Photo by Jessica Vaughn

MAGNOLIA SPRINGS - Back in 2018, the Town of Magnolia Springs began sponsoring Mobile Baykeeper to test Devil’s Hole on Magnolia River for bacteria levels as part of the SWIM Guide Program. In 2019 the town voted to continue their sponsorship of the program, adding a second location to the testing. While the council discussed testing at Cold Hole, the point where most swimmers enter the river, Mobile Baykeeper specialists had a different idea. They began testing at a spot near Highway 98. While Devil’s Hole mostly passes the SWIM Guide test, the 98 spot has consistently failed from the start of the testing season, April, and the high levels of bacteria found have many Magnolia Springs residents asking if it is safe to swim in the river.

“We keep getting this SWIM Guide that fails at 98, and it’s stirring everybody up,” said councilmember Marley Gardner. “This makes it look like the river isn’t safe, but the spot where everybody is swimming is passing generally. The spot at 98 is going to fail long term until we can figure out the problem there.”

For a better understanding of what the failed results indicate, it’s important to understand what SWIM Guide is and how it works. Mobile Baykeeper specialists will go out to specified testing sites determined with their sponsors weekly during the summer and monthly during the winter to take samples of bacteria levels in the water. The teams release the results they find so the public can make an educated decision on whether they choose to swim or not.

“To be clear, even if a site comes back with low bacteria levels it doesn’t mean the site is safe,” said Mobile Baykeeper Program Director Cade Kistler. “There’s so many other things that go into saying it’s safe, including weather. So we’re not saying it’s safe, what we want to do is give people information where they can make a risk-based decision for themselves and for their family on if they choose to swim at a certain spot.”

Just as a green light at one test site doesn’t make it absolutely safe to swim, Kistler states a red light at one testing site doesn’t mean it’s unsafe to swim in the entire river. The 98 site and the Devil’s Hole site are not connected in terms of testing, and as long as the Devil’s Hole spot results in low bacteria levels then it gives swimmers the peace of mind to make the choice if they want to swim, despite high results at 98, Kistler states.

“While testing at Devil’s Hole in 2018, we would have these periodic high levels, especially after big rain events,” Kistler said. “We wanted to figure out what were the sources of the bacteria when it comes in during those rain events so we can eliminate some of them and fix some of these problems. The goal was to go upstream a bit and isolate the bacteria where we found it in high levels and look for our problem.”

While searching for possible sources for the high bacteria levels, Mobile Baykeeper came across the 98 site, which repeatedly fails. Kistler states the tests at that site are not for swimming purposes as no one is swimming there, but rather teams are seeking the source of the problem in order to find a solution.

“We do put these results on our SWIM Guide, but not because people are swimming there,” said Kistler. “We want the information to be publicly available, we don’t ever want to be the ones holding the data for ourselves, talking about it but not letting people see it. When we get data we do our best to make sure that the public has access to it to learn about what’s going on. With the data gathered and shared, it can be used to help solve the problem, which is our goal.”

For those who would like to know more about Mobile Baykeeper and to keep up with SWIM Guide results, they can check out mobilebaykeeper.org/swim, as well as sponsor a site of their own if they are interested. An email list goes out weekly to show site results, and anyone can sign up on the website, or download the Swim Guide app to keep up with swim results. Kistler also encourages those invested in the Magnolia River to join the Magnolia Springs River Committee, which works closely on matters concerning the future of the river. For meeting dates and times, you can check out Magnolia Springs website at www.townofmagnoliasprings.org.