Tag Archives: Joyce Evans

Resolutions for Okefenokee Swamp, against strip mine –Suwannee Riverkeeper @ SGRC 2021-12-09

Yesterday I asked members of the Southern Georgia Regional Commission (SGRC) to pass resolutions supporting the Okefenokee Swamp and the Suwannee and St. Marys Rivers against a proposed titanium strip mine. SGRC’s members include 18 counties, which is almost all the Georgia Suwannee River Basin counties, and 45 municipalities. Some of them have already passed such resolutions: Valdosta, Waycross and Ware County, Homeland, Kingsland, and St. Marys.

Update 2024-03-14: Atkinson County.

Update 2024-02-29: And Hamilton County, Florida, making four counties downstream on the Suwannee River from the Okefenokee Swamp: Ware, Clinch, and Echols Counties, Georgia, and Hamilton County, Florida.

Update 2024-02-06: And Berrien County.

Update 2024-02-01: and Nashville 2024-01-08.

Update 2024-02-01: Georgia Municipal Association (GMA) supports HB 71, Okefenokee Protection Act, January 5, 2024

Update 2024-01-25: and Savannah.

Update 2023-10-24: and DeKalb County.

Update 2023-09-12: and Clinch County.

Update 2023-08-07: and Echols County.

[Suwannee Riverkeeper; Okefenokee Swamp, mine site]
Suwannee Riverkeeper; Okefenokee Swamp, mine site

You can ask your local city or county government to pass a similar resolution. The previous resolutions are on the WWALS website.

You can also ask GA-EPD for a moratorium on mining permits, or to deny the permits, or at the very least to examine them very thoroughly and produce the equivalent of the Environmental Impact Statement that the Army Corps should have been working on.
https://wwals.net/?p=55092

You can also use Protect Georgia form to end a message to your Georgia statehouse delegation.

Floridians, this mine site is upstream from Florida, and you can also use these forms.

Thanks to SGRC Council Chair Joyce Evans and Assistant Director Chris Strom for inviting me to come speak to SGRC.

See also Continue reading →

Naylor Boat Ramp poured 2019-04-30

Update 2019-05-08: Now with framing and concrete wire.

Update 2019-05-06: OK, as April Huntley pointed out after went out there over the weekend, the concrete is not poured yet: what’s out there is the bed on which to put the concrete. I called Lowndes County Project Manager Chad McLeod, who said that’s right. Today the forms for the concrete are in place. Probably Wednesday they will pour the concrete. Then it has to set for 10-14 days. After that, they will pick a day with an appropriate river level (they need a couple of feet of water in the river), and they will slide the segments down the ramp into the river. So probably somewhere between 18 and 25 May 2019 the concrete ramp should be in the river.

Some of the concrete was still setting on the new Naylor Boat Ramp on the Alapaha River just upstream from US 84.

[From the top]
From the top

Lowndes County Commissioner Joyce Evans asked Gretchen Quarterman at the Monday Planning Commission meeting whether she had been to the new Naylor Boat Ramp. Continue reading →

Hotchkiss Road Landing, Old State Road, and Naylor Boat Ramp

Common question: isn’t Hotchkiss closed? Answer: the old Hotchkiss Landing in Lowndes County is closed, private, and don’t go there! Caution! But Hotchkiss Road Landing in Lanier County is open as always, do go there to get to the Alapaha River. Boat landing And there’s a new park at US 84, with a Naylor Boat Ramp being built by Lowndes County, as urged by WWALS.

600x450 Bret Wagenhorst, Dave Hetzel, Gretchen Quarterman, at Hotchkiss Road, in Alapaha River Outing, by John S. Quarterman, for WWALS.net, 24 August 2014
Bret Wagenhorst, Dave Hetzel, Gretchen Quarterman, at Hotchkiss Road (open, do go there Boat landing), in Alapaha River Outing, by John S. Quarterman, for WWALS.net, 24 August 2014.

Previously there was some discussion of using a different name for Hotchkiss Road Landing in the Alapaha River Water Trail, but then nobody would know what we were referring to, since that’s what it’s always been called, down at the end of Hotchkiss Road off of US 84.

For those relatively new to WWALS, WWALS was heavily involved in Continue reading →

WWALS asks Lowndes County to do three things more against Sabal Trail 2016-04-24

Sent yesterday to the Chairman, the other five elected Lowndes County Commissioners, and the County Clerk (PDF). They meet again 5:30PM Tuesday evening, April 25th 2016.

Dear Commissioners,

Thanks to Chairman Bill Slaughter for saying in the Valdosta Daily Times that the Commission signing an easement contract was not an endorsement of the Sabal Trail pipeline.[1] Therefore I ask you to:

  1. Invite the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to investigate on site and on paper the numerous omissions by Sabal Trail of springs and underground water transmissivity in what it told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; .please see the letter from WWALS to the Army Corps,[2] attached with the letter from WWALS to you of April 12th.
  2. Ask our U.S. Congress member Austin Scott (GA-08) to join the four Georgia Congress members who have already asked FERC to fix its processes or deny a permit for Sabal Trail.[3]
  3. Join the hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals who have already asked the U.S. Congress to call in the General Accounting Office (GAO) to review FERC’s permitting processes.[4]

Please find appended further information about the issues the Chairman raised in the VDT of eminent domain, in differences in regulation of oil and gas pipelines, and in environmental and safety issues of natural gas pipelines.

Since I wrote to you on April 12th, two more major natural gas pipelines have run into serious problems.

On April 20th, Kinder Morgan shelved Continue reading →

Videos: WWALS asks Lowndes County to invite Army Corps of Engineers to investigate Sabal Trail discrepancies @ LCC 2016-04-12

Delivered to the Lowndes County Commission Tuesday 12 April 2016 on paper and then by email (PDF, plus 1-page Suwannee County, FL request to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and 28-page WWALS invitation to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), following up from two previous addresses to the same Commission.

See also the Carter Way item in that same Commission meeting, also related to Sabal Trail. Continue reading →

Alapaha River Boat Ramp land purchase approved by Lowndes County Commission 2015-12-08

As Commissioner Marshall said, “it’s been a long time coming”, but Tuesday the Lowndes County Commission approved $24,000 to buy 4.35 acres from Acree Investments for a boat ramp on the Alapaha River just north of US 84. Details are on the LAKE blog.

New boat ramp will be east of Naylor on US 84 Come celebrate with us 10AM tomorrow Saturday 12 December 2015 at Grand Bay, which is also on the Alapaha River Water Trail.

Commissioners told Gretchen as she was thanking each of them afterwards that they used the WWALS Alapaha River Water Trail map to determine there was no other boat ramp on the Alapaha River in Lowndes County, the closest being east of Lakeland and west of Statenville.

Of course there are other boat ramps in Lowndes County, but they are on the Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail.

Thanks to Dr. Acree for agreeing to sell for a reasonable price, and to the Lowndes County Commissioners for agreeing to buy this land for the Alapaha River boat ramp and park in February 2013.

-jsq

Naylor Park and Boat Ramp aerial plan map

300x186 Naylor Boat Ramp aerial, in Maps from board packet, by John S. Quarterman, 10 February 2015 Thanks to the Lowndes County Commission and staff, here’s a look at what they’re planning for the new boat ramp and park on the Alapaha River just north of US 84. Below are videos of discussion about these plans in several recent Commission meetings. This boat ramp and park is already on the map for the Alapaha River Water Trail, and I have thanked the Commission for moving along to get it established; see below. Continue reading →