Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Wacissa, FL

Wacissa is a small unincorporated community and census-designated place in western Jefferson County, Florida, with no municipal government of its own.

Wacissa had just 362 residents at the 2020 census, down slightly from 386 in 2010, making it one of the smallest communities in the Tallahassee metropolitan area.

Wacissa sits about 16 miles southwest of Monticello, the Jefferson County seat, and about 20 miles southeast of Tallahassee, the state capital, and its census-designated place covers about 4.2 square miles.

Wacissa shares its name with the Wacissa River, whose headwaters - a group of large, crystal-clear limestone springs - emerge about a mile south of the community.

The Wacissa River flows about 12 miles south through a broad cypress swamp before breaking into braided channels that join the Aucilla River, and it has been declared an Outstanding Florida Waterway by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

The Wacissa River is managed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission as part of the Aucilla Wildlife Management Area and is famous for its birdlife, including egrets, herons, ibis, osprey, wood storks and bald eagles.

Before the Civil War, cotton from Jefferson County plantations was barged down the Wacissa River to Newport, and in the late nineteenth century the river was well known to ornithologists because ivory-billed woodpeckers were then fairly common there.