Tag Archives: Transparency

Valdosta blamed in Florida for Lowndes County sewage spill

Lowndes County Public Information Officer Paige Dukes Maybe Lowndes County should come clean about its sewage spill so Florida will stop blaming Valdosta.

Gainesville.com staff report today, Health dept. urges public to avoid Suwannee, Withlacoochee rivers,

This is the second time in two months that state health officials have had to warn residents of North Central Florida to avoid contact with the water flowing in the Suwannee — and both instances involve sewage contamination involving a spill in Valdosta.

Or maybe it’s normal for GA EPD to be more responsive than our local elected government. What do you think?

-jsq

GA EPD on Lowndes County Waste Water Spill

Lowndes County: voice mail. GA EPD: written response within minutes about that wastewater spill into the Withlacoochee River that turns out to be from a Lowndes County sewer line (not Valdosta’s).

After I called Lowndes County and got referred to voice mail, I filed an open records request with the county. I then called GA EPD in Albany and talked to Mary Sheffield. She said that compliance issues are handled from the Atlanta Office and provided the number.

I called GA EPD in Atlanta and asked for the Lowndes County Compliance Officer. She kindly told me that there had been some confusion about what government was responsible for the spill, because Valdosta called first but then Lowndes County did call and take responsibility for the spill.

She said that the spill had been 1.32 Million Gallons and that so far they had had a verbal report from the county and that the county has 5 days to make a written report.

Further, she said she would e-mail me any information that she had at this time, although the verbal reports are not “official”. And before I finished typing this up, she sent this response:

Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:34:19 -0400
From: Kim Hembree
Subject: Lowndes County Spill

Ms. Quarterman,

The Lowndes County spill was originally reported to the Environmental Protection Division by the City of Valdosta on 4/25/2013. After responding to the spill, the City of Valdosta determined that the spill was coming from a portion of sanitary sewer collection system that belonged to Lowndes County. Lowndes County (County) responded to the spill on 4/25/2013. This morning, the County reported that the spill was approximately 1.32 million and entered the Withlacoochee River.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

To which I replied:

Thank you.

If I understand correctly, Lowndes County now has 5 days to file a complete spill report. I’ll be interested in that when it is available.

Gretchen

Also, has Lowndes County put up a sign at the spill site to replace the Valdosta spill sign?

-gretchen

Open Records Request – 20130426 – Waste Water

Wastewater spills open records request In addition to calling Lowndes County, I also filed this Open Records Request:

Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:56:39 -0400
To: Paige Dukes, Mike Allen, Phyllis Judge
Subject: Open Records Request – 20130426 – Waste Water

Hi,

Please find attached an open records request for the following:

1) All written reports to EPD about waste water spills for the last 3 years
2) All year long monitoring programs/results after each spill
3) published notices in legal organ of all spills for last 3 years
4) a copy of the Overflow Emergency Response Program

I would prefer electronic copies of these documents if they are available.

Thank you,

Gretchen

Gretchen Quarterman

I attached a scan of the paper Lowndes County Open Records Request form I filled out.

-gretchen

Openings on local boards and authorities

Valdosta City Hall Annex Want to help your community and find out how local politics works without even having to run for office? You can apply to be appointed to a local board or authority.

Here are (most of) the local boards and authorities. Budgets range from zero to more than $3 million a year. Influence ranges from unknown to very high. Your interest you have to determine for yourself. Maybe start by going to see the CDBG Citizens Advisory Committee in action Monday. Bring back some video, will you?

Here’s a list of openings to be filled by the City of Valdosta soon. The deadline for applications is 5PM 1 May 2013; that’s next Wednesday. HTML version is below. (I would link to a similar list for Lowndes County, but that Commission doesn’t post such a list.)

Continue reading →

Monday: CDBG Citizens Advisory Committee

A new citizens committee is meeting Monday:

CDBG Citizen Advisory Committee
Date: 4/29/2013 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Cost: FREE
Location: Valdosta City Hall Annex Multi-Purpose Room
300 N. Lee Street

The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Citizens Advisory Committee is charged with providing recommendations to the Mayor and City Council regarding the use of the federal entitlement funding received by the City of Valdosta through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

For more information, contact the Neighborhood Develoopment at (229) 671-3617.

