We thanked the Atkinson County Commission for this letter, and later got a copy of it. The letter probably helped with GA-EPD deciding to redesignate Recreational an upper segment of the Alapaha River Water Trail, one containing Willacoochee Landing in Atkinson County. More redesignations are possible later. There’s a GA-EPD Update Meeting next week.
![[Letter, Commission, Willacoochee Landing]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2021-06-23--atkinson-county-epd-recreational/many.jpg)
Letter, Commission, Willacoochee Landing
Alapaha River Water Trail and GA-EPD Recreational redesignation of the Alapaha River at Atkinson County Commission last Thursday made the news.
Typhani Gray, Fox 31 WFXL, 9 July 2021, WWALS Watershed Coalition thanks Atkinson Commission for support,
WWALS Watershed Coalition was started after organizers were concerned about sewage spills, and roads being closed because of trees being down in the river.
Most of that was in the Withlacoochee River around 2009, but the Alapaha River did have water quality issues back then.
The organization came to the Atkinson County Board of Commissioners to thank them for the Alapaha River Water Trail contribution.
In 2018 commissions passed a resolution supporting the water trail.
Here is that Atkinson County Commission resolution of 18 January 2018 supporting the Alapaha River Water Trail.
This trail runs for more than 100 miles on the Alapaha River all the way down to Florida.
Atkinson County has one landing on Georgia 135 that’s called Willacoochee [Landing].
According to John Quarterman, the Watershed Coalition has expanded its organization and is now tests waters to make it safer for people to swim and fish.
Valerie Folsom, who tests in Atkinson County at Willacoochee Landing @ GA 135, also spoke to the Atkinson County Commission about the latest test results. Continue reading
There are a couple of new things in what I sent on the deadline day, yesterday. (PDF)
For what this is all about, see Calling for pictures of swimming, diving, rapids, tubing, water skiing, or surfing, Suwannee River Basin, Georgia.
June 30, 2021
To: EPD.Comments@dnr.ga.gov
Elizabeth Booth, Environmental Protection Division
Watershed Protection Branch,
Watershed Planning & Monitoring Program,
Suite 1152 East, 2 Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr., Atlanta, GA 30334
Re: Georgia Triennial Review of Water Quality Standards
Dear Ms. Booth,
Once again I would like to commend you and all the GA-EPD staff for your diligence in this Triennial Review process. I thank you for your consideration of the request by WWALS Watershed Coalition, Inc. (WWALS) to upgrade GA EPD’s designated use of the Little, Withlacoochee, Alapaha, and Suwannee Rivers, as well as Grand Bay WMA, Banks Lake NWR, and the Okefenokee NWR, from Fishing to Recreational, to set higher water quality standards for these bodies of water.
In the interests of saving you and me time, I will try to merely summarize the arguments I have already made, while adding some material you may not have previously seen.
As you know WWALS would prefer that redesignation applied uniformly, year-round. As you mentioned in the recent EPD zoom meeting on this subject, perhaps one reason Florida has all its rivers as Recreational by default is its climate. South Georgia, like north Florida (and unlike north Georgia) has a subtropical climate in which we are not surprised by 80-degree weather in January. People swim, dive, fish, and boat on our rivers year-round. Some people even prefer to be on and in the water in the winter because there are fewer insects. I have recently been reminded that local churches also use them for immersion baptisms, which can happen in any season of the year.
Per request of EPD, please find attached a Recreational Data
Spreadsheet, which is also online here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g9gLcNnbRx4H9djZAlKd1ZaB7zrlmDbz/view?usp=sharing
In that spreadsheet are examples of swimming and diving locations, including almost every boat ramp or landing, plus selected sandbars, beaches, and springs. Also included are a few examples of rapids. None of them are Class III, but at least two are Class II+, and as Gwyneth Moody pointed out on the recent zoom, people frequently capsize in those.
Included for every location in that spreadsheet is a link to further information, mostly to one of our three river trails (“blue trails”):
Continue readingA local and Georgia state institution since 1960, the Georgia Sheriffs’ Boys Ranch on GA 122 east of Hahira and just east of the Withlacoochee River has a wastewater treatment pond, which has never reported a spill.
![[Entrance arch, WPCP, Founded 1960]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2021-04-26--ga-sheriffs-boys-ranch-wpcp/many.jpg)
Entrance arch, WPCP, Founded 1960
According to GA-EPD, it has sufficient capacity that it probably never will.
Nonetheless, Monday I went to look at that pond of NPDES Permit No. GA0047228. Thanks to the front office (she did not say her name) for asking the maintenance man (I think she said his name was Mike) to show me the pond. Continue reading
Update 2021-08-24: Parts of Alapaha, Withlacoochee Rivers to be Recreational –GA-EPD 2021-08-11.
The Georgia Environmental Protection Division (GA-EPD) is being quite thorough
about the Triennial Review of Water Quality Standards that is required by federal law.
However, several problems were revealed at their online meeting on February 2, 2021.
Some of the GA-EPD slides are inline below, and the rest are on the WWALS website:
https://wwals.net/pictures/2021-02-02–ga-epd-triennial-review
You can help:
https://wwals.net/?p=50127#help
![[Second-class Recreational, maps, wastewater]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2021-02-02--ga-epd-triennial-review/many.jpg)
Second-class Recreational, maps, wastewater
They want to create a second class of Recreational designation for boating, with more lax restrictions on contamination and only seasonal application; several waterbodies we requested are missing; and they want to declare that 20 river miles downstream from a wastewater permit cannot be Recreational.
Here is the slide defining second-class Recreational for boating: Continue reading
Update 2020-01-25: Florida advisory lifted, but WWALS warning signs stay up, and keep testing rivers, creeks and wells.
Okapilco Creek is down from 2419.6 cfu/100 mL E. coli last Thursday to 365 yesterday, Wednesday, January 22, 2020, according to data from Lowndes County received during the Florida Rivers Task Force meeting in Lake City.
![[Okapilco Creek in Brooks County]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2020-01-18--fdoh-lowndes-wwals-wq/okapilco-brooks.jpg)
Okapilco Creek in Brooks County in
Brooks County Tax Appraiser map.
That’s still higher than we’d like to see, but not way up in don’t touch the water range like before.
![[Lowndes County 2020-01-22]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2020-01-18--fdoh-lowndes-wwals-wq/2020-01-22--lowndes-county-data.jpg)
Lowndes County 2020-01-22
Thanks to Lowndes County Chairman Bill Slaughter for sending these results,
which are
on the WWALS website
along with the entire
entire updated WWALS composite spreadsheet
of all results from all sources.
Where did that contamination go? Did it show up on Continue reading
2019-12-28: High E. coli at state line in Florida DOH water quality data 2019-12-24.
At Nankin Thursday: 533 cfu/100 mL E. coli, well above the state limit of 200, and up from 33 on December 15, and zero on December 11 and 8 and November 23.
Florida already saw elevated bacterial counts at the state line on Tuesday, so the Withlacoochee River is apparently contaminated with Valdosta sewage all the way from Sugar Creek down to the Florida line. Yet Valdosta still hasn’t put up any warning signs on the Withlacoochee River downstream from Sugar Creek.
That December 26th reading by Suzy Hall at Nankin Boat Ramp isn’t as high as her recent numbers at Knights Ferry: 6,767 on December 24 and 4,966 on December 21st (with 100 on December 15th and zero on December 11th). Nonetheless, it looks like Valdosta’s sewage has spread downstream from Knights Ferry to Nankin.
At 533 cfu/100 ml, you probably don’t want to get that river water on you. Georgia standards indicate Continue reading
Florida provides Get Out of Jail Free cards for fertilizer, sewage, and manure (FSM), wrote Waterkeepers Florida in this letter sent Friday to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) in its Triennial Review of Water Quality Standards:
If actual substantial harm is eventually found, the only result is a planning processes that lead to Basin Management Action Plans (BMAPs). BMAPs are largely collaborations of the operators of FSM pollution sources, and the only consequence of the failure of the plan to actually curb FSM pollution is a requirement to report the failure. Where BMAPs were hoped to be practical mechanisms to reduce FSM pollution, they have in fact functioned as a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for agriculture industries and other sources of as FSM pollution, while our waters continue to be degraded. The FSM rules have been implemented over the past seven years, during which time, widespread massive algae outbreaks have taken place on the St. Johns River, and in other rivers and lakes throughout Florida.
![[Turbidity Criteria]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2019-11-22--wkfl-triennial-review-comments/WKFL-Final-Triennial-Review-Comments-0001.jpg)
Much of this letter from most of the members of Waterkeepers Florida, including Suwannee Riverkeeper, is about cyanotoxins, which fortunately we do not yet have in the Suwannee River Basin, and coral reefs, which are a southern Florida regional matter. Yet every regional matter affects the whole state of Florida, the southeast, the nation, and the world. For example, about II. Routes of Ingestion:
This calculation only takes ingestion while swimming into account. Exposure to cyanotoxins can also occur dermally and through inhalation of aerosolized particles. These routes are not taken into consideration, as EPA states, because adequate effects data are not available. The relative source contribution that was a part of the 2016 recommendations has been removed, to focus on the ingestion.
Plus people all over Florida and beyond eat fish caught in the red tide areas: how much exposure to ingested cyanotoxins do we all have?
Water quality testing for nutrients and cyanotoxins were big topics at yesterday’s Public Workshop in Tallahassee. Apalachicola Riverkeeper Georgia Ackerman was there, but had to leave at noon. So John S. Quarterman ended up speaking as Suwannee Riverkeeper and on behalf of Waterkeepers Florida, in Florida’s Triennial Review of Water Quality Standards.
![[Apalachicola Riverkeeper Georgia Ackerman]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2019-11-04--fl-triennial-review-tlh/20191104_091957.jpg)
Apalachicola Riverkeeper Georgia Ackerman
The FDEP presenters made it pretty clear they preferred putting up warning signs based on clorophyl a measurements and whenever cyanobacteria blooms are sighted, as they ask DOH to do now, to waiting for lab tests to come back to confirm, as EPA Continue reading
Update 2019-11-05: Workshop report.
FDEP is holding a Triennial Review workshop in Tallahassee Monday (tomorrow) morning.
When: 9AM, Monday, November 4, 2019
Where: Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Bob Martinez Center, Room 609, 2600 Blair Stone Road, Tallahassee, Florida
Announcement: on the FDEP website, along with the agenda.
Teleconference Call-in: 1-888-585-9008,
Conference Room Number: 125-938-245#
Teleconference participants will be in “listen only” mode (muted) throughout most of the meeting, but will be given an opportunity to provide verbal comments during the public comment period (after in-person attendees).
If you can’t go to this one, three more are scheduled, but they will not have teleconference participation. They are: Continue reading
![[Willacoochee Landing @ GA 135, Alapaha River Water Trail, Suwannee Riverkeeper at Atkinson County Commission, Reporter Typhani Gray and Tester Valerie Folsom, ARWT road sign]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2021-07-09--fox31-wwals-arwt-atkinson-co/many.jpg)
![[Rivers, Letter]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2021-06-30--recreational/many.jpg)
![[Across]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2019-12-26--nankin-wq/20191226_163637_resized.jpg)