The Withlacoochee River channel was full yesterday at the GA 122 bridge, near Hambrick Road, with reference Yellow Dog:
Compare to 21 March 2012 (on the left):
I wasn’t standing in quite the same place yesterday, because I would have been standing in water. But you can see the water is much higher than it was six months ago.
Here are a few more pictures and a video.
-jsq
Back at the end of March at
a river conference in Roswell, Georgia,
I was interviewed for a podcast.
Here’s
the audio,
and here’s the blurb they included:
John Quarterman on the Withlachoochee
Monday, July 9th, 2012
John S. Quarterman was born and raised in Lowndes County, where he married his wife Gretchen. They live on the same land where he grew up, and participate in local community and government.
NPS talks with Quarterman and his observations on starting and strengthening a Withlachoochee Riverkeeper organization at Georgia River Network‘s 2012 Weekend for Rivers.
The water organization has since been incorporated as the Georgia non-profit WWALS Watershed Coalition:
WWALS is an advocacy organization working for watershed conservation of the Willacoochee, Withlacoochee, Alapaha, and Little River Systems watershed in south Georgia and north Florida through awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen advocacy.
-jsq
PS: They also recorded another podcast which starts out on what may sound like a completely different topic, but which is actually quite related.
Third organizational meeting of WWALS (we’re still working on the pronunciation).
Formation of a Non-Profit Advocacy Organization working to protect water quality of the Willacoochee, Withlacoochee, Alapaha, and Little River Systems watershed in south Georgia and north Florida through awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen advocacy.
Nola Jackson Gentry, Garry Gentry, John S. Quarterman (the heap of stuff), Nathan Wilkins, Heather Evans, Carolyn Chapeau Selby, Gretchen Quarterman, Bret Wagenhorst
Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman for WWALS, Adel, Cook County, Georgia, 25 April 2012.
-jsq
At Georgia River Network’s Weekend for Rivers, 31 March 2012, Diane Shearer presented “A-lap-a-WHAT?” About, you guessed it, the Alapaha River. She grew up in Alapaha, Georgia, and recently returned to find the source of its eponymous river and to trace its path.
Here’s a slideshow of my pictures of her presenting her pictures. I think she’s going to post her slides somewhere soon.
According to her conference bio:
Diane is a retired public school teacher and writer. She is a member of Atlanta Audubon, Georgia Ornithological Society, Georgia Sierra Club’s Smart Energy Committee, and serves on the board of directors for the Initiative to Protect Jekyll Island. Her first attempt at expressing her love for the Alapha River was a column she wrote for Facing South in the early 1980’s called “In Praise of Rivers.”
Here’s a map of the Alapaha River watershed in green (blue is the Little River Watershed, wrapped inside the cyan Withlacoochee River watershed).
The Alapaha River is 190 miles long. It rises in southeastern Dooly County, Georgia and flows generally southeast along and through Crisp, Wilcox, Turner, Ben Hill, Irwin, Tift, Berrien, Atkinson, Lanier, Lowndes and Echols Counties in Georgia and Hamilton County in Florida. Along its course it passes the towns of Alapaha, Willacoochee and Statenville. The river flows into the Suwannee about 10 miles southwest of Jasper, Florida.
U.S. EPA has a bit more about the Alapaha.
There’s a Withlacoochee Riverkeeper forming about the watersheds of the Alapaha, Willacoochee, Little, Withlacoochee, and Alapahoochee Rivers. If you’re interested, ask to join the facebook group or contact me, river at quarterman.org.
-jsq
Landscape:
