Water District Halts Flap Gates Idea Another Way Must Be Found to Fix Saltwater Intrusion into Egans.

By MARY HURST

FERNANDINA BEACH – The St. Johns River Water Management District has told Florida Department of Transportation engineers there’ll be no quick fix to saltwater intrusion into the freshwater portion of Egans Creek, south of Jasmine Street.

The water management district put the kibosh on the manually operated flap gates proposed as a temporary solution to stop the salt water from flowing south of Jasmine Street.

David Miracle, water management district administrator in Jacksonville, said Friday the district had asked the FDOT for computer modeling to be done on the creek using various levels of rainfall. The results showed unintended consequences.

“We had concerns from the beginning about the flood elevations, using the flap gates, but the numbers were worse than we thought,” he said.

In the case of a 25-year flood, where 8 to 9 inches of rain would fall in a 24-hour period, the temporary flap gates, designed to stop salt water from going south of Jasmine, would not allow enough fresh water to flow out north of Jasmine.

Instead, they would back the water up south of Jasmine. That water could flood private property south of Jasmine abutting the creek and wash over Jasmine Street itself, Miracle said.

FLAP GATES ‘NOT BIG ENOUGH’

“The flap gates are not big enough to handle heavy storm flows,” Miracle said. “[the FDOT has] been working on a more permanent solution that would be large enough to handle the flood elevations that would occur with that much rainfall,” he said. “And we’re encouraging them to do that.”

FDOT Project Engineer Jim Knight said Monday he is working on the permanent solution as a very high priority.

“This will be a drainage structure that opens and closes as needed,” he said. “We hope to have this bid and installed by a contractor by late summer or early fall.”

Knight said after the flow of salt water south of Jasmine Street is stopped, the FDOT will measure the level of the salt in the water to determine what plants can be put back as part of the restoration. That will take the project into next year.

Fernandina Beach resident Clinch Kavanaugh wrote a letter April 10 to Miracle, objecting to the placement of the temporary flap gates and requesting the district be designated as the lead agency to study restoring Egans Creek to “some semblance of its historical estuarine habitat structure.”

EXPERT TEAM DELAY

FDOT officials and city commissioners agreed in April to engage in a value-engineering study of the creek, which would bring in experts from all appropriate fields from around the country to assess the problem and make recommendations on how to fix it. But that won’t come until the project is in its restoration plan in about a year.

“After we develop a plan and get public input, then we will bring in the value-engineering team of experts from around the country who will give us feedback on how we can do it better,” he said.

More than 50 acres of hardwood trees have died south of Jasmine Street as salt water has seeped south following the 2003 FDOT project to return the northern part of Egans Creek Greenway to saltwater marsh.

Fernandina Beach residents, including members of the Sierra Club, have called for the saltwater intrusion to be stopped immediately and for the area to be returned to freshwater habitat.

Kavanaugh said Friday he just wanted people to read about estuaries.

“We don’t need people to be afraid of science. What we do need is experts to study the whole system and recommend what we can do to restore the whole creek basin correctly,” he said.

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