Category Archives: USACE

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, Continue reading →

Withdraw both Interim Final Rules about NEPA –many to USACE 2025-08-04

The Great God Efficiency is no excuse to abolish public input and harm public health, safety, and wildlife habitats.

This objection letter may or may not have much effect, but we can be sure that not objecting would grease the railroad these rules changes are riding on.

On behalf of our millions of members and supporters nationwide, the 135 undersigned organizations write in strong opposition to the Army Corps of Engineers’ Interim Final Rules Implementing the National Environmental Policy Act for its civil works (COE-2025-007) and regulatory (COE-2025-006) programs. These rules will silence public input, erode public health and safety, and harm vital and cherished wildlife habitats across the country.

These Interim Final Rules bear no relation to improving efficiencies in project delivery. To the contrary, they will lead to inefficient, inconsistent, and inadequate NEPA reviews that will further undermine agency decision-making and the public’s trust in project decisions. The Interim Final Rules functionally repeal essential NEPA protections, including eliminating the most basic safeguards for meaningful public input. They make a mockery of the Corps’ stated purpose of aligning the NEPA regulations with current law.1 And they fail to provide any guidance at all on multiple, critical NEPA requirements.

You can read the reasons in the PDF. Images of each page are below.

Withdraw both Interim Final Rules about NEPA –many to USACE, August 4, 2025

Conclusion

For at least the reasons highlighted above, our organizations urge the Corps to withdraw both Interim Final Rules, and in their place issue regulations that properly implement the National Environmental Policy Act.

Continue reading →

Nitrate monitoring and mining on SRWMD land –Suwannee Riverkeeper to SRWMD Board 2025-07-08

Update 2025-07-21: PFAS in sewage effluent used to restore wetlands 2025-07-18.

I did get answers from the Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) about nitrate testing for springs, but no response about the Chemours application to mine on SRWMD land in Bradford County in the Santa Fe River Basin, using mineral rights retained by Rayonier.

Nitrate monitoring of springs and Mining on SRWMD land, –Suwannee Riverkeeper to SRWMD Board 2025-07-08

Surprisingly, nobody showed up to speak at the recent SRWMD Board meeting in item 6. Public Comment. See SRWMD’s YouTube video at 15:28.
https://www.youtube.com/live/9pousRkUayc?si=VoUYIbT4Ak8SKlGV&t=928 Continue reading →

Miners bought out near Okefenokee Swamp 2025-06-20

Very good news today! The coal miners from Alabama have been bought out, ending mining on their specific property. First, the thanks. Then the rest of the story.

Many thanks to The Conservation Fund for buying out Twin Pines Minerals, LLC (TPM), and to the James M. Cox Foundation and the Holdfast Collective (Patagonia) for helping fund that acquisition. Thanks to everyone who helped, and to everyone who has opposed this bad mining proposal since at least 2019.

There is a direct path to adding this land into the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge (ONWR), since the Okefenokee NWR Minor Acquisition Boundary Expansion was approved by USFWS 2025-01-03. Although given the current chaotic state of the federal government, keeping that land in private hands for now might be prudent.

Miners bought out near Okefenokee Swamp 2025-06-20, Twin Pines Minerals, by The Conservation Fund

We should all celebrate!

But this land acquisition is not the end of the mining story. There is much more we can do to protect the entire Okefenokee Swamp, the blackwater rivers of south Georgia, and to pass a constitutional amendment for Right to Clean Water, Air, and Soil.

Directly to the north of TPM’s parcels is much more land, Continue reading →

Mercury found in Okefenokee alligators 2025-06-12

The problem: “Alligators in the Okefenokee Swamp had mercury levels that were eight times higher than the other two research sites.” The other locations were Jekyll Island near Brunswick, GA, and Yawkey Wildlife Center, near Georgetown, SC. See Savannah Peat, UGA Today, June 12, 2025, New study shows alligators aren’t all that’s lurking in Georgia’s swamps,

Why this matters: “The presence of mercury in these waters not only impacts the health of the alligator but could have dangerous health effects on the other creatures relying on these waterways for food, including humans.”

