Update 2024-01-28: Valdosta Knights Creek water quality test results in Four more Valdosta sewage spills 2023-12-17.

Update 2023-12-22: Bad water quality, Withlacoochee and Santa Fe Rivers 2023-12-21.

The Valdosta written report about its December 11, 2023, 425,000-gallon sewage spill, received in response to a WWALS open records request to GA-EPD, contains some information that was not in the Valdosta press release. Including a bit more about corrective action than was in the reports of the two previous spills.

Plus Valdosta has started posting water quality test results upstream and down from the spill location.

More about that and the spill location below.

Valdosta Report, Map, GA-EPD Sewage Spills Report, Valdosta Water Quality Results

Here’s the spill report. As you can see, it has both the start and stop dates and times of the spill: start 9:30 AM December 11, end 6 PM December 14. GA-EPD also returned the Valdosta Utilities cover letter of the report, which was sent Friday, December 15, 2023 2:20 PM. Which confirms what Valdosta Utilities Acting Director Jason Barnes told me on the phone: the report went in (and the Valdosta press release went out) after the spill stopped.

The affected waterway is identified, as “Knights Creek/Mud Creek”, and the creek is also named at the top of the report:
“MAJOR SPILL REPORT TO EPD Knights Creek Sanitary Sewer Spill.”

As you know, Knights Creek flows into Mud Swamp Creek, then the Alapahoochee River, the Alapaha River in Florida, and the Suwannee River, on the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

The report gives the cause as equipment failure, not blamed on the contractor:
“CAUSE OF MAJOR SPILL: Bypass pump failure and Hydraulic Overload”

And there is more about what the city did and what it plans to do to prevent such spills. Continue reading →