BY DAN HILDEBRAN
A division director for the St. Johns River Water Management District told the district’s governing board that the Black Creek Water Resource Development Project is 65% complete and scheduled to go online in November.
The project is designed to recharge the Upper Floridan aquifer and raise water levels in lakes Brooklyn and Geneva. It is part of the lakes’ recovery plan to help the district comply with regulatory minimum flows and levels.
Dale Jenkins, who leads the District’s Division of Infrastructure and Land Resources, said the project consists of three components: the intake and pump stations at the intersection of State Road 16 and the south fork of the creek, the 17.2-mile of pipeline along State Roads 21 and 16 and the treatment facility on Camp Blanding between Lake Magnolia and Lake Brooklyn.
Jenkins said the intake and pump station are almost complete, with only paving and other minor work remaining.
The director added that the pipeline is 70% complete, with all the conduit buried along State Road 16 and about one-half of the 30-inch ductile iron pipe installed along State Road 21.
Jenkins said that workers have encountered gopher tortoise burrows along the pipeline route and that the district has relocated the reptiles after securing permitting. The species is listed as threatened by the state.
Jenkins said the project’s third component, the water treatment system that will remove brown tannins from the Black Creek water before its discharge into Alligator Creek and Lake Brooklyn, is 40% complete. He added that the treatment system’s one-half million-gallon storage tank is finished. Workers are preparing the treatment media to fill the six two-acre treatment cells.
“The actual treatment media is at a Lake County facility, where they mix the media together and dry it out before it gets brought to the treatment site,” he said.
The director added that workers are now installing liners into the six cells. He said that on top of the liners, workers will install a layer of bedding stone with distribution pipes within the stone layer and then two feet of media above the stone.
“It’s a nice passive treatment media that takes all the color out of the Black Creek water as well as any nutrients that are there,” he said.
Jenkins said the treatment system is 40% complete and added that if flow conditions remain the same in Black Creek, the district can start pumping water to the treatment facility even though only three of the six cells are finished.
