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May 21st Newsletter
Once again we
have been involved in quite a few areas, mostly in Fayette County. The
following paragraphs will be recaps of what happened or what is happening,
so if you have questions or comments, please let me know.
Editorial: If you are interested in some of my comments about local
issues, check out the Editorial page of the Wednesday (May 24th) Fayette
County
News. You may agree with my thoughts - perhaps not, but either way, feel
free to respond with a letter to the editor. I suspect there will be some
writers in the Citizen blog who disagree and I will hear from them, so join
in if you wish.
Blog Comments: I joined a group of writers from here in Fayette
County and contribute an article now and then to a web site called Fayette
Forum. The
intent of the web site is to provide "positive" news about happenings in
Fayette County. My segment is titled Naturally Fayette. Visit the site as
there are a lot of different topics covered.
Mussel Projects: There are several projects running with three of our
local high schools. You may recall that two young ladies from Fayette HS
had a project that went to the International Science Fair in Indianapolis,
IN.
They competed
against an amazing array of science projects from around the country as well
as from many other countries. Unfortunately, their project did not receive
any additional awards. I am working with their teacher to see about
publishing their results. While they didn't compare with some of the other
science fair projects, their work is far too valuable to just leave as is.
Knowing the respiration rate of our native mussels is a true addition to
environmental science studies.
The aging project continues. We have cages with mussels in two streams,
monitored by myself and students from McIntosh HS and Sandy Springs HS.
Growth is slow for freshwater mussels so the results may be a year or more
away.
I am working on another aspect of the aging project whereby I collect mussel
shells I find at as many streams as possible. While on the streams, I
capture, measure and replace live specimens back into the streams. I have
data on about 600 mussels so far and there are some interesting trends
starting to sow up. A lot more work here, so I will keep you up to date on
the results as they develop.
Tree Project: This week, we will be going back to the field to plant
some of the water hickory trees that another group of students from McIntosh
HS collected. We will establish, we hope, a new population of these
not-so-common hickory trees in one of our nature areas. Results here are
many years off, but it should prove interesting. By the way, this tree is
native to Fayette County along the Flint River.
Rotary Club; Clean Water Initiative: This group has been very
supportive of many of the programs we have been involved with. Much of the
equipment that the local Adopt-A-Stream teams use came from funds provided
by the Peachtree City Rotary Club. They are in the process of planning a
second Float The Flint for this Summer. They expect to participate in the
Rivers Alive cleanup in October as well. Overall, a great group of citizens
to work with. If things work out this year, we may provide our own T-shirts
to go along with those provided by Rivers Alive. We have more of the very
young groups participating in our cleanup and there is evidently a shortage
of the small shirts for young kids in the State-wide effort. This gives us
a way to design what goes on the shirts as well, so it may be fun. Perhaps
you know of someone interested in helping with some funds for those shirts.
Let me know.
Planning Groups: I continue to participate in the North GA Flint
River Advisory Council. Recently, they held a meeting at the ARC offices in
downtown Atlanta. Once again, I was the only member of the Flint River
group to attend, but since it was held jointly with the Chattahoochee group,
I wasn't alone. It was an update of the North GA Water District water
planning process, so there is not a lot to report.
Another group that started since my last newsletter is the City of
Fayetteville Comprehensive Plan, citizens group. In cooperation with the GA
Department of Community Affairs, the Mayor, a number of City Council
members, city staff, some business representatives and several citizens have
worked on some development issues and offered some ideas on sensible city
planning/development. There will be one final meeting in June and the final
plans will be made public after that date. Some good stuff and lively
discussions.
Fayette County invited me to work with them on the County Stormwater Plan.
The County Engineer's Office has headed up this effort and some builders,
planners and citizens participate on this planning effort as well. It turns
out, the county process will be very different from the plans we worked on
for Fayetteville and Peachtree City due to the much larger area and far
lower density of development. Still some difficult issues to tackle, but
the County staff is very receptive to ideas and concerns.
Adopt-A-Stream: There are now ten teams active in Peachtree City, all
students (plus one teacher) from McIntosh HS. They are producing some good
stream data and in the process of having them in the streams, they have come
upon a couple of problems. First was some red material coating the Flat
Creek stream bottom just below Lake Kedron. We concluded that it was likely
from a heavy nutrient load in the lake from the watershed runoff. Recently,
teams of students took handouts we obtained from ARC to about 500 homes.
Those handouts offered ideas about better yard management to reduce
fertilizer and other nutrient rich runoffs into the lake. The students,
based on their observations, suggested that some of the problem may be
coming from spills of fertilizers as lawn maintenance companies applied
monthly treatments. We prepared a draft letter for the Peachtree City
Engineer to be sent to the companies operating in the city which requested
greater care and put them on notice of city citations if violations were
found. Finally, a problem was identified from two of the student sample
sites in the Northern-most segments of Flat Creek where that stream enters
the city. The sediment load was increasing and there was a corresponding
reduction in the number of macroinvertebrates. Because of that, this
Association filed a complaint letter with GA EPD requesting that that agency
take action against Tyrone for failure to prevent sediment from entering the
stream causing damage to one of our drinking water reservoirs. We will see
how that goes, but I won't be holding out a lot of hope that anything
positive happening.
Nature Center: This topic is a bit speculative, but I have looked
into the possibility of placing a new nature center and research facility on
Fayetteville City Property that is between Whitewater Creek and Ginger Cake
Creek just South of Highway 54. I talked to Joe Morton, City Manager, and
he said they have some interest but needed to see what we had in mind. This
came up because I have a possible/probably source of $100,000 dollars for
the building. These funds would be funneled through this Association with
the string attached that the resultant nature center would have a central
purpose of environmental education. There is interest from a couple of
teachers as well and I plan on putting together some plans and ideas of what
will happen. It may be possible in future years to hold Summer biology
camps for HS students at such a facility.
Rolader Development: At the moment, this is the only development
issue we are involved with. This proposal is for property adjacent to the
Starrs Mill HS. Rolader wants to attach the sewer lines from his 60 plus
homes to the Peachtree City sewer system by crossing school property to the
sewage pumping station that serves the school and a couple of nearby
subdivisions. It looked like it might turn into a nasty problem, but recent
reports in the newspapers indicate that the plan changed from impacting
wetlands to trenching across the school parking lot.
You are welcome to share this newsletter with your friends. If you know of
anyone interested in joining our Association, please let them know about us. |
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