Watershed meeting organized by Army Corps of Engineers

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) didn’t know there was a large water problem hereabouts, but now they do, and they want to take a watershed-wide approach, from the headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico, including both surface water and aquifer issues, perhaps starting with redrawing FEMA’s flood maps, and maybe even including once again funding the state water council.

Thursday 11 April 2013 there was a rather large governmental meeting organized by USACE in response to the City of Valdosta’s request of 11 March 2103. Yesterday, Valdosta City Council District 5 Tim Carroll sent the appended list of attendees, augmented by a conversation with him on the phone 13 April and a blog comment by him later that same day on the original post on the WWALS blog, in which he also remarked:

Very good preliminary meeting that hopefully will yield real action on our region wide water issues. Thanks for sharing this info with WWALS.
We know little else, because no media or private citizens were invited.

  • USACE Savannah office: Jeff Morris, Georgia Silver Jackets Coordinator and Beth Williams, Hydraulic Engineer
  • USACE Jacksonville office: David Apple, Chief, Watershed and Restoration Planning Section
  • GADNR: Christopher Hill and Tom Shillock, GAEPD Floodplain Management Unit
  • GEMA: Dee Langley, Planning Program Manager and Terry Lunn, Director, Hazard Mitigation Division
  • GEMA: Gary Rice – Regional Field Coordinator
  • USGS: Brian McCallum, Supv. Hydrologist/ADir and Keith McFadden, Physical Scientist
  • FEMA Region 4: Susan Wilson, CFM, Floodplain Management and Insurance Branch Chief and Janice Mitchell, Insurance Specialist and Lender Compliance

Those state and national agencies were brought by:

Jeff Morris
Team Leader
Plan Formulation and Economics Branch
Planning Division
Savannah District, USACE

He listed himself as coordinator for the Georgia Silver Jackets. Silver Jackets is a national inter-agency program, “Many Agencies One Solution”, with programs developed at the state level. Georgia’s Silver Jacket program is apparently still getting organized.

Local elected and employed officials included:

Lowndes County:

  • Chairman Bill Slaughter
  • County Engineer Mike Fletcher
  • Emergency Director Ashley Tye

City of Valdosta

  • Mayor John Gayle
  • City Manager Larry Hanson
  • Operations Manager John Whitehead
  • Utilities Director Henry Hicks
    City Engineer Pat Collins
  • Assistant to City Manager Mara Register
  • Storm Water Director Emily Davenport
  • Zoning and Planning Director Matt Martin
  • Public Information Officer Sementha Mathews
  • Council Robert Yost
  • Council Tim Carroll

Tift County

  • Chairman Grady Thompson
  • County Manager Jim Carter

Tifton

  • Two city employees (engineering? planning?)

Others included:

-jsq