The Development Director is responsible for supporting the development and implementation of all WWALS fundraising initiatives, including membership program, major gifts, grant writing, planned giving, special events, and capital campaigns. The Development Director works closely with the Executive Director and the Suwannee Riverkeeper in all development and fundraising endeavors.
![[WWALS Seeks Development Director]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2023-07-07--development-director/many.jpg)
The Development Director is responsible for supporting the development and implementation of all WWALS fundraising initiatives, including membership program, major gifts, grant writing, planned giving, special events, and capital campaigns. The Development Director works closely with the Executive Director and the Suwannee Riverkeeper in all development and fundraising endeavors.
![[WWALS and Suwannee Riverkeeper logos]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/logo/suwrk-wwals-logos.jpg){kind=logo}
To send your comments to Georgia officials,
follow this link:
https://waterkeeper.org/news/help-suwannee-riverkeeper-save-okefenokee-swamp/
![[Great Blue Heron flying, Suwannee River, Okefenokee Swamp, 2019-12-07]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2020-11-17--gwc-dd/2019-12-07--jsq-gbh-suwannee-river-okefenokee-with-boaters.jpg)
Great Blue Heron flying, Suwannee River, Okefenokee Swamp, 2019-12-07
Julia Widmann, Waterkeeper Alliance, March 18, 2021, Help Suwannee Riverkeeper Save Okefenokee Swamp,
Today, you can take action to help Suwannee Riverkeeper protect Okefenokee Swamp and the surrounding community in Southern Georgia and northern Florida from the risk of dangerous mining pollution.
Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is home to the beloved blackwater Okefenokee Swamp, a Wetland of International Importance and a proposed World Heritage Site. Okefenokee Swamp is an ecologically diverse wetland, loved by boaters, fishers, and birders, as well as alligators and blue herons, and hunters on nearby property. It’s an important tourist attraction for members of the public all across the country and provides great economic benefits to the local area. Suwannee Riverkeeper John S. Quarterman has helped lead the way in protecting this special place.
In 2019, Twin Pines Minerals LLC, an Alabama-based company, first proposed a titanium mine beside the swamp. Twin Pines’ proposed mine poses dangerous risks Continue reading
Tonight at 5:30 PM the Columbia BOCC will vote on a water bottling operation by Niagara Bottling that has already been rejected by the Columbia County, Florida, Economic Advisory Board. The Board of County Commissioners makes the actual decision.
Especially if you live in Columbia County, please attend or send them email or call them. We don’t need more plastic bottles to clean up and we don’t need more drawdown of the aquifer and rivers. See the letter below by Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson for much more on what and why.
Besides, the demands Niagara makes sound like private prison company demands to have a certain number of prisoners or else penalties. For example:
Phase 1 water obligations of 650,000 gallons per day by Lake City to provide water is only relieved after Columbia County receives a non-appealable water use permit authorization sufficient to meet company’s water requirements at build out of 2,860,00 gallons per day of potable water and Columbia County has all water infrastructure completed and can independently serve the company.
The purpose of a county government is not to serve a private company from somewhere else.
See also background news stories by Stew Lilker, Columbia County Observer:
Image: Stew Lilker, Columbia County Observer
The word “potential” is important: just because a company promises jobs doesn’t mean they would actually appear. And if water bottling companies and phosphate mines and agriculture keep draining the aquifer, what jobs will be left?
November 6, 2021
Good Evening Gentlemen,
I am a resident of Columbia County. I identify with and volunteer for a citizen based organization named Our Santa Fe River which opposes bottled water businesses in our region in order to protect our freshwater springs, rivers and public water supplies found in wells and municipality service systems.
Tomorrow night, Columbia County (FL) Board of County Commission meeting will be discussing and possibly voting on the Belle Project (Niagara water bottling plant proposal).
Thursday, January 7, 2021 at 5:30 P.M.
School Board Administrative Complex
372 West Duval Street
Regular scheduled meeting Agenda: Continue reading
The Adel, Georgia, City Council passed the two ordinances for the wood pellet plant with no discussion, yet with some votes against, and protestors outside and inside, on September 21, 2020. There are still things you can do to stop this polluting project that would export our trees from throughout the Suwannee River Basin and beyond, to Europe to burn, producing yet more CO2.
![[Protesters outside and in, and the Adel City Council split vote for the wood pellet plant]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2020-09-21--adel-wood-pellet-plant/wwals.jpg)
Protesters outside and in, and the Adel City Council split vote for the wood pellet plant
Below are links to each LAKE video of those agenda items, with a few notes.
See also Vicki Weeks, Dogwood Alliance, 16 October 2020, Industrial Logging and the Wood Pellet Industry Hurt Us All.
And Dogwood Alliance’s
petition to call on Georgia leaders to protect our forests.
https://www.dogwoodalliance.org/actions/stop-the-destruction-of-georgia-forests/
You can also ask GA-EPD to reject the air permit application. Probably more on that later.
For background, see: Continue reading
Update 2020-09-11: fixed document and map links and added form for comments.
