An official with the St. Johns River Water Management District said that although the pipeline for a Lake Region water project is complete, more work remains before water will be pumped to a creek north of Lake Brooklyn.
The Black Creek Water Resource Development Project combines pumps, a filtration system, and 17 miles of pipe to transport up to 10 million gallons daily from the creek to Keystone Heights lakes and the Floridan Aquifer. The project is critical to the district’s recovery plan for Lakes Brooklyn and Geneva, which have fallen below regulatory minimum flows and levels.
Dale Jenkins, the district’s Division of Infrastructure and Land Resources Director, said engineers must pressure test 11 miles of the pipeline before pumps begin to take water from Black Creek and push it east and south to the treatment facility.
However, Jenkins told the district’s governing board during its November 12 meeting that the biggest holdup to starting the pumps near the creek at its intersection with State Road 16 is a problem with the water filter media at the Camp Blanding treatment site.
He said the contractor producing the media, which will filter the creek’s brown, tannin water before it goes into Alligator Creek, has experienced production difficulties.
“The primary one is residual moisture in the media,” he explained, “so that was kind of delaying the processing of the media.”
The official added that the contractor hired a process engineer to remedy the problem. Once the contractor fills the first of six cells at the treatment facility, pumps will move Black Creek water to Camp Blanding to test the filtration system.
Jenkins said he hoped the project would be operational sometime in January.
