Update 2025-07-25: SRWMD & SJRWMD aquifer recharge project update @ SRWMD 2025-07-08.

It’s well-established that ordinary wastewater treatment does not remove PFAS forever chemicals. Yet two Florida Water Management Districts want to use treated wastewater from Jacksonville into wetlands to “restore” levels and flows in the Santa Fe River and many springs in the Suwannee Basin.

PFAS in sewage effluent used to restore wetlands, Maybe into Nutrien Phosphate Mine wetlands on Swift Creek

See the Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) YouTube video of its July 8, 2025, Governing Board meeting:
https://www.youtube.com/live/9pousRkUayc?si=R8KNhx524INgVNW-&t=4120

It’s hard to tell from that project’s map, but it sure looks like one of the target wetlands is at the top of Swift Creek in the Nutrien Phosphate Mine in Hamlton County.

Map: Swift Creek Nutrien Phosphate Mine Wetlands, 2025-07-21 in the WWALS map of the Suwannee River Water Trail (SRWT)

The same Swift Creek that had a fish kill in June 2025 and was so bad in 2009 that the U.S. EPA intervened in 2010. See
https://wwals.net/?p=67838

If treated wastewater is so great, why not feed it back into the same cities’ drinking water?

To keep spring and river water levels from going down, how about limit water withdrawals? Why does every golf course and mine represent a “need” for water?

Tom Perkins, The Guardian, July 18, 2025, US wetlands ‘restored’ using treated sewage tainted with forever chemicals: Use of wastewater treatment plant effluent containing Pfas threatens wildlife, food and drinking water, advocates say,

Many of the nation’s wetlands are being filled with toxic Pfas “forever chemicals” as wastewater treatment plant effluent tainted with the compounds is increasingly used to restore swampland and other waters. The practice threatens wildlife, food and drinking water sources, environmental advocates warn.

Effluent is the liquid discharged by wastewater treatment plants after it “disinfects” sewage in the nation’s sewer system. The treatment process largely kills pathogens and the water is high in nutrients that help plants grow, so on one level it is beneficial to struggling ecosystems.

But the treatment process does not address any of the hundreds of thousands of chemicals potentially discharged into sewers, including Pfas. Testing has found effluent virtually always contains Pfas at concerning levels, but the practice of using it for wetland restoration is still presented as an environmentally friendly measure.

There’s more in the article, including this:

Pfas are a class of about 15,000 compounds that are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and accumulate in the human body and environment. The chemicals are linked to a range of serious health problems such as cancer, liver disease, kidney issues, high cholesterol, birth defects and decreased immunity.

And this:

“We’re talking about ecosystem health,” [James] Aronson[, a restoration ecologist and president of Ecological Health Network non-profit,] said. “It’s the food web, and soil, animal, and water interactions — everything gets degraded and poisoned, and it’s the opposite of restoration.”

Also, the price tag for the WMD project is a billion dollars. Yes, with a B.

Seems like that would pay for a lot of seawater desalination.

 -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/

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