Water agency OK's pump station contract for St. Johns County water pipeline

Dec 13, 2023

Done with studies, state water officials are moving ahead with concrete steps on a project to pump water from Clay County's Black Creek to shrunken lakes around Keystone Heights.

The St. Johns River Water Management District's governing board on Tuesday approved a $15.9 million contract to build a pump station to eventually move up to 10 million gallons of creek water daily through a pipeline to near Lake Brooklyn in the county's southwest corner.

The lake is in a recharge area for the Floridan aquifer, which supplies most of the state's drinking water, and the agency has said the pipeline will "help meet future water supply demands while protecting natural resources."

But the agency has also projected the pumping could raise Lake Brooklyn's water level almost 10 feet, a prospect that property owners pursued doggedly during years when lakefronts receded far from homes and docks built around former shorelines.

"I am thrilled to see this project become a reality," board Chairman Rob Bradley said in a release after the vote. "For those of us who grew up Clay County, we’ve seen firsthand the drastic changes in our lake levels over the past few decades. This project will help us address that and more, all while protecting Florida's natural systems."

Bradley, a former state senator, championed the project when he was a legislator shepherding $48 million to the water management district in three successive appropriations starting in 2017. Those allotments put $43.4 million in what the agency calls the Black Creek water resources development fund. Pooling that with other money, the board on Tuesday counted $51.1 million in agency budgets as reserved for the project.

The pump station, between Penney Farms and Camp Blanding off Florida 16, is scheduled to be built by August 2024 by Sanford-headquartered contractor Wharton-Smith Inc.

Creek water will be pumped into a 17-mile pipeline planned to empty near Alligator Creek, where a "passive treatment system" is supposed to remove organic material that makes Black Creek water darker than Keystone Heights lake water.

Water from the treatment area will flow into Alligator Creek, which feeds Lake Brooklyn, whose lake bottom connects with the aquifer, gradually pouring water into the underground resource. Water demand from Jacksonville and neighboring communities have helped lower aquifer levels, and replenishing the resources was touted by the project's backers as a way to protect water's availability.

"The benefits of this project are far-reaching and speak directly to the district's mission of ensuring adequate water supply for future generations in Florida," the water management district's executive director, Mike Register, said in written comments Tuesday.

The pump station was planned to only take an amount from Black Creek when the water level is flowing above a certain height, to avoid harming plants and animals in the creek. The water management district previously estimated the creek ran above that cutoff level about three-quarters of the time.

The water management district at one point projected starting construction last year and finishing in August 2023. But the work was delayed while the agency tested a small-scale model of the passive treatment system to ensure the water from the creek wouldn't be too dark and effect the lake ecosystem.