BY DAN HILDEBRAN
A St. Johns River Water Management District director said testing for the Black Creek Water Resource Development Project began in February.
Dale Jenkins, the district’s director of the Division of Infrastructure and Land Resources, told the governing board during its February meeting that he anticipated Black Creek water flowing into Alligator Creek and onto Lake Brooklyn sometime in March.
The Black Creek Water Resource Development Project is designed to recharge the Upper Floridan aquifer and raise the water levels of Lakes Brooklyn and Geneva. It is part of the lakes’ recovery plan, which helps the district comply with regulatory minimum flows and levels.
Jenkins said the project’s pumps and pipeline carried the creek’s water to a storage tank within the project’s Camp Blanding treatment center at the beginning of February. He added that vibration testing of the pumps and leak and sediment testing of the storage tank went well.
Jenkins said three of the project’s five components are 99% complete: the pumping station, the intake apparatus at Black Creek, and the 17-mile pipeline that runs along State Roads 21 and 16.
He added that the treatment facility’s construction is 78% complete, and the installation of filtering media at the treatment facility is 12% finished.
Jenkins said that of the six cells at the treatment facility, Cell 1 is nearly complete. Cells 2 and 3 are ready for media when it becomes available. Cells 4, 5, and 6 are still under construction.
During the district’s January governing board meeting, Jenkins reported that the project was delayed because of a contractor’s inability to produce enough of the treatment facility’s filtering media, which removes the brown, tannin, Black Creek water before it is discharged into Alligator Creek.
He added that the contractor was overhauling the production facility to speed up production.
During the February governing board meeting, Jenkins said the contractor had solved its production problems.
“We’re happy to report that the media production facility is now fully up to speed,” he said. “All the improvements have been made, so it’s full speed ahead right now. We’re hoping that we can start catching up, and if we stay on schedule with the production of the media, we should have enough media to fill Cells 2 and 3. It won’t be in the cells, but it’ll all be delivered to the staging area at Camp Blanding by the end of April…and hopefully, it’ll be done towards the end of April or early May.”
When questioned by governing board members, Jenkins clarified that although Black Creek’s water would begin to enter Alligator Creek in March, the project would not be fully operational until a few months later.
