Tag Archives: Grand Bay Creek

Rivers, creeks, and Alapaha River Water Trail in Echols County Comprehensive Plan Update 2024-01-25

The state-required five-year update process for the Echols County Comprehensive Plan has started, with a kick-off meeting December 5, 2024.

The first Workshop appears likely to be January 25, 2025, most likely in Statenville.

Stay tuned for updates from the Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC).
https://www.sgrc.us

Or ask SGRC Planner II Alexandra Arzayus, aarzayus@sgrc.us, 229-333-5277.

[Rivers, creeks, and Alapaha River Water Trail in Echols County Comprehensive Plan Update]
Rivers, creeks, and Alapaha River Water Trail in Echols County Comprehensive Plan Update

Meanwhile, WWALS has been doing its part since the last update, adopted July 9, 2020.
https://dca.georgia.gov/document/plans/plan-update-2020-3/download

We thank the Echols County Commission for their Okefenokee Resolution to help protect the Suwannee River from strip mining near the Okefenokee Swamp.

We have paddled on the Suwannee River, including Fargo to campsite, Suwannee River 2022-03-05 and State Line to Turner Bridge, Suwannee River 2022-03-06.

We have formalized a Suwannee River Water Trail (SRWT).

We have suggested to Echols County a boat ramp on the Suwannee River. As far as we know, the county is pursuing that opportunity with the landowner and the GA-DNR.

WWALS convinced GA-EPD to redesignate all of the Alapaha River in Echols County from Fishing to Recreational, meanwhile stricter levels of permitted contamination.

WWALS has designed, printed, and planted at-water signs and road signs for the Alapaha River Water Trail (ARWT). Continue reading →

Pictures: Mayday to Statenville, Alapaha River 2024-05-11

We saw many creeks and seeps, and a few shoals barely visible as waves, on the Alapaha River from Mayday to Statenville, all in Echols County, Georgia, Saturday, May 11, 2024.

[Creeks, seeps, waves over shoals, and many power boats, Mayday to Statenville, Alapaha River 2024-04-11]
Creeks, seeps, waves over shoals, and many power boats, Mayday to Statenville, Alapaha River 2024-04-11

We had two chainsaws and two handsaws, but did not need to saw any deadfalls to get through.

We did see more power boats than I’ve ever seen on that river.

Thanks to Shawn O’Connor for leading, and to everyone else for paddling.

Continue reading →

Ockolocoochee, Little River 1889-01-29

Who knows the Ockolocoochee River? No, not the Ochlockonee River; that’s a bit to the west.

[Withlacoochee River labeled Suwanee R. in 1823 Irwin and 1834 Lowndes County maps; current WWALS Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail map]
Withlacoochee River labeled Suwanee R. in 1823 Irwin and 1834 Lowndes County maps; current WWALS Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail map

You do know the Ockolocoochee River as the Little River, of the Withlacoochee, of the Suwannee.

Here is news from 1889 that also includes the boat that didn’t survive from Troupville to Ellaville, which was apparently not a paddlewheel steamer. Continue reading →

Lucille M. Norton Bridge across Grand Bay Creek dedicated 2006-07-09

Here’s a bridge named after a schoolteacher, the Lucille M. Norton Bridge across Grand Bay Creek in Lanier County, Georgia, on GA 31, aka US 221 and Lakeland Highway.

[Lucille M. Norton Bridge]
Lucille M. Norton Bridge

Kenna Walsh, Valdosta Daily Times, July 7, 2006, Updated September 12, 2014, Bridge to be named for Lucille Norton,

LAKELAND — This Sunday, a well known and loved Lakeland teacher will receive an eternal dedication. Lucille Norton, a native of Lanier County who died at age 86, taught home economics in Lakeland for 58 years. This Sunday, the bridge over Grand Bay Pond on U.S. 221 will be named in her honor at a 2 p.m. ceremony in the Lanier County Courthouse.

Continue reading →

Road widening south of Grand Bay, Lakeland Highway, Lightsey Road to Shiner Pond Road 2023-07-18

Watch out for road work on Lakeland Highway across Grand Bay Creek.

[Map and Grand Bay Creek Bridge]
Map and Grand Bay Creek Bridge

The Public Notice doesn’t say when the work will start on GA 31 aka US 221 aka Lakeland Highway, but you have 30 days from yesterday to comment. I will ask for a copy of the application. Meanwhile, the Public Notice is below, and here is the gist of it (I added the links):

State Route 31 from State Route 7 to State Route 135
(GPS Coordinates: 30.97284, -83.10488; 30.90854, -83.18506)

…

The proposed project will impact the buffer of Open Water (OW) 4, OW 13, and OW 31. The project will add passing lanes at four sites in two interconnected corridors along State Route (SR) 31 in Lanier and Lowndes Counties. The project will impact the state mandated 25-ft buffer within the Suwannee Watershed (HUC 03110202). The disturbance will cover 5,903 square feet and include discharging of fill and clearing and grubbing to widen SR 31, culvert replacement, and the installation of Best Management Practices (BMPs).

