We all drink with straws from the groundwater here in the U.S. southeast coastal plain.
So surface water interchange with groundwater produces problems for city and county drinking water treatment, and for E. coli contamination of private water wells. Continue reading
These pictures of Quitman’s large sewage settling pond appear to show evidence of recent sewage runoff from these ponds, as well as holes in the fence and a rather rotted pier. They were taken Tuesday, July 26, 2022. Water quality testing downstream the day before indicates something contaminated Okapilco Creek and the Withlacoochee River downstream after rains a day before that.
For months I have been asking for a tour of Quitman’s sewage facilities to see if conditions have improved.
![[Quitman sewage settling ponds: Spills? 2025-07-26, None reported, WQ monitoring says maybe]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2022-07-26--quitman-large-settling-pond/many.jpg)
Quitman sewage settling ponds: Spills? 2025-07-26, None reported, WQ monitoring says maybe
On the preceding Sunday, July 24, 2022, there had been more than an inch of rain on Quitman. I find no Quitman reports for July 2022 in the GA-EPD Sewage Spills Report.
Yet Valdosta’s water quality monitoring for that Monday got 1,000 cfu/100 mL E. coli for Okapilco Creek at US 84 (US 221), which is downstream of those Quitman settling ponds and upstream of the nearest dairy. Valdosta got worse on the Withlacoochee River downstream of Okapilco Creek at Knights Ferry Boat Ramp: 2,700. Continue reading
Monday at 1PM or after the House adjourns, the Georgia House Natural Resources and Environment Committee (HNRE) will meet to consider the two bills against mining near the Okefenokee Swamp.
This is the committee where previous bills have died. So this is a very important meeting. Please contact your Georgia Statehouse Representative.
Feel free to mention that many city councils and county commissions have passed resolutions
supporting the Okefenokee Swamp against mining.
And all the Riverkeepers of Georgia and Waterkeepers of Florida have written letters.
https://wwals.net/pictures/okefenokee-resolutions/
Floridians, please ask your Georgia friends, relatives, and business associates to do the same. And you can contact those Representatives directly. Part of the Okefenokee Swamp is in Florida, and all of it is upstream from Florida, on the St. Marys River and the Suwannee River, of the Florida state song.
To find your legislator (and see below):
http://openstates.org/find_your_legislator/
These are the bills:
More about those bills here:
https://wwals.net/?p=67055 Continue reading
Update 2025-03-01: Georgia House Committee meeting on Okefenokee Bills Monday 1PM 2025-03-03.
Many local governments support Georgia legislation to prevent mining near the Okefenokee Swamp, and you can, too.
Please ask your Georgia Statehouse Representative to support the two bills now in the Georgia House.
More about those bills here:
https://wwals.net/?p=67055
Here are all the Georgia State Representatives whose districts include any part of the Suwannee River Basin:
https://wwals.net/about/elected-officials/georgia-house/
Find your legislator:
http://openstates.org/find_your_legislator/
![[Okefenokee Bills, city & county resolutions, GA House Committee, Natural Resources & Environment]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2025-02-26--ga-hnre-okefenokee-bills/fbmany.jpg)
Okefenokee Bills, city & county resolutions, GA House Committee, Natural Resources & Environment
Floridians, please ask your Georgia friends and relatives to do that. And you can contact those Representatives directly. Part of the Okefenokee Swamp is in Florida, and all of it is upstream from Florida, on the Suwannee and St. Marys Rivers.
Soon these bills will be heard in the House Committee on Natural Resources and the Environment (HNRE). Not this afternoon, despite an earlier rumor. Maybe as early as Monday. Continue reading
Update 2025-02-27: Okefenokee Bills, city and county resolutions, GA House Committee 2025-02-26.
Bipartisan sponsors have introduced two Georgia House bills to protect the Okefenokee Swamp:
These bills will not stop the current mining application before the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (GA-EPD). But they can stop further applications for expansion, which will make the current application much less valuable. And they can stop other mining applications, including by other companies using other mining methods.
The focus of these bills is Trail Ridge east of the Okefenokee Swamp, which is in the St. Marys River Basin. But there is no dam in the Swamp between that Basin and the watershed of the Suwannee River, which drains about 85% of the Swamp.
Please contact your
Georgia House Representative and ask them to support these bills.
https://wwals.net/about/elected-officials/georgia-house/
Floridians, please urge your Georgia friends and family to do so. And you can call or write the Georgia State Representatives yourself. Remember: this is all upstream from Florida.