Who’s on it? Hard to say, although Continue reading →

Videos: audit, solar, office, and more @ VLCIA 2013-04-16

Interesting stuff (audit and internal controls, many meetings, 2 megawatts of solar power, searching for and finances of a new office from a mysterious seller) in the items missing from the posted agenda yet presented anyway, while two staff were elsewhere.

Here’s the agenda with a few notes and some links to the videos. * marks items that were not in the posted agenda.

Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Agenda
Tuesday, April 16, 2013 5:30 p.m.
Industrial Authority Conference Room
2110 N. Patterson Street
Continue reading →

Arsenic, Outings, and Flooding: WWALS Watershed Coalition @ VLCIA 2013-04-16

Water issues strongly affect economic development, so I talked about the new WWALS Watershed Coalition at the 16 April 2013 Board Meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority.

The VDT declined to speak, so I did. After apologizing for no okra today, I commended the Authority for talking about the missing agenda items and for mentioning due diligence and flood control.

Mostly I talked about the new WWALS Watershed Coalition, www.wwals.net, incorporated in June 2012, which is about watershed issues such as flooding, water quality, and invasive species related to the Withlacoochee, Willacoochee, Alapaha, and Little River System. I mentioned arsenic in some local well water, which the Department of Health has finally said should be tested, three years after Janet McMahan discovered it was a problem. I invited VLCIA board and staff to two upcoming WWALS events: Continue reading →

A New Home! Year Six @ VLCIA 2013-04-16

The Industrial Authority was very forthcoming about everything about their new office purchase except who they were buying it from; this was at the 16 April 2013 Board Meeting of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority. The seller turns out to be a household name hereabouts.

New Office –Roy Copeland

Chairman Roy Copeland talked about the at least five year process for finding “a new home” for VLCIA. 103 Roosevelt Drive He noted that before he joined the board they were considering buying a property he and his wife own. He and former Lowndes County Chairman Ashley Paulk looked at another property near the Courthouse. VLCIA even toured the historic Lowndes County Courthouse but concluded it couldn’t be renovated for their purposes. Jerry Jennett noted the search had gone on even longer than five years. Copeland said the parameters they had set were, as far as he recalled, Continue reading →

Videos: No road abandonment, Yes deannexation, and Earth Day @ LCC 2013-04-09

Eight minutes and a few seconds for the Regular Session of 9 April 2013 of the Lowndes County Commission, with the road closing withdrawn (while it’s still unclear who owns the land next to that road) and the deannexation approved. No special presentation was seen at the scheduled item, but an Earth Day event was announced at the end of the meeting.

Here’s the agenda, with a few notes, and a few links into the video.

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, APRIL 8, 2013, 8:30 a.m.
REGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 2013, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
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Gulf 3 years ago; Caspian 5 years ago: BP oil well blowouts

Two years before BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig poisoned the Gulf of Mexico (Saturday was the third anniversary), apparently BP had a very similar disaster in the Caspian Sea and covered it up. Is this a company or this the 13 spills in 30 days industry we want piping tar sands crude across America to the Gulf for all of 35 permanent jobs and CO2 emissions like 51 coal plants? There’s a cleaner, cheaper, and more energy-independent way: solar and wind power can power the U.S. and the world.

Greg Palast wrote for EcoWatch 19 April 2013, BP Covered Up Blow-out Two Years Prior to Deadly Deepwater Horizon Spill,

Two years before the Deepwater Horizon blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP off-shore rig suffered a nearly identical blow-out, but BP concealed the first one from the U.S. regulators and Congress.

This week, EcoWatch.org located an eyewitness with devastating new information about the Caspian Sea oil-rig blow-out which BP had concealed from government and the industry.

The witness, whose story is backed up by rig workers who were evacuated from BP’s Caspian platform, said that had BP revealed the full story as required by industry practice, the eleven Gulf of Mexico workers “could have had a chance” of survival. But BP’s insistence on using methods proven faulty sealed their fate.

One cause of the blow-outs was the same in both cases: the use of a money-saving technique—plugging holes with “quick-dry” cement.

By hiding the disastrous failure of its penny-pinching cement process in 2008, BP was able to continue to use the dangerous methods in the Gulf of Mexico—causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history. April 20 marks the second anniversary of the Gulf oil disaster.

There’s more in the article, such as this:

Continue reading →