Update 2023-05-19: Fixed boat ramp attribution: Nankin, not Sasser.

Thanks to Georgia Rivers Alive for giving WWALS the 2022 Adopt-A-Stream Award for cleanups. This is the second year running WWALS has won this award.

Adopt-A-Stream Award 2023-04-27
Photos: WWALS, at Nankin Boat Ramp 2022-12-17 and Statenville Boat Ramp 2023-01-07

While we appreciate the award, we’d much rather not have trash to clean up. There is some progress on that. The worst trash offender, Valdosta, has now bought two trash traps and put them on Sugar Creek and Two Mile Branch, and has built one on One Mile Branch: those last two creeks feed into Sugar Creek and the Withlacoochee River. Plus Valdosta City Marshalls have notified every parking lot owner that they have to clean up their act and strategically place trash cans.

Lowndes County has a litter crew cleaning up every public river access in the county. Echols County, Georgia, cleans up at Statenville Boat Ramp. Hamilton County, Florida, told us where we could take the trash from Sasser Landing.

There is much room for further improvement. More below on what else can be done.

This year’s award was announced at a lunch in Atlanta that we could not attend due to other appointments, and on Rivers Alive instagram.

Adopt-A-Stream Award 2023-04-27.
Photo: Nankin Boat Ramp 2022-12-17 by Gretchen Quarterman for WWALS.

Here’s what happened last year.

Movie: Stopping trash upstream –Suwannnee Riverkeeper John S. Quarterman, for WWALS

This year, it’s amusing that Rivers Alive picked a picture at Sasser Landing in Hamilton County, Florida, that was taken in 2023, not 2022. The award picture is of Clyattville-Nankin Boat Ramp on a WWALS cleanup that started at Knights Ferry Boat Ramp on the Withlacoochee River, December 17, 2022. Thanks to Lowndes County Public Works for a longstanding agreement to pick up bagged trash that WWALS leaves at boat ramps after cleanups.

Here’s a picture at Statenville Boat Ramp in Echols County, Georgia, on that same a January 7, 2023 Alapaha River cleanup.

Trash and banners at Statenville Boat Ramp, 2023-01-07, photo by John S. Quarterman for WWALS.

Thanks to Echols County for cleaning up at Statenville Boat Ramp before we got there. We found more over by the road.

Thanks to all the volunteers on that and many other cleanups.

Special thanks to Russell Allen McBride, pictured on the left, who is the volunteer-for-life at the Valdosta Sugar Creek WaterGoat trash trap.

Thanks to Amy Myers (light top holding the WWALS banner) and Will Hart (dark blue) for organizing this particular cleanup.

Thanks to Bobby McKenzie (with trash picker holding Suwannee Riverkeeper banner) for keeping after the trash problem with the tenacity of a mama alligator.

The Rivers Alive 2022 Annual Report identifies single-use plastics as the main culprit, along with single-use everything else. That matches what we see on WWALS cleanups.

Single Use Plastic is most of the trash –AAS 2023-04-27

So let’s look up at solutions to stop that single-use trash: reusable substitutes, bottle deposits, and bans on single-use packaging.

Solid waste management hierarchy

More on the trash situation:
https://wwals.net/issues/trash/

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can help with clean, swimmable, fishable, drinkable, water in the 10,000-square-mile Suwannee River Basin in Florida and Georgia by becoming a WWALS member today!
https://wwals.net/donations/

Short Link: