Tag Archives: quality

Suwannee Farms, Lakeland Sands, and Bill Gates in Suwannee County, FL

Why does a farm need an industrial wastewater facility permit? WWALS got an email alert from FDEP about such a permit request for Suwannee Farms LLC on June 11th. A bit of digging shows it’s apparently now owned by Bill Gates, along with many more nearby acres in center pivot agriculture.

Suwannee Farms, Suwannee River Terra, and Lakeland Sands Permit: Water – Industrial Wastewater Facility Permit
Project Name: SUWANNE FARMS LLC
Location Id: FLA470031
Location Name: Suwanne Farms LLC
County: Suwannee
Application Number: FLA470031-005

For further information, please contact the Northeast District permitting office in Jacksonville at (904) 256-1700

Suwannee Farms has its own Continue reading →

Antioch Cemetery in a field, Jasper, FL

“Gone but not forgotten” say many of the epitaphs Closer in Antioch Cemetery, stranded in the middle of a center pivot field near Jasper, Hamilton County, Florida. Who did this? Could it be Bill Gates?

The cemetery is at the end of SW 38 Trail, 30.4606571, -83.1870117, in a tiny 1.97 acre parcel 4736-000 owned by Continue reading →

Request for Class 3 Permit Modification by CR/T from GA-EPD 2016-06-22

Update 2016-06-24: report and video of the meeting.

A chemical plant on E. Hill Ave. in Valdosta wants to stop monitoring chemicals in one of its wells, Map: MW-20 and SMW- it says because of difficult access due to stormwater that collects there. Yet they want to “add analysis of naphthalene, 2-methylphenol, and phenol for the post-closure care monitoring program.”

Facebook: event

When: 6-7 PM Wed June 22nd 2016

Where: South Georgia Regional Library
300 Woodrow Wilson Dr, Valdosta, Georgia 31602

This is the same location as the Arizona Chemical plant that almost closed in 2008. Stuart Taylor, VDT, 30 November 2014, Made in Valdosta: Chemical Research Technology, Continue reading →

Dye test in Dead River Sink on Alapaha River

Update 2016-06-22: Dye test into the Dead River Sink: it came back up several days later and eighteen river miles south, in the Alapaha River Rise and Holton Bluff Spring, both on the Suwannee River.

The Alapaha River disappears underground in dry seasons, and nobody has ever known where it comes back up. Soon, we will know.

Green Publishing, 16 June 2016, Dye test held for river basins,

The Florida Geological Survey will be conducing a dye test for the Suwannee River Water Management District in the Upper Suwannee/Alapaha River basins later this month. They will introduce dye into the Dead River Swallet (swallets are sinkholes that capture flow) and a swallet that is located on privately owned land. They will also have sampling devices setup at Continue reading →

Valdosta force main and new WWTP are online and working

The recent rains caused little wastewater overflow, according to Valdosta City Council Tim Carroll, who forwarded cryptic Valdosta press release yesterday and then explained on the telephone what it meant: Map the two biggest pieces of Valdosta’s wastewater and sewer fixes are operational already.

The press release referred to “the new force main” as if it were already in operation, yet nothing on Valdosta’s website says it is. So I called Tim Carroll and he confirmed that yes, the force main is online. Not only that, but 5 million gallons less water than usual for such rains entered the new Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP).

Wait, does that mean the new, uphill, out-of-the-floodplain WWTP is also online? Yes, confirmed Carroll. And the less inflow was due to less INI.

What’s INI, I asked, ignorantly? Continue reading →

Joint Regional Water Planning Council Meeting, Dublin, GA 2016-06-23

Apparently we get dragged into a meeting of all regional councils with waters flowing into the Atlantic Joint because the Suwannee-Satilla RWPC includes much of the Satilla and St Marys Rivers, even though most of the SSRWPC territory is in our Upper Suwannee watershed. A tiny bit of our Little River Watershed is in Wilcox County, which is in the Altamaha RWPC.

Received from GA-DNR May 25th 2016, NOTICE:

JOINT REGIONAL WATER PLANNING COUNCIL MEETING Continue reading →

We have a right to expect waterways and groundwater to be clean –Dennis J. Price

Another letter against Sabal Trail and for the rivers and the aquifer in the paper Suwannee Democrat, May 5th 2016.

In response to Jason Bashaw’s, Chairman of the Suwannee County Commission, article in the Suwannee Valley Times, I have this to say. Why is it that if people are concerned about the environment they live in, they are automatically placed into this environmental left category? Like many, many people in our surrounding counties, I hunt, fish, hike and paddle our local rivers. I use the environment as do we all.

I use the environment as do we all. So, for working and paying taxes all my life — as a Vietnam Veteran, as a person who chose to live in this rural part of Florida and raise his kid, as a person who is not now nor ever will be wealthy — I count our public lands, our woods and rivers as a reward for doing the right thing. I do not mind my tax dollars going towards public lands. Mr. Bashaw uses the environmental left in a derogatory manner as a means of denigrating them, and he is including me in it and I resent it. I resent it for my friend’s in WWALS and others who show concern for the pipeline route. I have not met an environmental lefty among them.

WWALS is, Continue reading →

Trash cleanup on a Valdosta lake 2016-04-30

Update 2016-04-29: Canceled due to gators. Stay tuned for rescheduling.

The VSU Anthropology Club has asked WWALS to send volunteers to help clean up a private lake in Valdosta.

Facebook Event When: 9AM Saturday 30 April 2016

Where: End of Wedgewood Drive at Bancroft Road

In charge: VSU Anthropology Club aka Anthro-Geeks

Facebook: event, which says: Continue reading →

Lowndes County Chairman says accepting easement was not endorsement of Sabal Trail pipeline

So Lowndes County should have no problem asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to come investigate what Sabal Trail didn’t tell FERC. And if the county is concerned about legal expenses, maybe it should pay attention to the lawsuits happening right now in California about a natural gas leak that went up into the air, closing schools, evacuating hundreds, and making many of them sick.

The VDT article today doesn’t mention writing a letter to the Corps was one of my requests to the county. It does quote the Chairman expresssing interest in details of eminent domain, in differences in regulation of oil and gas pipelines, and in environmental and safety issues of natural gas pipelines. Treating his statements as questions, I have provided some further information below on those points.

And he does say the county might have incurred legal expenses if it hadn’t accepted Sabal Trail’s money for the easement. He doesn’t mention how much money Lowndes County spent suing a local company on behalf of a trash collection company financed out of New York City, or how much money the county spent suing a local church about a minor tax matter. It seems when Lowndes County wants to do something, it doesn’t worry so much about legal expenses. And maybe the county should worry more about legal expenses if something does go wrong with that pipeline, especially considering what’s happening with the Porter Ranch leak in California.

Besides, writing a letter Continue reading →

Valdosta wastewater improvements ribbon cutting being scheduled for May

Valdosta seems serious about finally opening its new force main and uphill Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant: they’re scheduling a ribbon cutting for May, a year ahead of the original schedule. According to both City Council Tim Carroll and Engineering Assistant Director Emily Davenport, the EPA has already pressure-tested the relevant lines and the plant, and approved them.

People downstream are rightly concerned at the many years they’ve endured wastewater from Valdosta. And recent schedule slips haven’t helped their perceptions, which is why actually holding Continue reading →