![[Two Georgia House bills introduced to protect the Okefenokee Swamp, February 20, 2025]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2025-02-20--ga-okefenokee-bills/fbmany.jpg)
Two Georgia House bills introduced to protect the Okefenokee Swamp, February 20, 2025
The experienced mining company Chemours spilled 230,000 gallons of process water into the Suwannee River Basin in Florida a week ago.
The company that proposes to strip mine too near the Okefenokee Swamp for titanium dioxide, which is primarily used for white paint, is still under a Florida Consent Order for violations it caused when it was processing tailings at one of Chemours’ Florida mines.
So please ask your Georgia State Representatives to support these bills, and other methods of preventing mining near the Okefenokee Swamp. Continue reading
Update 2025-02-28: Clean Franks Creek 2025-02-26 and Alapaha and Withlacoochee Rivers 2025-02-27.
Update 2025-02-24: Two Georgia House bills introduced to protect the Okefenokee Swamp 2025-02-20.
Sunday a week ago the Chemours Trail Ridge South titanium dioxide mine spilled process water, approximately 230,000 gallons.
Chemours has decades of experience with many TiO2 mines in north Florida and south Georgia. Yet they spill. Should we trust an inexperienced bunch of coal miners to strip mine for tooth whitener materials within three miles of the Okefenokee Swamp? When those same coal miners already spilled while processing tailings at two Chemours north Florida mines, causing a Florida Consent Order?
![[Chemours Trail Ridge South, Mine Process Water Spill, 230,000 gallons, Sunday, February 16, 2025]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2025-02-16--chemours-trail-ridge-south-process-water-spill/many.jpg)
Chemours Trail Ridge South, Mine Process Water Spill, 230,000 gallons, Sunday, February 16, 2025
This is according to a report emailed the next day in the daily Pollution Notice by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP). Which has more detail than what you can see in the online map of the last 30 days of reports.
For example, the emailed report has “Coordinates (in decimal degrees): Lat: 29.891, Long: -82.043”. That puts it within feet of the location reported for the September 14, 2024 Chemours process water spill.
Which is at the old Trail Ridge Mine, not at the location farther south of there given in the 2019 Bradford County Commission hearings for a permit for Trail Ridge South Mine.
I called my usual contact at Chemours, and he says the released water is little different from what would be in the creeks anyway.
I told him that would be great, but everyone would like to see some evidence, such as what Chemours promised in the incident report: “Water within the tailing cell, point of entry and downstream locations have been sampled and we will continue to monitor. The sample locations are checked every day per our water quality monitoring program.&rqquo; Plus some independent sampling downstream.
I have also sent email to the contacts for the Trail Ridge South Mine, asking for that information and a tour of the facilities. We shall see.
Meanwhile, Our Santa Fe River (OSFR) is on the case and has asked FDEP for further information. OSFR recommends:
“Please help remind our DEP to assess and inform us about the levels of radium that were discharged. You can contact the FL- DEP to request the sample results from the spillage. You may want to email the inspector Chris.Suarez@floridadep.gov or call the Mining and Mitigation office at 850-245-8336 to ask that the spill analysis be posted.”
So where did this wastewater go? According to the stated coordinates, at the top of a wetland or pond. Continue reading
Update 2024-11-14: Bad Withlacoochee River, Sugar Creek, One Mile Branch and Alapaha River 2024-11-13.
I don’t know why it took them a week to do this.
November 13, 2024
Florida
HEALTH
Contact:
Lisa Hayes
Lisa.Hayes@flhealth.gov
850-879-0683
Madison, Fla.— The Florida Department of Health in Madison County (DOH-Madison) has issued a health advisory to residents and visitors near the Withlacoochee River in North Florida due to a wastewater overflow in the City of Valdosta, Georgia, that resulted in E.coli levels exceeding the 235 MPN/100ml threshold. It is recommended that residents and visitors avoid coming in contact with the impacted water, such as swimming or fishing.
DOH-Madison, Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and Suwannee River Water Management District are working together to assess and closely monitor the situation. As these assessments continue, we will provide updates to the public.
DOH plans to conduct sampling and testing this week along the Withlacoochee River.
Until further information is known regarding possible bacterial contamination of the river, residents and visitors in the area are urged to take precautions when in contact with the Withlacoochee River.
Water contaminated with elevated fecal bacteria presents several health risks to humans. Microbes normally found with fecal bacteria could cause gastrointestinal issues and other conditions.
Anyone who comes in contact with the river water should wash thoroughly, especially before eating or drinking. Children and older adults, as well as people with weakened immune systems, are particularly vulnerable to disease, so every precaution should be taken if in contact with the river water.
For more information about the potential health effects of wastewater overflow, contact DOH- Madison at 850-973-5000 or visit Madison.FloridaHealth.gov.
