Assessing and Addressing PFAS Contamination for Community Water Safety in Santa Rosa County

About the Community

Santa Rosa County, Florida, is a rapidly growing community in Florida’s panhandle that combines rural landscapes with urban developments and is home to several natural resources, military installations, and industrial sites. The community relies on local aquifers, especially the fragile, shallow, local Sand and Gravel Aquifer, as a source of drinking water. However, recent environmental assessments have revealed high levels of PFAS contamination in local water, soil, and fish tissue. This contamination likely originates from nearby industrial sites, wastewater effluent disposal, and military facilities. The citizen-led, science-based Santa Rosa County Watershed Protection Committee, representing local residents and concerned stakeholders, has partnered with the AGU Thriving Earth Exchange to address these environmental and public health issues.

Exposure to PFAS presents difficulties for locals, such as possible health risks, effects on the ecosystem, and contamination of essential water resources and marine life. The community is advocating for preventative measures and sustainable wastewater and industrial effluent management because there aren’t any strict federal or state laws that particularly address the wide variety of PFAS chemicals. By collaborating with Thriving Earth Exchange, Santa Rosa County can leverage scientific knowledge and assistance in developing data-driven strategies to safeguard local drinking water and advance the well-being of the community.

Sunset on Blackwater River. Photo courtesy of Carmen Reynolds

About the Project 

Establishing a comprehensive inventory and GIS mapping of PFAS and other industrial contaminants affecting water quality in Santa Rosa County will lay a crucial foundation for future public health initiatives, policy development, and sustainable environmental management. This GIS-based platform will serve as both a diagnostic and advocacy tool, helping community leaders, county officials, and the public to monitor contaminant hotspots, assess health impacts, and promote policy reform. By providing transparent access to data on contamination levels and affected areas, this project will enable community engagement in decision-making processes, encourage policy changes, and advocate for cleaner wastewater management and industrial practices.

The first phase will involve selecting a compatible mapping platform that integrates with existing county systems (such as Santa Rosa’s GIS map). The project team, including scientists and community leaders, will compile existing data and conduct additional sampling to establish baseline contamination levels in water sources, soil, and fish tissue across the county. Data elements will include natural resources affected (waterways, aquifers, and soil strata) and manmade contaminant sources (industrial sites, wastewater treatment facilities, military installations, and unregulated effluent disposal zones). Each contamination feature will be logged as a GIS layer, exportable for analysis and visualization in multiple formats.

This contamination map will serve as an active monitoring and planning tool. Through GIS layers, stakeholders will be able to access real-time data on contaminant levels, explore correlations between pollution sources and affected areas, and monitor the effectiveness of local mitigation efforts over time. The platform will also help prioritize community health initiatives, supporting both local decision-making and advocacy for state and federal regulations to reduce PFAS levels.

In the end, the map, database and report created will become a resource for Santa Rosa County, with the potential for expansion into predictive modeling and integration with broader community science initiatives. Our long-term project goals will include fostering local expertise in environmental health assessment, embedding regular contaminant testing and reporting into county protocols, and establishing the map as a standard tool for planning and advocacy. Over time, the project outcome will not only serve Santa Rosa County’s environmental needs but will also support a sustainable and resilient future through well-informed policies and community action.

Timeline and Milestones

The project is expected to run for approximately 15 months. Key milestones include:

• Project scoping
• Review of existing test results and GIS maps
• Recruiting and onboarding a volunteer scientist
• Further contaminant testing (within the first three months of onboarding scientist)
• GIS mapping
• Community workshop by the 12th month of the project
• Finalized report by the end of the project

Community Leaders

Carmen Reynolds retired as a lieutenant colonel after 22 years in the United States Air Force. She completed her BS degree summa cum laude in Criminology & Law Enforcement, her master’s degree in business Personnel Management and a BA degree in Journalism. She was selected to run The Voyager newspaper with a staff of 20 while studying journalism at the University of West Florida. Carmen was one of the first seven female officers accepted into the Security Police field as a Shift Commander. She held three specialties during her career: Security Police, Administration and Communications, Electronics, Computers, Communications and Intelligence. She was named an Outstanding Woman of America in 1983 and distinguished with numerous base, Tactical Air Command and Air Force awards, rising to the top in the administration field. Upon her retirement in 1998 at Hurlburt Field as the Deputy Dean of the Air Ground Operations School, now the Command-and-Control Warrior School, she began volunteering for former POW, George Bud Day to obtain healthcare benefits for aging veterans, which resulted in TriCare for Life. She served in voluntary capacities on the Santa Rosa County Zoning Board, as a Holley-Navarre Fire Commissioner, the PTO Board at Holley-Navarre Middle School, its School Advisory Council, and as a mentor at Navarre High School. She was a founding member of Santa Rosa County Crime Stoppers and the co-chair of Navarre’s first-ever Cancer Relay for Life. While working as the Copy Editor at Navarre Press, Carmen received the Florida Press Association’s No. 1 award in 2016 for In-depth Journalism for her 5-part series on Veteran Suicide. She cofounded Recall Florida, an initiative to enable Florida’s 47 non-charter/nonmunicipal counties to recall local-elected officials. She serves on the citizen-led, science-based Watershed Protection Committee to protect water quality and as a volunteer board member and grant writer at the Navarre Beach Sea Turtle Conservation Center.

