by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
In a 2002 Army Corps of Engineers report on the status of Hogan’s Creek and the plan to restore the waterway that bisects Downtown, project manager Steven Robinson concluded the then-$4.9 million was absolutely necessary.
“Without the project, Hogan’s Creek would continue to degrade in environmental quality and contribute to pollution and sediment loadings of the St. Johns River,” he wrote.
Robinson is no longer in the Corps’ Jacksonville District office, but Hogan’s Creek is still polluted and there are still plans to improve the waterway from both an aesthetic and environmental perspective. When those plans go into motion isn’t clear, either.
According to John Pappas, deputy director of Public Works, the State Department of Transportation has set aside $1 million to build a 12-foot wide concrete pathway along a portion of east and north sides of the creek. However, since the 2002 study, new environmental concerns have cropped up, namely an ash remediation effort that hasn’t started and doesn’t have a price tag.
“We are waiting before we can move forward,” said Pappas. “We are waiting to hear from the ash remediation group.”
Dubbed the “Hogan’s Creek Greenway Project,” the $1 million plan involves a walkway, concrete edging and monument of some kind, said Pappas.
According to Tom Heal, an engineer with Public Works, part of the clean up will involve the removal of trash that’s in the creek and on the creek banks. Because the creek flows from Springfield southeast to the St. Johns River, much of that trash gets caught in a net in the water just before the mouth of the creek. The banks of the creek in that area are littered with fast food cups, beer cans, a bicycle rim, police tape and other garbage — all evidence of homeless people sleeping under and near the various bridges that cross the creek.
While the creek’s water may appear filthy, Ebenezer Gujjarlapudi, director of the City’s Environmental Compliance Department, said until the water and the sediment are tested, there’s no way to determine exactly what contaminates are in the water and to what levels. He said the Corps and the State Department of Environmental Protection will deal with the creek itself while the City will concentrate on the Greenway project and the area outside of the water’s edge.
“The State has determined that over 85 percent of the contamination is from fecal matter from pets, geese and other animals,” he said. “Most of the contamination is around Confederate Park. We are looking at what’s in the ground.”
What’s near Confederate Park is the Park View Inn, a long vacant hotel at the corner of State Street and Newnan Street. Gujjarlapudi said the Park View is condemned and slated for demolition within the next couple of months. After that, he said, the State DEP will work with the property owner to begin remediation. At that time, he added, the City will be able to better gauge the environmental issues at Confederate Park.
“Once they clear that up, we will put our plan together to clean up our property,” said Gujjarlapudi.
Heal said the project could go to bid, but since only about one-half to two-thirds of it could be placed on a request for proposal due to the ash issues, the project is “in the middle of nowhere” and it wouldn’t make sense to put out an RFP.
Jim Manning, an engineer in the Environmental Compliance Department, said some of the contamination is from an early 1900s gas manufacturing plant that sat where the Park View Inn is today.
“It’s like tar and it’s deep underground,” he said. “It’s not in the creek, but it’s deep underground and it’s sinking.”
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