Valdosta promises an upgraded Watergoat; offers no plan for cleaning it out or nearby woods

It will go in Sugar Creek, he says, and the old one will go into Two Mile Branch below Berkley Drive.

Valdosta promises new Watergoat, Two Mile Branch trash report, Old Watergoat, Two Mile Branch trash

That’s all good. Thanks for doing that, Engineer O’Dowd, and City of Valdosta.

But he did not mention any plan for cleaning out that new trash trap location on Two Mile Branch. Remember, Russell Allen McBride, who as a volunteer cleans out the current one on Sugar Creek, says he can not take on cleaning out any more trash traps.

The Engineer’s note also did not address the Click ‘n’ Fix report in which it was posted. The report was about trash in the woods next to Two Mile Branch upstream of Berkley Drive. Trash that is on property owned by the City of Valdosta.

And what’s this about spraying? Spraying what? Why near waterways in which children play and people boat? And how does spraying stop trash, or even pick it up?

A little progress is good, after all this time:

• Two months since Valdosta Mayor Scott James Matheson promised (again), this time on video at a trash source, to do something about the trash problem.
• Eight months since Valdosta installed the current Sugar Creek Watergoat, which remember Russell is cleaning because Valdosta never even acknowledged my request for the city to clean it out.
• Ten months since WWALS last met with Valdosta city officials about the trash problem. We’re still waiting for the followup meeting that was promised two to four weeks later.
• A year and a month since WWALS installed the first and second WWALS homemade trash booms across Sugar Creek.
• A year and six months since the Mayor said on his radio show, “If you see it, it’ll break your heart. In a deadfall it all gathers.”
  Radio 2021, Plan 2010
• Two years and six months since on a WWALS cleanup we discovered boats were the only way to get floating trashjams out of Sugar Creek at Two Mile Branch and the Withlacoochee River.
• Two years and ten months since a neighbor report of trash in Two Mile Branch and Sugar Creek dragged WWALS into this, and
• a dozen years since Valdosta’s own 2010 Stormwater Master Plan spelled out the problem of treash in creeks, with pictures, said creeks attract children to play, which makes it a public health problem, and said the problem needed to be fixed “immediately”.

WWALS would like to see Valdosta follow its own 2010 advice and fix the trash problem, including enforcing its ordinances requiring property owners to keep trash from escaping and to strategically place trash cans so many per number of parking spaces.

For much more about the trash situation, see:
https://wwals.net/issues/trash