State wants U.S. to take part of dam

The Legislature has not provided money to tear down a dam on the Ocklawaha River.

By CRAIG PITTMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published July 30, 2002

Two years after Gov. Jeb Bush decided the state should tear down a controversial dam on the Ocklawaha River, the state has been unable to take even the first step needed to restore the river's flow.

So now state officials want to hand over part of the dam -- and the headache that goes with it -- to the federal government.

In a letter to the U.S. Forest Service, a state Department of Environmental Protection official said "it is impossible for us to proceed with restoration" because the Legislature has failed to budget any money for the work.

Therefore "the department feels obligated to return your land back to you, the U.S. Forest Service," DEP Assistant Secretary Bob Ballard wrote in a July 19 letter. "This action opens the door for the U.S. Forest Service to pursue restoration."

In other words, "the part of the dam that sits on Forest Service property could become the property of the U.S. Forest Service," said Denise Rains, a spokeswoman for the federal agency.

But whether that will speed up or slow down action on the dam remains unanswered. Forest Service officials want the dam torn down, but opponents have vowed to sue to block any action.

"The minute the Forest Service brings a shovel to the state of Florida, we'll be in litigation forever," promised Ed Taylor, president of Save Rodman Reservoir Inc. "We'll step in and stop it."

The 7,200-foot dam and 9,000-acre reservoir are remnants of the Cross Florida Barge Canal, which was supposed to let barges slice straight across from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. When the Army completed the dam in 1968, it backed the Ocklawaha up for 16 miles, covering some land that had been part of the Ocala National Forest.

However, the project was aborted over environmental concerns, and in 1991 Congress turned the dam over to the state. As a result, the state owns a dam and reservoir atop 600 acres of U.S. Forest Service land, and its permit to occupy the property recently expired.

Seven months ago the federal agency set a timetable for getting rid of the dam by 2006. The first step, with a Sept. 30 deadline, would be to collect water quality information.

Then, starting in June, the 20-foot-deep reservoir would be drawn down gradually over two years until it's only 4 feet deep. Then about 2,000 feet of the dam would be torn out to allow the Ocklawaha to flow through unimpeded.

Tearing down the entire dam would cost too much, forest service officials said, but ripping out part of it would still restore the river. They said the total cost would be about $14-million.

But Ballard's letter says the state won't be able to meet even the first deadline in September because of long-standing opposition from the Legislature.

State lawmakers, particularly incoming Senate President Jim King, say the reservoir is a great place to fish for bass and too important to the Central Florida economy to change it.

The issue has been controversial for more than a decade. Gov. Lawton Chiles repeatedly pushed to rip it out, but he failed to persuade powerful lawmakers to spend any money on the project. Bush, who sided with antidam forces in 2000, has run into an identical resistance from legislative leaders.

Bush tried hard in a losing effort to get money for restoring the river in 2001 but last year did not renew his request, said Kristina Jackson of Florida Defenders of Wildlife, an environmental group pushing for destruction of the dam. She said environmental groups would be delighted to see federal officials take over the project "rather than leave it in purgatory."

But Rains said the U.S. Forest Service has no money set aside for the project either. It is looking to the Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency for help.

While the state is trying to hand its property over to the federal government, Save Rodman Reservoir has been trying to do the opposite. At the group's urging, U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Ocala, filed a bill this year to turn the federal property over to the state. However, that bill has been bottled up in a subcommittee for four months with no action.

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