Update 2025-09-05: Clean Alapaha and Withlacoochee Rivers 2025-09-04.

What is overflowing in that floodwater from those five Chemours mines on Trail Ridge at the top of the Santa Fe River Basin?

“If I lived near Chemours, I’d be paranoid too,” said John Quarterman, who serves as the Suwannee Riverkeeper, a staff position for an organization of the same name that advocates for conservation of the numerous watersheds within the Suwannee River Basin. “Some of the stuff they’re paranoid about is probably actually happening, but it’s hard to document which of it is and which of it isn’t.”

Until the Florida Department of Environmental Protection takes frequent measurements up and down the state’s rivers, Quarterman said, it will be difficult to pin down the impact of Chemours’ activities. And without such studies, he said, it’s difficult to identify bad actors — let alone hold them accountable.

WWALS has a volunteer water quality monitoring program, and two recently-trained testers may start testing in the Santa Fe River Basin soon.
https://wwals.net/issues/testing

Is Chemours to blame for flooding rural Santa Fe River Basin? –Grist 2025-09-04

Sachi Kitajima Mulkey, Ayurella Horn-Muller, Grist, September 4, 2025, Waterlogged and contaminated: In rural Florida, locals suspect a mining company is to blame for their flooding troubles: Residents are trying to connect the dots between hurricanes, high radium levels, and a mineral mining giant next door.

The storm had passed, but the water kept rising. In September 2017, Hurricane Irma slammed into Florida, causing tides to surge and dumping about a foot of water across much of the state. A few days later, Jane Blais stood on a bridge with her neighbors near her High Springs ranch, watching the Santa Fe River below swell higher and higher.

“We had zero notice,” Blais said, recalling how she ran home to evacuate the tenants of a small cluster of apartments she owned and move her horses to higher ground. “It came in so fast, completely abnormal.”

By the end of the day, Blais’ rental units were soaking in 3 feet of floodwater, and her horses — despite her best efforts — were submerged chest-deep. Her darkest moment came when veterinarians at a nearby university warned that her horses might die. As the water rose and the hours dragged on, she considered shooting them to spare them from drowning or disease. Around her, neighbors reported destroyed homes, lost belongings, and an unrecognizable landscape.

The rest of the story is well worth reading.
https://grist.org/extreme-weather/rural-florida-locals-suspect-mining-company-flooding/

It ends with this:

“It would mean so much to me for somebody to just listen, to know what’s happening to us,” [Christy] Carter said. “I just think we owe it to future generations to do everything we can to pass them on something that’s worth living in.”

 -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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