Out of disk space after Sequoia Upgrade

Ever since upgrading to Sequoia on a Macbook Air M1, I have been battling disk space issues. Here is a break down of disk space used reported by "storage settings" of a 245 GB drive in decreasing order:

System Data: 211 GB

Mac OS: 23 GB

Applications 3.5 GB

Developer: 2.34 GB

Documents: 475 MB

Messages: 325 MB

Photos: 225 MB

iCloud Drive: 8 MB

Mail: 4 MB

System data section is consuming 211 GB of a 245 GB volume. I have deleted and removed several applications and the system keeps using any space I free up. Its also causing random crashes. It is becoming an unusable computer and I have become really frustrated with Apple. I shouldn't have to buy a third party application to clean up the drive. Something has gone wrong and I need some help.