Plus mercury comes down from the air not only into the waters where alligators live, but also onto nearby land, such as where the coal miners from Alabama want to strip mine for titanium dioxide (TiO2) too near the Okefenokee Swamp. Such mining could stir up mercury from the soil and get it into water or back into the air. You can still tell the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (GA-EPD) that it should deny the miners’ permit applications:
twinpines.comment@dnr.ga.gov

And also probably where Chemours wants to expand its Trail Ridge South TiO2 mine onto land owned by the Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD). The official comment period has expired, but you can still write to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) about the Chemours permit applications:
https://wwals.net/?p=67629

High levels of mercury found in alligators, Okefenokee Swamp, UGA 2025-06-12

Where does the mercury come from? “For instance, precipitation is the dominant source of environmental mercury deposition in other systems, and the hydrology of OS is dominated by precipitation and runoff with an average annual rainfall of 132.23 cm (Brook and Hyatt 1985, Wang et al., 2019, Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge 1945–2021). Okefenokee is also in close proximity to several industrialized power plants, which have the potential to contribute to atmospheric Hg deposition (Porter 2000, Sherman et al., 2012).”

The actual power plants are not named in that paper or its sources, but we know the main culprit: Georgia Power’s Coal Plant Scherer, near Macon, Georgia, Continue reading →

Additional documents for Chemours permit application to mine SRWMD land 2025-06-16

Update 2025-08-31: SRWMD purchased Rayonier tract with mineral rights leased to Chemours for TiO2 mining –SRWMD to Carol Mosley 2025-07-11.

Update 2025-07-20: Nitrate monitoring and mining on SRWMD land –Suwannee Riverkeeper to SRWMD Board 2025-07-08.

Today, I got about 1.4 gigabytes of files in response to the FOIA I sent to the Army Corps on May 28. Unfortunately, this additional information arrived after the June 12 deadline for comments on the Chemours application to mine for titanium dioxide on SRWMD land. WWALS already sent a letter on that day.

If the Public Hearing happens that we and others called for, we can bring up any questions that come out of this additional information.

Additional documents for Chemours permit application to mine SRWMD land. Obtained via FOIA

It’s all on the WWALS website.

You can pick up the 661 megabyte zip file.

Or you can look in the extracted subdirectories and files, starting with:

This is what I requested: Continue reading →

Questions and call for Public Hearing on Chemours permit application to mine SRWMD land –WWALS to USACE 2025-06-12

Update 2025-06-16: Additional documents for Chemours permit application to mine SRWMD land 2025-06-16.

This is what I filed by the Thursday deadline as public comments on the latest Chemours mining permit application. This one is to expand the Trail Ridge South Mine onto land owned by the Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD). I continue to wonder why SRWMD bought this land, allegedly for conservation, if they were going to let Chemours mine on it?

Several other organizations also filed comments, some of them also calling for a Public Hearing.

Questions and call for Public Hearing, Chemours application to mine SRWMD land, Santa Fe River Basin –WWALS to USACE 2025-06-12

Continue reading →

Additional Project Drawings for Chemours application to mine on SRWMD land –USACE 2025-01-02

I got these additional figures indicate that Chemours wants to mine right up to Double Run Creek, upstream from the Santa Fe River.

I got them by following up on the Chemours application to the Army Corps for a permit to mine TiO2 on SRWMD land,

Additional Project Drawings, Chemours application to USACE to mine on SRWMD land –SWCA 2025-01-02

Chemours can’t continue mining without this permit, which it must get from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), because of the successful lawsuit by Miami Waterkeeper, St. Johns Riverkeeper, et al., to revoke the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) takeover of federal Clean Water Act permit applications.

See the third page of the USACE application form:

This project was originally review[sic] and approved by the USACE in 2020 pending the issuance of the State Water Quality Certification. Prior to USACE receiving the State Water Quality Certification, the EPA approved Florida’s State 404 Program, which became effective on Dec. 22, 2020, and all USACE pending permits were transferred to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) for processing.

This project was subsequently reviewed, and Phase 1 was approved on June 6, 2022, under the FDEP State 404 Program, Permit no. ST404_137482-022. A portion of the Phase 1 approved impacts have been completed. The approval of Phase 2 is needed for Chemours to continue mining operations without any disruptions. Due to the FDEP being divested of its authority to issue State 404 Program permits on Feb 15, 2024, Chemours has requested the USACE review and approve the entire project for compliance consistency.

For that lawsuit, see Continue reading →

More about Spill from Chemours Trail Ridge South TiO2 mine SE of Starke, FL 2024-01-31

The map in this Chemours followup report about its January 31, 2024, 194,195-gallon wastewater spill seems to indicate the water went south into Double Run Creek, which goes to the Santa Fe River.

More about Spill 2024-01-31, Chemours Trail Ridge South, TiO2 mine SE of Starke, FL, Santa Fe River Basin

The latlong in the map legend, 29.8901015, -82.0506411, is on one branch of Double Run Creek. Continue reading →

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