- Stream
- Water
- sewer from the 1880s; 'extremely polluted' 1991
- City of Atlanta
South River
The Ocmulgee headwater that drains south Atlanta and south DeKalb to Jackson Lake. It was the first stream Atlanta used as a sewer and remains one of Georgia's most polluted rivers.
The record
Kenneth Krakow's Georgia Place-Names says it was known in early days as the South Branch of the Ocmulgee River; Wikipedia's South River Forest article gives its Muscogee name as Weelaunee. The South River Watershed Alliance says it became Atlanta's first sanitary sewer in the early 1880s, when headwater streams near downtown were piped to carry sewage away from wealthy neighborhoods. In the map area it collects Intrenchment, Sugar, Doolittle, Shoal (with Cobbs), Snapfinger and Pole Bridge creeks (USGS NHD). SRWA says the state declared all 60 miles 'extremely polluted' in 1991, and American Rivers ranked it fourth on its 2021 Most Endangered Rivers list.
Today: Open river; the South River Forest proposal covers land along it in southeast Atlanta and DeKalb.
Where on the map: Flows east-southeast from East Point past Lakewood, Constitution and Panthersville to Panola Shoals and out of DeKalb near Klondike Road.