Alfred Picardi (BS MIT) began his 40–year career as an environmental scientist/engineer with the Virginia Water Control Board, US EPA, and private consulting firms, finishing off as an individual consultant for the World Bank and retiring as Environmental Performance Improvement Manager for Exelon Corporation.  He is currently a member of the board of directors of Midway Water System, Inc..

Rick Schaeffer earned his AA from Okaloosa-Walton Community College and a BS in geology from the University of South Alabama. He completed an MS at Auburn University in 2001, receiving the Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence. Before completing his university studies, Rick spent over a decade as regional manager of the central United States, including Canada and Mexico for International Transport Inc. (heavy specialized division)  Overseeing the Tulsa OK, Kansas City Mo. and Lincoln Nebraska terminals. Beginning in 2002, Rick served as Site Manager for Escambia County Environmental Health Department, overseeing the cleanup of 55 contaminant plumes across five counties in Northwest Florida. Transitioning to oil exploration in 2009, he worked as a site geologist on numerous wells across Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Now retired, Rick continues to consult for small exploration companies and has dedicated the past three years to the Santa Rosa County Watershed Protection Committee, advocating for upgraded filtration systems to ensure clean, safe water for the community.

Community Scientists

Dr. Jeffrey Wickliffe‘s research, education, and service are guided by a commitment to understanding and preventing adverse human health effects from environmental hazards. I focus on identifying modifiable environmental factors that contribute to chronic diseases, using this knowledge to build accurate health risk models and interventions that promote longevity.

As an environmental toxicologist, I take a bench-to-trench approach, combining lab-based work (e.g., chemical biotransformation, genetics, mutagenesis) with human population studies using a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) framework. This approach informs both my bench science and community work, examining how chemical and non-chemical stressors, like socioeconomics, disasters, or food insecurity, interact to affect outcomes such as cancer, reproductive health, and development.

One of my long-term goals is to create cumulative, probabilistic risk models that guide preventive and policy-based solutions. I also integrate my research into teaching, exploring interactions between genetics, diet, trace elements, and environmental exposures, and bringing this into the classroom through innovative pedagogy.

Across all my work, I aim to identify and act on modifiable risks, bridging science and policy to improve public health outcomes.

Dr. Abadi Azar’s is cross-trained in climatology/meteorology and environmental epidemiology. Her research interest focuses on first exploring and better understanding the role of climate and natural environment on public health and, second, on investigating how these impacts vary by demographic characteristics and Social Determinants of Health indicators. Her current projects involve the use of statistical modeling, data management, and machine learning techniques to improve our understanding of how environmental exposure, such as drought and heat waves, is affecting the communities. The proper early warning messaging systems should be backed up by robust scientific research. The ultimate goal of her research is to help improve the allocation of public resources and public health messaging systems to minimize adverse health outcomes driven by climate and weather-related events. Dr. Abadi actively collaborates on multiple federally funded large observational studies to better understand the impacts of drought on health outcomes.

Erin Wright is a current Master of Public Health (MPH) student with a concentration in Environmental Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She earned her Bachelor of Science in Public Health from UAB in April 2024. In the realm of environmental health, Erin’s research interest lies in examining the intersection of the environment and human health, in particular how such environmental factors influence health outcomes across different regions. She is eager to continue working in the public health field to further explore these factors and engage with the community through communicating environmental health data and ways to preserve and promote health and well-being.

Community Science Fellow

Chioma Onwumelu is a passionate geoscientist specializing in data analysis, water resource management, and environmental assessment. With a strong commitment to bridging science and community needs, she focuses on developing sustainable solutions through collaboration and research. Chioma holds a B-tech degree from the Federal University of Technology Owerri, Nigeria, and a Ph.D. and MS degree in Geology from the University of North Dakota. Beyond her professional pursuits, Chioma is deeply involved in volunteering for various educational and community initiatives. Her dedication to knowledge-sharing and community engagement underscores her holistic approach to advancing the field of geoscience and fostering a more inclusive and informed society.