Bubble collums require all source blocks to work. You are placing water at the top of the collum and it is flowing down the hole. You would need to place a bucket of water at each block as you come up out of the hole to make this work. (There are other methods for creating source blocks of water in collums too)
Is the light level high enough in that area which won't plant? Also is this happening in other places in your world?
This is also happening on leather and iron armor.
I personally hate the enchanted glowing effect, so I wouldn't mind if this stayed.
I have a server running 20w11a, and the approximately 12 players on this server are completely unable to play in the soul sand vally, the ghast spawning is WAY Too high. A increased challenge is fine, but this is too frustrating.