Tag Archives: Ocilla

GA HB 879 coal ash dewatering up for full Senate vote 2018-03-15

A Georgia Senate Committee Chair from the Suwannee River Basin, Tyler Harper of Ocilla, got HB 879 out of his committee and onto the full Senate floor for a vote soon. Please remind your Georgia state Senator to vote for it so we’ll get to know more about when Georgia Power (or anybody else) is dewatering a coal ash pond, planning to shop it to local landfills.

Wes Wolfe, Brunswick News, 15 March 2018, Coal ash notification bill heads to full Senate,

coal ash ponds and coal ash in landfills in Georgia

The coal ash pond dewatering bill authored by state Rep. Jeff Jones received unanimous committee approval Tuesday afternoon, moving the public notification legislation one step closer to law. By making it through the state House of Representatives before the crossover deadline, and now ready for a vote by the full Senate, puts it in a rare group of bills to be so successful this session.

Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee Chairman Tyler Harper, Continue reading →

Old Coffee Road, Georgia

The Google map of locations on Old Coffee Road was used by many of the early settlers of south central Georgia, including in the watersheds of the Willacoochee, Alapaha, Withlacoochee, and Little Rivers and Okapilco Creek. It crossed all those and other waterways by ford or private ferry: there were no bridges back then.

Old Coffee Road map, WWALS.net
Follow this link for the interactive google map.

The Georgia Historical Commission erected markers at half a dozen locations in the 1950s and 1960, reading: Continue reading →

Deserter Lake in Alapaha Wildlife Management Area

Update 2016-10-20: WMA check-in hunt does not count towards Georgia bag limit.

WWALS member Patrick Kunes took this video of Deserter Lake in Irwin County on the Alapaha River in the new Alapaha River Wildlife Management Area (WMA) on the Alapaha River betweeen Tifton and Ocilla. You can hear him talking about turkeys he saw, and you can see the lake on the river. He mentions deadfalls, which are a common feature on the upper Alapaha River. The river itself is not really boatable up that far much of the year, but lakes like this one often still have water. Many such lakes do not have public access, but Deserter Lake does now. This lake is upstream from the formal start of the Alapaha River Water Trail (ARWT), but we’ve included it in the online material about the ARWT because Deserter Lake is in the new Alapaha WMA.

Patrick wrote about this video: Continue reading →

Video: Steam engine, bridges, trees, beaches, and trash: Alapaha River by Diane Shearer

Also boating, deadfalls, steam engine, and rapids. Diane Shearer presented slides about the Alapaha River of her homeland, 31 March 2012 at Georgia River Network Weekend for Rivers, and said:

Right there at Alapaha, where it’s been clearcut behind it. This is one of the main problems of the river: there used to be nothing on that shore there but huge cypress trees and tupelo trees, and that’s almost gone everywhere. And that’s one of the great dangers to this river, is agricultural runoff, the fact that people can suck all the water out of it they want to, for irrigation and those sorts of things.

The video starts Continue reading →

WWALS in the Ocilla Star, 2013-02-13

WWALS in the Ocilla Star Wednesday 13 February 2013, scan by Cindy Leighton:

WWALS, Ocilla Star, Scan by Cindy Leighton

This is from the WWALS press release of 10 January 2013 that also appeared in Tifton Gazette 18 January 2013.