{"id":7951,"date":"2014-03-02T10:34:18","date_gmt":"2014-03-02T15:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=7951"},"modified":"2014-09-03T17:36:43","modified_gmt":"2014-09-03T21:36:43","slug":"florida-tired-of-valdostas-wwtp-spills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/03\/florida-tired-of-valdostas-wwtp-spills.html","title":{"rendered":"Florida tired of Valdosta’s WWTP spills"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nOnce again,\r\n\r\nValdosta famous into Florida again for wastewater spill<\/a>,\r\nand Florida residents are tired of it.\r\n

\r\nWCTV 1 March 2014,\r\n\r\nGeorgia Spill Leads To Warning In Florida<\/a>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n[Matt] Meersman and his friends enjoy visiting the Suwannee River to train\r\nfor canoe races. According to the City of Valdosta, heavy rains have\r\ncaused about 7.5 million gallons of highly treated waste water to\r\nwash into the Withlacoochee River, which connects to the Suwannee.\r\nSigns are posted around the Suwannee River State Park to let people\r\nknow about the possible dangers of swimming in the water.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“When it’s impacted by stuff like this, it makes it hard on us to\r\nthink about it as the pristine place that we like to think of it\r\nas,” said Meersman.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nMeersman says there are other rivers around the area they can\r\npractice on in the meantime, but he says he’s tired of the spills.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“It’s bad enough to see trash, but when you know there are things in\r\nthe water that can hurt you that shouldn’t be there, that makes it\r\npretty frustrating,” said Meersman.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHere’s the City of Valdosta PR of 28 February 2014,\r\n\r\nCity Reports WWTP Permit Violation<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nOn Feb. 27, 2014, the Withlacoochee Wastewater Treatment Plant\r\n(WWTP) notified the Environmental Protection Division of a violation\r\nto the facility’s discharge limits for Total Suspended Solids (TSS).\r\nThe incident followed a peak flow of 13.47 million gallons into the\r\ntreatment plant which resulted from the heavy rain from the previous\r\nday.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAfter utility managers investigated the cause of the violation, it\r\nwas determined that excess solids building up in the secondary\r\nclarifiers caused some solids to wash out and pass through the\r\nremaining treatment processes. It is important to note that the\r\nspill volume reported was highly-treated wastewater meeting all\r\npermit requirements with the exception of the allowed limit for TSS\r\nonly.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe reported TSS measured for the effluent sample collected for Feb.\r\n26 was 107 milligrams per liter, which is greater than 1.5 times the\r\nseven day average allowed by the National Pollution Discharge\r\nElimination System permit. The reported volume of this spill is the\r\napproximately 7.5 million gallons into the Withlacoochee River.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAgain, while this constitutes a major spill under regulatory\r\nguidelines, the total volume reported for the permit violation was\r\nhighly-treated wastewater and met all other permit requirements,\r\nwith the exception of TSS.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nUpstream and downstream sampling of the Withlacoochee River was\r\ninitiated on Feb. 27, and public notice signs were posted downstream\r\nof the spill location.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nContact Environmental Manager John Waite at (229) 259-3592 or at\r\njwaite@valdostacity.com.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd on\r\n\r\nFiscal Year 2015 Valdosta Mayor-Council Goals<\/a>\r\nthe first two items are sewage-related:\r\n

\r\n
    \r\n
  1. \r\nBid, award contract and begin construction of the Force Main Project. \r\n
  2. \r\nBid, award contract and begin construction of the WWTP.\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

    \r\nWe shall see.\r\nMeanwhile, Florida is tired of Valdosta’s….\r\n

    \r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Once again, Valdosta famous into Florida again for wastewater spill, and Florida residents are tired of it. WCTV 1 March 2014, Georgia Spill Leads To Warning In Florida [Matt] Meersman and his friends enjoy visiting the Suwannee River to train for canoe races. According to the City of Valdosta, heavy rains have caused about 7.5 […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[41,54,55],"tags":[7187,8701,8718,8702,12,7,61,7482,6,8726,8727,58,295,6257],"class_list":["post-7951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-valdosta-city-council","category-water","tag-force-main","tag-georgia","tag-health-care","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-sewage","tag-suwanneee-river","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-city-council","tag-water","tag-withlacoochee-river","tag-withlacoochee-wastewater-treatment-plant","tag-wwtp"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-24f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7951"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9972,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7951\/revisions\/9972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}