Tag Archives: WWALS Watershed Coalition

VDT has selective smell



To the VDT the county government always smells like azaleas
and the city of Valdosta government always smells like sewage.
The local newspaper of record doesn’t seem to smell sewage
or landfill problems from Lowndes County.
Today’s VDT editorial complains about
environmental groups paying attention to “theoretical disasters”
(presumably referring to the Sabal Trail pipeline),
yet the VDT has never covered the group that has
most consistently followed the watershed-wide
flooding issues that cause Valdosta’s flooding problems:
WWALS Watershed Coalition.
The VDT recommends citizens get more involved
in sniffing out Valdosta’s sewage problems, yet it doesn’t seem
to cover Citizens Wishing To Be Heard anymore, nor has the VDT called
for the citizen participation sessions promised by
the local governments for the Army Corps of Engineers flooding studies.
Maybe the VDT could encourage citizen participation, rather than ignore it.

VDT editorial today,

It just plain stinks, Continue reading →

Ask Georgia Power to conserve our water –Garry Gentry for WWALS @ GA PSC 2013-06-18

Garry Gentry read the


WWALS Watershed Coalition letter
at

the Georgia Public Service Commission meeting Tuesday 18 June 2013.

The recent rains have swollen our blackwater rivers, Withlacoochee, Willacoochee, Alapaha, and Little, under our longleaf pines and Spanish-moss-covered oaks, and filled up the tea-colored tannin waters in our frog-singing pocosin cypress swamps here in central South Georgia. But that was only a dent in our protracted drought that ranges from mild to extreme, with projections not much better….



There is no need to use our Floridan Aquifer water to build more
baseload power plants while Georgia lags behind Michigan,
Massachusetts, and even tiny New Jersey and Maryland in solar power.

WWALS calls on the PSC to ask Georgia Power to conserve our water
and to bring jobs to south Georgia through solar power and wind off
the Georgia coast.

You can read

the complete letter.
Here’s

the video:



Ask Georgia Power to conserve our water –Garry Gentry for WWALS

Georgia Power proposed closing of coal plants,

Administrative Session, GA Public Service Commission (GA PSC),

Doug Everrett (1: south Georgia), Tim Echols (2: east Georgia), Chairman Chuck Eaton (3: metro Atlanta), Stan Wise (5 north Georgia), Bubba McDonald (4: west Georgia),

Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),

244 Washington Street SW, Atlanta, GA, 30334-9052, 18 June 2013.

-jsq

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:

Continue reading →

Big Little River Paddle Race


Blue boat
Today is the last day of the $20 online registration for the
Big Little River Paddle Race, cosponsored by WWALS Watershed Coalition
and Friends of Reed Bingham, to be held Saturday March 23rd
at Reed Bingham State Park.


WWALS blog post;
event flyer PDF, and much of the flyer text is below.

Continue reading →

Clean streams to attract business —Al Browning



Al Browning of

WWALS
made a point yesterday that I haven’t heard mentioned
by local Chambers of Commerce or economic development agencies:

Suppose there’s a business looking to south Georgia, to move into an area.
They can go to the

Adopt-A-Stream website for that particular area,
and get an idea of where the best water is.
And they may choose… that Berrien County has terrible water;
I’m going to go to Cook County, or Lowndes!

Here’s

the video:

That’s

Georgia Adopt-A-Stream,
which currently doesn’t show any water quality testing sites
for any of those counties, but that could change soon.
Maybe economic development organizations should help it change,
because that lack could be steering businesses elsewhere.

A prominent local economic development appointee asked me last year,

Why would you want absolutely clean ear or water?

Well, businesses considering moving here might want those things
because their employees do.
And their employees might want those things because they
don’t want to get sick.
And besides, who doesn’t like clean air and water?

-jsq