Tag Archives: quality

Testing for firefighting chemicals in wells and waterways 2019-01-18

Those firefighting chemicals that leaked from Moody Air Force Base are on the front page of the Valdosta Daily Times today:

Moody recommends private well owners contact their county representatives for information on testing personal wells.

Paige Dukes, Lowndes County clerk and public information officer, said this is an opportunity for county residents such as Tann to have their water tested. Not only for PFAS but for any other contaminants that might be there.

Indeed, and Lowndes County operates the Moody AFB wastewater treatment plant that spilled into Beatty Branch and Cat Creek. So it’s an opportunity for Lowndes County to help organize testing for these per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFASs), because testing for them isn’t nearly as simple or inexpensive as testing for other contaminants.

[Suwannee Riverkeeper John S. Quarterman, nearby resident Debra Tann, VDT reporter Thomas Lynn and photographer Derrek Vaughn, at Beatty Branch, January 7, 2019. Photo: John S. Quarterman for WWALS.]
Suwannee Riverkeeper John S. Quarterman, nearby resident Debra Tann, VDT reporter Thomas Lynn and photographer Derrek Vaughn, at Beatty Branch, January 7, 2019. Photo: John S. Quarterman for WWALS.

Debra Tann and I were back at Beatty Branch on January 7, 2019, this time with the VDT, about the firefighting chemical issue that was in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the first week of January. This time it was for local reporters. Moody neighbor wants water tested, Continue reading →

Water Quality Testing, Troupville Boat Ramp 2019-01-06

You can learn how to do water quality testing, and help WWALS test our waters. We have Florida training coming up this Monday, January 21, 2019, at noon, at Suwannee River State Park. We’ll be scheduling another Georgia training soon.

[Air]
Air

Here is Sara Jay testing Little River water at Troupville Boat Ramp, Sunday, January 6, 2019.

[Continue titrating with Sodium Thiosulfate ONE DROP AT A TIME, swirling thoroughly after each drop,]
Continue titrating with Sodium Thiosulfate ONE DROP AT A TIME, swirling thoroughly after each drop,

Pictures of the whole test procedure are Continue reading →

Public Health Assessment of Rice Rail Yard, Waycross, GA 2018-06-07

The Georgia Department of Health published many positive downwards trends in contaminants, and some big “cannot conclude”s last summer, when it released through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) a Public Health Assessment, CSX TRANSPORTATION — RAIL YARD SITE, WAYCROSS, WARE COUNTY, GEORGIA.

Cover, Pages

Most of the graphs show downward trends, like this one, of Trichloroethene (TCE), the substance whose detection seems to have kicked off all this work.

TCE Downward trend, Pages

On page 39, the report says about data collected by Silent Disaster: Continue reading →

Rochelle details, and Tifton spills at Agrirama Lift Station 2019-01-15

Tifton, and any other cities: if you keep spilling from the same place whenever there’s a big rain, maybe it’s not the rain that’s excessive. Maybe your sewage infrastructure is inadequate and you should fix it.

Map: Agrirama Lake, Spills
One day a week ago GA-EPD included latitude and longitude in the spreadsheet, with this for Tifton’s Agrirama Lake Lift Station: 31.464770, -83.530532, shown here on the WWALS map of the Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail (WLRWT).

In yesterday’s GA-EPD Sewage Spills Report we have a little more detail on the 300-gallon Rochelle, GA spill: Continue reading →

Quitman spill amount 2019-01-14 for 2019-01-03

Finally we see in the GA-EPD data from yesterday a total for Quitman’s spill of the third of January:

120,000 gallons of raw sewage, Diff

120,000 gallons of raw sewage. That’s far more than my previous guess.

Maybe you’d like to join the new WWALS water quality testing program. Or maybe you’d like to join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!

Let’s add up Quitman’s recent spills: Continue reading →

Top of the Alapaha River Basin: Rochelle, GA, spilled 2019-01-10

First time we’ve seen this: 300 gallons of raw sewage spilled from Rochelle, Georgia, in Wilcox County, at the top of the Alapaha River Basin.

Spill, Rochelle, GA

Rochelle is nestled between Continue reading →

Tifton spilled again into Agrirama Lake 2019-01-06

Yet again into Agrirama Lake, Tifton spilled 8,500 gallons of raw sewage yesterday (Sunday, January 6, 2019). And, finally, a number of gallons Valdosta spilled from its Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant back on December 15, 2018.

Tifton (and Dekalb, Fulton, and Clayton Counties), Spreadsheet

As you can see, cities in the Atlanta Metro Area spilled more. And in the table below you can see many more of them spilled.

Not that that makes Tifton’s spill Continue reading →

Still below the limit: fecal coliform in Valdosta river data 2019-01-02

Three weeks in a row! The Valdosta river water quality testing data WWALS obtains through a weekly open records request shows all stations tested below the Georgia state limit last Wednesday.

Graph, Withlacoochee River Basin, Withlacoochee

However, like the week before, there are no data for Continue reading →

Quitman LAS spills again 2019-01-03

Quitman spilled raw sewage again yesterday, January 3, 2019, from its Land Application Site (LAS) east of town, south of US 84, next to Okapilco Creek. GA-EPD in its Sewage Spills Report of today finally got the river basin right (Suwannee), but seems to have forgotten which creek that LAS is near.

Quitman Land Application Site, Map
Quitman LAS on the WWALS google map for the Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail (WLRWT).

No amount is reported yet, but Quitman usually spills between 20,000 and 80,000 gallons of raw sewage. We shall see.

Spills reported to GA-EPD through 2019-01-03

That Quitman spill is the only new one in the Suwannee River Basin for the past 30 days.

GA-EPD spreadsheet 2019-01-03, Report
WWALS diff of 2019-01-03 and 2019-01-04 GA-EPD Sewage Spill Reports.

A bunch of other reports are rolling off the end, as indicated by Continue reading →

AJC at Moody AFB about groundwater contamination 2018-12-07

A month ago at Beatty Branch:

“Everything in this area depends on groundwater,” said John Quarterman, the Suwannee Riverkeeper in Lowndes County, where Moody is located. “I’m not saying that Moody necessarily did make enough contamination to be a problem, but I can’t tell from this report, and I don’t think it’s our responsibility to determine that they didn’t.”

[Photographer Hyosub Shin and Reporter Meris Lutz]
Photographer Hyosub Shin and Reporter Meris Lutz, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, online today and in Sunday’s Atlanta paper newspaper, Contaminated groundwater, a toxic legacy of Georgia’s air bases, 3 January 2019.

Moody Air Force Base tested their own wells, and found them clean. Which is good, but

[Figure 2 AFFF Area Locations]
Figure 2 AFFF Area Locations
PDF

their wells are much deeper than the wells the rest of us use in the country around here. Moody did not test any of those wells; Continue reading →