Home/Opinion Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on email Ron Littlepage: Chill, Putnam County - a restored Ocklawaha River would actually lead to better fishing By Ron Littlepage Tue, Jan 13, 2015 @ 3:02 pm Bob.Mack@jacksonville Bob.Mack@jacksonville The reaction of Putnam County officials and bass anglers to the effort by Jacksonville business, political and environmental leaders to breach the Rodman dam and restore the Ocklawaha River was not unexpected. “Blindsided” and “outraged” were two of the words used. Hopefully, calmer reflection will present a different view. In truth, the dam should have come down decades ago after the Cross Florida Barge Canal, an environmental disaster in the making that still boggles the mind, was abandoned. The dam serves no real purpose. It doesn’t generate electricity. It’s not a navigational aid for waterborne commerce. It isn’t used for water supply. The giant reservoir that it created becomes so choked with aquatic vegetation that it has to be drained every three or four years. But it’s that reservoir that bass anglers insist should remain despite the damage it has done to the Ocklawaha and the St. Johns River, and they have used their political muscle and the stubbornness of parochial legislators to block removal of the dam, an action that Florida governors dating back to Reubin Askew have supported taking. The reality is the fishing will be better with a restored Ocklawaha River. That will be true during the gradual drawdown of the reservoir, and it will be true when the original channel once again winds through thousands of acres of restored forested floodplain. And for bass anglers only happy running their sleek boats on open-water lakes, there are other nearby natural lakes that are part of the St. Johns River system available for that. Putnam officials are concerned about an economic loss if the reservoir is drained. But the two to three years and $25 million it would take to restore the Ocklawaha will produce jobs in Putnam County. And with the return of an uninterrupted Ocklawaha, one that is not disrupted by a man-made reservoir, will come visitors that will bring more revenue to the county than the occasional bass tournament. That fear of an economic disaster in Putnam and nearby Marion County was not supported by a study done in the 1990s by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. “Restoration of the river will result in minimal net negative impacts and certainly will not send either county’s economy into a disastrous economic downturn,” the report said. There is a reason the time is right for this renewed effort to finally restore a free-flowing Ocklawaha River and for Gov. Rick Scott to join his predecessors in supporting the dam’s removal. JaxPort, the JAX Chamber and other business leaders, with the support of Scott, are pushing to dredge the St. Johns River shipping channel from its current depth of 40 feet to 47 feet. The Riverkeeper organization has pushed back, concerned that the dredging will increase the river’s salinity upstream and damage the river’s health. Removing the dam and restoring the natural flow of the Ocklawaha would add hundreds of millions of gallons of freshwater a day to the St. Johns to counteract that — water now lost to the suppressed flow of 20 natural springs flooded by the reservoir and evaporation. But it will do more than that. This effort is North Florida’s equivalent to restoring the Everglades and correcting an environmental travesty that never should have happened. It’s that important. The poet Sidney Lanier traveled on the Ocklawaha in the late 1800s and described it as “the sweetest water lane in the world.” “A lane which runs for more than a hundred and fifty miles of pure delight betwixt hedgerows and oaks and cypresses and palms and bays and magnolias and manifold vine growths.” It can be that way again, and Putnam County, Jacksonville and the St. Johns will be better off because of it. ron.littlepage@jacksonville: (904) 359-4284
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 12:25:25 +0000
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