Will wetlands fix industrial waste? Nope!

Picture from http://www.geocities.com/xpatriot_1999/One/north.html

Upon my post two days ago, I sent emails to Rich Rachal, the director of environmental clean-up for FDEP, north east division. The Mayors Office, including Brad Thoburn, Susie Wiles, John Peyton, and Chris Pearson.

Mr. Pearson is the director of environmental clean up at the Duval County Solid Waste Division, and in the past has been very difficult to get a hold oh. He is also the person who keeps telling the community that we cant put in things like irrigation or playgrounds in our parks.

Within a half an hour Brad Thoburn replied that there is progress, refering to the Hogan's Creek Greenway (Again, a sidewalk, not a cleanup plan), followed quickly by a reply from Chris Pearson.

I have asked Chris Pearson to attend the Sept. SPAR roundtable meeting, and he agreed to look at his calendar, but has so far not committed.

the next day I got a call from Daniel Cronrath with COJ. He has been tasked with finding funding sources to push ahead the ACoE plan for aquatic renourishment. I replied to him and the rest of the city players, via email, with my thoughts on the plan.

Thank you for your time on the phone yesterday. It was truly a pleasure.

Based on our conversation, I want to go on the record as being against starting the Aquatic Renourishment as its has been proposed by the Army Corp of Engineers, until such time as the city/state/feds clean up all industrial contamination in the Hogans Creek Basin including a plan for cleaning up the parks contamination.

The biggest problem facing the creek and the connecting park system is the fact that we have oil, ash, and other industrial waste sites along the creek. Removing Hydrilla weed and restoring the creeks "aquatic health" will only address the issue with the elevated fecal coloforms, not items like the current levels of nickel, cadmium, lead, manganese, and other known industrial pollutants. Otherwise, the tax-payer would just be paying to make it a prettier superfund site.

The DEP and city have already been working on a plan for the remediation of the former coal gasification site and Confederate Park. This is a great first step.

Next we need to get action on the 6th St Ash site in Schell Park, as well as identify other source contamination sites. The old Auto body at Laura St/Hogans Creek, the old Lower Pond site at 4th and Pearl, areas near the Maxwell plant are all good places to get some soil testing done to see what sorts of problems we have.

At such time as there is a plan to address industrial waste in both the creek, and the parks, THEN we should look at improving the overall health of the creek with the rebuilding of wetlands, ponds, and transplant of native plants and fish, as well as the architectural restoration/preservation of the remaining Klutho architecture.

Thank you all for your time!

One note, I have learned that its going to cost roughly $11 Million dollars to clean up the oil contamination around Confederate Park, stemming from the former Coal Gasification plan on the grounds of the Park View Inn.