.
