After two hours of speakers in the Public Hearing, the Brooks County Commission this Monday denied the Special Exception for Morven Solar, 3:1:1.
![[Speakers, Decision: Morven Solar @ Brooks County Commission 2023-02-06]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2023-02-06--brooks-county-morven-solar-videos/many.jpg)
Speakers, Decision: Morven Solar @ Brooks County Commission 2023-02-06
Commissioner Myra Exum, after saying that whatever the Commissioners did they would be wrong, Continue reading
Update 2023-02-08: Morven Solar denied @ Brooks County Commission 2023-02-06.
Before this evening’s Brooks County Commission decision on a Special Exception for Morven Solar, WWALS wrote asking for three conditions.
![[Letter and Map --WWALS to Brooks County Commission about Morven Solar 2023-02-06]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2023-02-06--wwals-to-brooks-county-morven-solar/many.jpg)
Letter and Map –WWALS to Brooks County Commission about Morven Solar 2023-02-06
The meeting is 5PM tonight, Monday, February 6, 2023, at Brooks County Courthouse, East Screven Street, Quitman, GA, 31643.
See also Videos: Morven Solar at Brooks County Planning Commission 2023-01-19.
Here is the WWALS letter, sent to the Brooks County Commission as PDF. Continue reading
Update 2023-01-21: Report: Conditions wanted on Morven Solar by Brooks County Planning Commission 2023-01-20.
To help visualize what Morven Solar is proposing tonight at the Brooks County Planning Commission, yesterday I took a few pictures.
They include the pecan trees to be cleared for the project that county (SGRC) staff pointed out were not included in the tree survey, as well as the planted pines that were included, and some natural trees that are to be kept as a buffer.
Most of the project is on current center pivot irrigation cotton fields, with the agricultural pesticides that implies.
Which raises one of several questions: will the solar project also use pesticides, or will it adopt another method, such as sheep or goats?
![[Parts of the Morven Solar project sites 2023-01-18]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2023-01-18--morven-solar/many.jpg)
Parts of the Morven Solar project sites 2023-01-18
This is the layout of the project: Continue reading
Here are the chemical tracer and DNA marker test results by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) that WWALS has frequently mentioned, for example in Current Situation of Water Quality Testing, Suwannee River Basin 2020-08-02.
Below, please also find a summary of those results by WWALS Science Committee Chair Dr. Thomas Potter.
![[Human and Ruminant DNA markers]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2020-08-05--fdep-data/big/hr3.jpg)
Human and Ruminant DNA markers
Thanks to Katrina Yancey of FDEP for sending the data, and for acknowledging that FDEP has no objection to WWALS publishing it. I asked FDEP for whatever they wanted to include, and this is what they sent:
“Thank you for asking, we recently set up our new site so it may be helpful to state that more information may be found at DEP’s webpage for the Suwannee River Basin Sampling Locations (https://floridadep.gov/dear/watershed-monitoring-section/content/suwannee-river-basin-sampling-locations).”
The actual data is on the WWALS website.
Dr. Thomas Potter, WWALS Science Committee Chair
After Continue reading
“If you get people out on the river and they have a positive experience with nature, they will help protect it,” wrote Dr. Tom Potter, pictured during the March 2019 Onemile Branch Cleanup at Drexel Park during Azalea Festival.
Kara Pound, Subaru Drive, Winter 2019, 2019 Subaru Drive Community Champions,
We are thrilled to celebrate these exceptional Subaru owners who embody the Subaru Love Promise by giving their time and talent to help their communities.
![[The catch]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2019-03-10--onemile-branch-cleanup/20190310_143954.jpg)
Photo: John S. Quarterman for WWALS, Tom Potter at Onemile Branch Cleanup during Azalea Festival, Drexel Park, Valdosta, GA, 2019-03-10.The Watershed Protector
Tom Potter, 69
Valdosta, Georgia
Vehicle: Subaru Outback
Volunteering: WWALS Watershed Coalition, which works to protect watersheds in South Georgia and North Florida“I have a Ph.D. in environmental chemistry and a lengthy background in the science of water quality — I worked as Continue reading
They don’t want to say “we don’t know,” but they don’t know. At least they have a working hypothesis about the collapse of the 2017 peanut crop in much of Florida: it has to do with variations in rainfall.
Bob Kemerait, Southeast Farm Press, 22 January 2018, Peanut collapse: Something happened but it’s not clear exactly why,
…For months, University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Extension agents led by Anthony Drew, Mace Bauer and Dee Broughton had been sounding the alarm that an unprecedented collapse of the peanut crop was occurring across large areas of Florida’s production region. Symptoms of this collapse included stunted plants, late-season yellowing and leaves with distinctive marginal leaf necrosis. Where most severe, entire fields wilted in the weeks prior to harvest. Abysmal yields, off by as much as 45 percent, forced some to consider their future in farming if solution could not be found.
During the latter third of the season, Continue reading
Pesticide dust blew across the road between the Withlacoochee and Suwannee Rivers just the other day:
Photo: WWALS member Chris Mericle, looking north from SW 69th Drive
Nearby resident and WWALS member Brit McClung says:
“A good portion the chemicals that are applied to that field wind up on my front porch, on me and in my lungs with the dirt.”
His land is just northeast and a church is southeast of Continue reading
Investment firms owned by Bill Gates have bought thousands of
acress of agricultural land in counties in or near WWALS watersheds
in south Georgia and north Florida, all above the Floridan Aquifer,
near the Alapaha, Alapahoochee, Withlacoochee, and Suwannee Rivers,
as part of a nationwide buying spree of a quarter million acres.
Here’s a summary of what we’ve found thus far. Any more recent posts should be found through this search.
These purchases of hundreds and thousands of contiguous acres are all after Bill Gates announced in 2012 he was going to “fix” agriculture in conjunction with Monsanto and Syngenta.
And it’s not just Bill Gates. Continue reading
Found by Chris Graham. I added the illustrations and the table. -jsq
THE FLORIDAN AQUIFER
by Sandra McCulloughSandra McCullough lives in Valdosta, Georgia. She is a Speech Communications major and has an interest in the Environment and Humankind’s interaction with the Environment. Sandra plans to continue her education and become a teacher of public speaking. The topic to be discussed here is the Floridan Aquifer.
The Floridan aquifer system is very important to a large number of people, despite general lack of knowledge of or about it. The Floridan aquifer underlies all of Florida, south Georgia, and parts of both Alabama and South Carolina.’ This particular aquifer system is one of the major sources of ground-water in the United States. For this reason and more, studies of its function have been done for years. These studies as well as other findings will be discussed in this paper.
Continue reading