No rain, clean Withlacoochee River 2021-05-27

Update 2021-06-04: Clean Rivers 2021-06-03.

No rain has produced a quite low but clean Withlacoochee River. It’s fortunate WWALS testers sampled Wednesday and Thursday, so it looks like the Withlacoochee River remains about as clean as we’ve ever seen it. Happy boating, fishing, and swimming!

[Bridges, Withlacoochee River, Swim Guide]
Bridges, Withlacoochee River, Swim Guide

The last results we have from Valdosta are for upstream on Wednesday. They got slightly higher results at US 41 than did WWALS tester Bobby McKenzie, yet lower at GA 133.

[US 41 Bridge 2021-05-26]
US 41 Bridge 2021-05-26

Bobby stood on a sand bar to get this picture and a water sample.

[GA 133 Sand Bar 2021-05-26]
GA 133 Sand Bar 2021-05-26

At Troupville Boat Ramp on the Little River, slightly upstream from the Withlacoochee, Bobby’s sample yielded four E. coli colonies, so 4 * 100 / 3 = 133 cfu/100 mL. That’s well within the one-time sample limit.

[Plates, Troupville Boat Ramp 2021-05-26]
Plates, Troupville Boat Ramp 2021-05-26

WWALS testers Jacob and Michael Bachrach tested at Knights Ferry, Nankin, and State Line Boat Ramps, and got zero for all three. Yay! The last Madison Health results we have are for last week, so it’s good WWALS tested.

[Signs, Knights-Ferry Boat Ramp 2021-05-27]
Signs, Knights-Ferry Boat Ramp 2021-05-27

[Upstream, Nankin Boat Ramp 2021-05-27]
Upstream, Nankin Boat Ramp 2021-05-27

[Signs, Nankin Boat Ramp 2021-05-27]
Signs, Nankin Boat Ramp 2021-05-27

[Horn Bridge, State Line Boat Ramp 201-05-27]
Horn Bridge, State Line Boat Ramp 201-05-27

Finally, Gus Cleary tested at Cleary Bluff for WWALS, and also got zero. That’s downstream from Allen Ramp, and near the Withlacoochee River Confluence with the Suwannee River.

So, good water quality news this week!

[Still clean 2021-05-21-27]
Still clean 2021-05-21-27
For context and the entire WWALS composite spreadsheet of Georgia and Florida water quality results, rainfall, and spills, see:
https://wwals.net/issues/testing/

We’ll do some forensics for recent weeks in later posts, now that we finally have Valdosta downstream data for those weeks.

Meanwhile, Swim Guide is mostly green.

[Still Clear, Swim Guide 2021-05-27]
Still Clear, Swim Guide 2021-05-27

Some of the middle Withlacoochee Florida locations are historic yellow, because we don’t have any new data for them since last week. They’re probably clean, too. We just do not have recent data to confirm that.

 -jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®

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