GA 31 is commonly known as Lakeland Highway, and also as US 221.

The coordinates supplied actually put the southwest end of the road work just east of Lightsey Road aka CCC Road in Lowndes County, and the northeast end east of Shiner Pond Road aka Spells Road CR 12 in Lanier County.

[Map: Lakeland Highway widening in ARWT]
Map: Lakeland Highway widening in the WWALS map of the Alapaha River Water Trail (ARWT)

OW 4, 13, and 31 presumably are numbered for this particular project. I would guess Continue reading →

Drainage built over that runs into Grand Bay @ LCC 2022-03-21

This morning the Lowndes County Commission considered and Tuesday evening will vote on letting a subdivision developer replace a detention pond with a built-on lot and some other detention area somewhere unspecified.

[Map: Little Viking Road to Grand Bay, ARWT]
Map: Little Viking Road to Grand Bay, in the WWALS map of the Alapaha River Water Trail (ARWT).

The detention pond is marked by the red ellipse. The most likely drainage from there is where I drew the cyan line. It appears to go into Grand Bay. See below a closeup of the lot and a larger map of how Grand Bay drains into Grand Bay Creek, the Alapahoochee River, the Alapaha River, and then the Suwannee River on the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Continue reading →

Pitcher plants, GA 31, Grand Bay –Gretchen Quarterman on WCTV 2020-08-21

Hooded Pitcher Plants are the answer to Lanier County Sheriff Nick Norton’s question to the Georgia Department of Transportation as to why the ditches were not being mowed on GA 31 between Valdosta and Lakeland.

Amber Spradley, WCTV, at GA 31 and Grand Bay Wildlife Management Area (WMA), August 22, 2020, GDOT discovers rare plants ahead of road project,

[Clockwise: Amber Spradley, Gretchen Quarterman, potted pitcher plants, Hooded Pitcher Plants]
Clockwise: Amber Spradley, Gretchen Quarterman, potted pitcher plants, Hooded Pitcher Plants

Gretchen Quarterman, a 10-year “Master Gardener” and the executive director of WWALS Watershed Coalition, tells WCTV Hooded Pitchers live in nutrient-poor bogs, or wetlands. They trap and consume insects to obtain nutrients for survival.

Continue reading →

Winner: Raptor, flower, paddling organization, tree base: Within These WWALS #6 2020-05-16

The winner of Within These WWALS #6 is…

Emmy Kidder.

She wins a packet of WWALS photo notecards from that watershed, sent via postal mail from WWALS charter board member Bret Wagenhorst.

Swamps and Springs WWALS picture notecards

Here are the answers to Within These WWALS #6.

Name this native raptor that can dive into water and catch live fish, has white under its wings making it easier to identify from below, and builds its nests atop trees over bodies of water, like this one shown atop a cypress at dusk.

Osprey, Pandion haliaetus.

We paddle by this nest most every time on our Banks Lake Full Moon paddles. The next one is coming up Continue reading →

AJC at Moody AFB about groundwater contamination 2018-12-07

A month ago at Beatty Branch:

“Everything in this area depends on groundwater,” said John Quarterman, the Suwannee Riverkeeper in Lowndes County, where Moody is located. “I’m not saying that Moody necessarily did make enough contamination to be a problem, but I can’t tell from this report, and I don’t think it’s our responsibility to determine that they didn’t.”

[Photographer Hyosub Shin and Reporter Meris Lutz]
Photographer Hyosub Shin and Reporter Meris Lutz, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, online today and in Sunday’s Atlanta paper newspaper, Contaminated groundwater, a toxic legacy of Georgia’s air bases, 3 January 2019.

Moody Air Force Base tested their own wells, and found them clean. Which is good, but

[Figure 2 AFFF Area Locations]
Figure 2 AFFF Area Locations
PDF

their wells are much deeper than the wells the rest of us use in the country around here. Moody did not test any of those wells; Continue reading →

Ockolocoochee, Little River 1889-01-29

Update 2023-12-28: Revised version..

Who knows the Ockolocoochee River? No, not the Ochlockonee River; that’s a bit to the west. You do know the Ockolocoochee River as the Little River, of the Withlacoochee, of the Suwannee. Here is news from 1889 that also includes the boat that didn’t survive from Troupville to Ellaville, which was apparently not a paddlewheel steamer.


Irwin County, 1885a, GeorgiaInfo, Rand McNally Map of Georgia, 1885

Atlanta Constitution, January 29, 1889, Pg 12., quoted in Ray City History Blog, 18 October 2010, More About Troupville, GA and the Withlacoochee River,

THE WITHLACOOCHEE RIVER.

VALDOSTA, Ga., January 19. -[Special.]- Away up near the northern limit of the great wiregrass section there is a big cypress swamp. They call them bays there. From this bay emerges Continue reading →