by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
The City of Jacksonville, for all intents and purposes, ended its artificial reef program in the late 1990s. Despite having a permit that extended until March 9, 2005, the City shut the program down and stopped adding to the existing 96 artificial reefs because there was essentially no one to oversee the program.
In April, former City Council member Lynette Self held a meeting with area marine scientists and Keith Mille of the State’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The group’s goal was to urge Mayor John Peyton to revive the program. The mayor listened and there is now a bill in front of Council that allows the City to partner with the Army Corps of Engineers to start redeploying materials to the 21 artificial reefs the City currently holds permits for.
While Mille is certainly pleased to hear Jacksonville is interested in getting back into the artificial reef business, he says Council approval of the program is just the first — and perhaps easiest — step of many.
“This is long overdue,” said Mille, who’s an environmental specialist III with the FWCC’s Division of Marine Fisheries Management Artificial Reef Program — a division which helps fund artificial reef programs all over the state. “The permits from the Army Corps of Engineers is the first step. A permit is just a piece of paper.”
Under the ordinance, the City’s Parks and Recreation will oversee the program.
However, who within that division will run things hasn’t been decided.
Jody McDaniel is a park planner with the Parks Department. She said she’s been tasked with finding a current City employee who’s willing and qualified to run the program.
“We definitely need someone with a marine background to oversee it,” said McDaniel.
“One staff member will oversee everything.”
The permits will allow the City to deploy material only within the 21 designated areas off the Duval County coast. According to Mille, it’s been so long since some of those areas have been tended to, there’s no telling what condition the reefs are in. Some areas, he said, have simply been designated and have never been developed.
The key now, according to Mille, is for the City to find the right person who will dedicate themselves to the program. Developing good artificial reefs, he said, is a time-consuming process, but it doesn’t have to be difficult if administered properly.
Mille said several area organizations will be more than willing to help, including the universities, the Offshore Club and Jacksonville Reef Research.
“The City is not alone,” said Mille. “Tallahassee will help with the process. We just need someone to take charge over there and say what’s next. Jacksonville needs someone to take the initiative. That’s been the problem all along.”
Typical artificial reefs are 90-100 feet and extend five or six feet high. Concrete debris, culverts and manhole covers make the best base material. Once deployed, some reefs start seeing marine activity in just a few weeks; others can take up to a year.
Mille said once the City finds an administrator of the program, they will need to quickly establish a good relationship with the Florida Department of Transportation — which does a majority of the roadwork in the area and, therefore, produces the most concrete debris — local concrete manufacturers and those in the fishing industry. Mille said many of the concrete companies will donate unusable or defective concrete structures such as culverts. However, if there’s no one to negotiate the donation or a facility to store them, they are either recycled or shipped out of the area.
“All of the material in Jacksonville is currently going to Nassau, Flagler and St. Johns counties. Some of it is being sent to Georgia and North Carolina,” said Mille, adding the State will send out grant proposals in January and they are due back to the State in March. These grants offset a vast majority of the costs associated with finding and storing materials and locating and securing a licensed hauler. “Ninety percent of building artificial reefs is coordination.”
McDaniel said she envisions creating a community advisory group made up of private citizens and business owners with current and future stakes in the artificial reef program. This group, she said, would help determine where the City would start with the next round of deployment.
“They’ll know good sites,” she said.