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Swim advisory lifted for Ogeechee River
Consumption advisory still in effect
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Ogeechee Riverkeeper Dianna Wedincamp collects a dead fish Wednesday on the Ogeechee River while investigating the recent fish kill. (Scott Bryant)

A massive fish kill affecting 40 miles of the Ogeechee River was caused by a bacterial disease induced by environmental stress, environmentalists said Thursday.

Some questions still linger about what caused the environmental stress, but by Friday, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) decided to lift the advisory on swimming in the river.

However, a fish consumption advisory for the river will remain for Bryan, Bulloch, Chatham, Effingham and Screven counties pending results of fish tissue analysis, which aren’t expected until next week.

“Based on the EPA data, we are confident the swim advisory is no longer appropriate,” said Jim Ussery, assistant EPD director. “The EPA analysis did not detect any chemical substances in the water at unsafe levels.”

The water samples were taken from the river at three locations in Screven County and at a fourth location where Hwy.119 crosses the river between Bulloch and Effingham counties.

An advisory recommending people not swim in the river was posted last weekend after dead fish began appearing in Screven and Bulloch counties. The advisory also applied to citizens in Bryan, Chatham and Effingham counties as more dead fish were found downstream.

EPD announced Thursday that the fish died of columnaris, a bacterial disease caused by environmental stress.

“The cause of the environmental stress is still unknown,” said Kevin Chambers, an EPD spokesman.

Read more in the May 28 edition of the News.

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Later yall, its been fun
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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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