Update 2021-11-13: Clean rivers 2021-11-13.

All pretty clean for Thursday and Wednesday samples on the Little, Alapaha, and Withlacoochee Rivers, but there were big rains Friday, so expect the same kind of contamination today and tomorrow that happened a week ago after similar rains. I’d wait a few days before boating, swimming, or fishing in the Withlacoochee River.

Chart, Folsom, Hagan; Lakeland, Cleary Bluff; Knights Ferry, Nankin, State Line; Swim Guide

None of the WWALS results for Thursday were zero, but they’re all well below the 410 cfu/100 mL one-time limit.

We have Valdosta downstream results through last Friday. Once again Valdosta results corroborate WWALS results. It’s interesting that last Thursday’s rain contamination had reached Nankin but not State Line by last Friday morning. The Valdosta Okapilco Creek results indicates much of that contamination is probably the usual cattle manure runoff coming out of Brooks County. It’s still lower than the results from last year under similar conditions, so whatever the cattle farmers are doing seems to be working, with room for more improvement.

2021-10-21-29–chart-bad-after-rain
For context and the entire WWALS composite spreadsheet of water quality results and rainfall, see
https://wwals.net/issues/testing/

Looking back a week, those early-week GA 133 numbers and the Wednesday US 41 numbers would have been good to know earlier.

2021chart-good-before-rain 10.0000000, 0.0000000

So I’ve marked green all the WWALS Swim Guide “beaches” for which we have recent results.

Map: good Thursday, but big rains Friday Swim Guide 2021-11-04

Maybe you’d like to get trained to join our testing crew?

Thanks to the WWALS testers:

• Elizabeth Brunner for the GA 122 landings:
  • Folsom Bridge Landing on the Little River
  • Hagan Bridge Landing on the Withlacoochee River
  • Lakeland Boat Ramp on the Alapaha River
• Michael and Jacob Bachrach for the downstream Georgia Withlacoochee River sites:
  • Knights Ferry Boat Ramp
  • Nankin Boat Ramp
  • State Line Boat Ramp @ GA 31
• Gus Cleary for Cleary Bluff downstream from Allen Ramp on the Withlacoochee River in Florida.

Thanks to Joe Brownlee and Georgia Power for a generous grant for water quality testing equipment and materials.

You or your organization could also donate to the WWALS volunteer water quality testing program.

We have no new data from FDOH or FDEP since September 9.

There are more images on the WWALS website.

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!

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