Update 2021-09-02: Bad at GA-FL Line: Health Alert, Withlacoochee River 2021-08-31.

In a lull between rains, the Little, Withlacoochee, and Alapaha Rivers showed clean for all our WWALS Wednesday and Thursday test sites.

You could also become a WWALS water quality tester. There’s a testing training coming up September 11, 2021.

Chart, Little, Alapaha, Withlacoochee Rivers, Green Swim Guide

This is even though Valdosta found results for Wednesday at US 41 too high. We don’t know where that contamination came from. That’s upstream from Sugar Creek, so not from there.

Valdosta also got way too high for Monday at Knights Ferry Boat Ramp. Curiously, Valdosta’s Monday result for Okapilco Creek was within range, so if that contamination came out of Okapilco Creek, it had already washed downstream into the Withlacoochee River. Notice Nankin Boat Ramp not as high but still too high on E. coli for that Monday, as the contamination was reaching it.

Chart: Clean Rivers 2021-08-26
For context and the entire WWALS composite spreadsheet of water quality results and rainfall, see:
https://wwals.net/issues/testing/

Whatever that contamination was, it apparently got diluted by all the rainwater, or just washed on downstream into the Suwannee River.

Both the WWALS Alapaha River sites also tested clean.

By the most recent results from WWALS and Valdosta, all the sites for which we have results show green on Swim Guide.

Map: Clean Rivers Swim Guide 2021-08-26

There are more images on the WWALS website:
https://wwals.net/pictures/2021-08-26–wq

Thanks to Valdosta PIO Ashlyn Johnson for getting those Valdosta results posted.

Thanks to WWALS testers Valerie Folsom, Elizabeth Brunner, Bobby McKenzie, Jacob Bachrach, Michael Bachrach, and Gus Cleary, as well as WWALS Testing Chair Suzy Hall.

Thanks to Georgia Power for a generous grant that has paid for most of the testing equipment and materials.

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

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