Telegraph Staff Writer
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— A St. Johns River Water Management District official told the district’s governing board that the Black Creek Water Resource Development Project pumping station continues to be delayed. In contrast, other parts of the project continue to advance.
Bob Naleway, the district’s bureau chief of district projects and construction, told the board that a replacement cutter head for drilling a 700-foot tunnel from the creek to the pipeline has not yet been delivered to the site.
Dale Jenkins, the district’s division director for infrastructure and land resources, said the cutter head initially ordered by the contractor did not meet the subsurface conditions near the pumping station and could not effectively advance the tunnel.
“The contractor is addressing the situation, and a new tunneling machine and cutter head is being fabricated and should be delivered to the site the first week in August,” he said during the board’s June 13 meeting.
Naleway said the replacement cutter head is now expected in early September.
“The contractor was able to shift some tasks to mitigate some of the scheduling impacts from that new machine,” he said.
Naleway also reported that installing high-density polyethylene pipe under two creeks along State Road 21 using horizontal directional drilling technology has been completed.
The tunnel under one creek was about a thousand feet, and the second tunnel approximated 3,000 feet.
The bureau chief sought and obtained approval from the governing board for a $16 million contract to install a water filtering system on Camp Blanding, which is the final stage of the project.
In April the board approved a $23 million purchase to obtain the filtering media for the treatment system.
Naleway said the treatment system, designed to remove the dark color from the creek’s water before discharge into Alligator Creek and onto Lake Brooklyn, will consist of six treatment cells filled with the treatment media.
“Construction includes earthwork to build the six cells,” he said, “a surge tank, piping to distribute the Black Creek water into the cells and spreading the treatment media in the cells, and the collection system after the water filters through the treatment media. The water will be discharged into Alligator Creek, where it replenishes the Upper Floridan Aquifer and overflows into Lake Brooklyn.”