### Continue reading
Update 2025-04-03: BMAP Webinars: Lower and Middle Suwannee and Santa Fe Rivers, Silver and Rainbow Springs 2025-04-10.
I got to the Suwannee Basin BMAP meeting late, because I had been at SRWMD HQ talking about water trails. Still, this seemed sparsely attended.
Other than a few IFAS people, almost everybody there seemed to be the same usual suspects from the Santa Fe BMAP meeting two days before in Lake Butler. So that was an opportunity to talk to many of them without much interruption.
I promised them some comments, which I will send to Chandler B. Keenan <Chandler.B.Keenan@FloridaDEP.gov>
For example, asking why SRWMD made no mention of the Manatee Springs BMAP when issuing an ERP for a road in the area of the big PUD rezoning that Chiefland City Commission approved mostly in flood zones next to Long Pond, in the springshed of Manatee Springs. Continue reading
There was better communication than last time, but of course that was a low bar.
You can follow up after that meeting, and the next ones:
here are some ideas.
https://wwals.net/?p=66108
The other two BMAP meetings are today (see below).
![[Santa Fe River BMAP Meeting, Lake Butler, FL 2024-10-28 Better communication than last time]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2024-10-28--santa-fe-bmap-meeting/many.jpg)
Santa Fe River BMAP Meeting, Lake Butler, FL 2024-10-28 Better communication than last time
At the Santa Fe BMAP meeting in Lake Butler, none of the people from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) volunteered an answer to the most basic question: how has the situation improved since the BMAPs started?
Thanks to the graph Ryan Smart of the Florida Springs Council (FSC) brought, showing “Changes in pounds of nitrogen at spring vent”, several of them did agree that in fact the situation has gotten worse. Continue reading
Update 2024-11-05: Pictures: Suwannee River Basin BMAP meeting in Live Oak 2024-10-30.
Update 2024-10-30: Pictures: Santa Fe River BMAP meeting, Lake Butler, FL 2024-10-28.
FDEP has announced rescheduled dates for some BMAP meetings after the hurricanes.
https://floridadep.gov/dear/water-quality-restoration/content/bmap-public-meetings
Please go and say why you think the Basin Management Action Plans (BMAPs) are broken. But don’t stop there, or they will just mark down x number of people came, so public outreach was successful.
Here are more things you can do at the meeting and afterwards.
Wear blue, so we can all be seen together, as recommended by Sarah Younger of the Suwannee-St. Johns Group of Sierra Club Florida.
Ask for metrics for improvement since the BMAPs started, such as how much less nitrate leaching from irrigated fertilizer into springs and rivers.
Turn their poster session format into a grassroots town hall. Video your question and their answer. Post your video on social media with a hashtag: #BMAPSantaFe, #BMAPSuwannee, or #BMAPSilverRainbow (see below).
If they say go look at some obscure website, ask them to tell you the metrics now.
If the FDEP person refuses to answer, video that, and post it.
For the Suwannee BMAP, ask them why SRWMD did not mention the Manatee Springs BMAP when it issued an Environmental Resource Permit (ERP) for a road inside the 2,109-acre rezoning area for a development in floodplain.
For the Rainbow BMAP, ask them why SWFWMD did not mention the Rainbow Springs Springshed when it issued an ERP for the sand mine.
Ask them what the BMAPs are doing to get farmers to convert from Monsanto-seed Glysophate-spraying over-fertilized water-sucking over-irrigated agriculture to methods more friendly to Florida’s waters.
Be polite. The specific FDEP employees there are probably just trying to do their job. The problem comes from higher up. See below for what to do about that after the meeting.
![[Help fix Florida BMAPs to fix Florida polluted waters 2024-10-28-30]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2024-10-30--suwannee-bmap/fbmany.jpg)
Help fix Florida BMAPs to fix Florida polluted waters 2024-10-28-30
Three meetings are of particular interest. Continue reading
![[River water and groundwater interchange interacts with drinking water treatment in Georgia and Florida]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2025-03-26--groundwater-interchange/fbmany.jpg)
![[Georgia House Committee Meeting 2025-03-03 1 PM, on Okefenokee Bills, Natural Resources and the Environment]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2025-03-03--ga-hnre-okefenokee-bills/fbmany.jpg)
![[DOH-Madison Health Advisory Near Withlacoochee River 2024-11-13 due to a wastewater overflow in the City of Valdosta, Georgia]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2024-11-13--doh-madison-health-advisory/many.jpg)
![[Suwannee River Basin BMAP meeting in Live Oak 2024-10-30 Much like Santa Fe BMAP and no closer to solutions]](https://www.wwals.net/pictures/2024-10-30--suwannee-bmap-pictures/many.jpg)