The Adel City Council had no questions after their Public Hearing on annexation and rezoning for a wood pellet plant, Tuesday, September 9, 2020, after thirty minutes of speakers for and against.
That was just the first reading. The second reading will be 5:30 PM, Monday, September 21, 2020, at Adel City Hall.
![[Maps and speakers, wood pellet plant, Adel City Council 2020-09-08]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2020-09-08--adel-city-council/many.jpg)
Maps and speakers, wood pellet plant, Adel City Council 2020-09-08
After the meeting I asked the City Manager, the City Clerk, and a couple of City Council members what maps and plans they had looked at. They all said they hadn’t seen any, and maybe I should talk to Economic Development. So I asked her, and she didn’t seem to indicate she’d seen any.
Yet there are maps and plans in the air permit application to GA-EPD, and others reviewed by the Planning Commission, which, as the City Manager pointed out during the meeting, issued a Public Notice of its public hearing on July 6, 2020. I don’t know why these state and county agencies have not published these documents, nor why the City of Adel has not. But those are public documents, so here they are (see Air Quality Permit maps and Planning Commission maps).
Below are videos by Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE) of the pellet plant part of the Adel City Council meeting. See also the agenda and the WWALS letter to the Adel City Council. See also some helpful documents by the Dogwood Alliance
And this handy Dogwood Alliance form to send a comment to the Adel City Counci l.
By the way, this kind of work does take time and effort, so feel free to contribute to WWALS. . Continue reading
Are 60,000 comments over two comment periods enough to stop a titanium dioxide strip mine within miles of the Okefenokee Swamp? We don’t know. So please ask your elected officials, local, state, and national, to stop the mine, or at the very least to demand an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Follow this link for how.
![[Heavy Mineral Mining In The Atlantic Coastal Plain-0006]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2019-09-12--wwals-usace-tpm/Heavy-Mineral_Mining_in_the_Atlantic_Coastal_Plain-0006.jpg)
Heavy Mineral Mining In The Atlantic Coastal Plain-0006
Here’s the rest of the interview of Suwannee Riverkeeper John S. Quarterman by Brian Blount of WKUB 105.1 out of Blackshear, Pierce County, Georgia, north of Waycross and the Swamp.
If you have any trouble listening to it, you can download it from the WWALS website.
See the first Suwannee Riverkeeper comment to the Corps for more about slimes and hydrology.
For much more about this bad strip mine idea, see
https://wwals.net/issues/titanium-mining
-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®
You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!
Update 2020-06-08: Part 2, Please ask your elected officials to stop strip mine near Okefenokee Swamp –Suwannee Riverkeeper on WKUB 105.1 FM.
The Okefenokee Swamp is a gem, locally, nationally, and internationally, too important to risk for profit by a few miners for paint. This is in a radio interview of Suwannee Riverkeeper John S. Quarterman by Brian Blount of WKUB 105.1 out of Blackshear, Pierce County, Georgia, north of Waycross and the Swamp.
Here is an introduction by Wade Scott, and my request for people to ask the Army Corps to deny the permit application by Twin Pines Minerals, LLC, or at least to require an Environmental Impact Statement broad enough to cover the whole Swamp and the Suwannee and St. Marys Rivers, as well as the existing titanium mines in north Florida and south Georgia, plus the phosphate mines current and proposed in north Florida. Continue reading
Another letter in the Charlton County Herald, October 23, 2019, same issue as the letter posted previously. You can send your own letter to the editor or comment to the Army Corps or GA-EPD.
![[Lawtey, FL, Highland Mine, Chemours]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2019-10-23--hunt-arwood-charlton-county-herald/Lawtey-Chemours-Highland-Mine.jpg)
Lawtey, FL, Highland Mine, Chemours, google earth.
Mining Ruined Family Field
Dear Editor,
Let me start out by saying that I have not been a part of any protests that have been going on. I don’t think anyone can foresee if the proposed strip mining will actually harm the swamp. We probably won’t know until many years have passed. Only time will truly tell.
However, I can say that the strip mining by Dupont in Bradford County did do a lot of harm to my Grandfather’s strawberry farm! My Grandfather owned a farm that joined Dupont’s Continue reading
Excellent letter in the Charlton County Herald, October 23, 2019. You can send your own letter to the editor or comment to the Army Corps or GA-EPD.
Twin Pines should not be given the keys to the Okefenokee
Dear Editor,
Since announcing plans to strip mine along the Trail Ridge adjacent to Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Twin Pines Minerals has held multiple hearings and meetings with political figures and the people of Charlton County to make their case and ostensibly calm fears about the miners environmental impact. Unfortunately, the company continues to display a lack of transparency and misrepresent both the nature and scale of the proposed mine, as well the costs of mining next to the swamp.
To truly understand what is at stake, here are the facts.
![[Hunt]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2019-10-23--hunt-arwood-charlton-county-herald/hunt.jpg)
First, Twin Pines has repeatedly claimed that operations will only Continue reading
![[WKUB 105.1 FM]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2020-06-04--wkub-brian-blount-okefenokee-swamp-titanium-mine/155477_328832620516056_198958454_n.jpg)