A helicopter crew began work July 27 to raise power lines suspended above the St. Johns River near JaxPort’s Blount Island Marine Terminal.
The helicopter operation is one of the last phases of the Fulton Cut project, which aims to raise the lines to allow taller container ships to access the port. City utility JEA, the Jacksonville Port Authority and the city of Jacksonville are partnering on the project.
The lines are set to be raised to 225 feet from 175 feet above the channel between Blount Island and Reed Island, where local reporters were granted viewing access to the helicopter crew’s initial work.
Working to connect three newly constructed towers on each side of the St. Johns River, the helicopter crew will set up a system of ropes and pulleys that will be used to drag the power lines to the new towers. Darrell Hamilton, JEA’s manager of transmission and substation projects, said work to connect the lines to the taller towers is expected to begin in mid-September and be completed by the end of 2026.
Helicopters will not be needed to connect the lines, he said, but helicopter crews would return afterward to begin demolition of the old towers. That demolition is expected to be complete by summer 2027.
After mid-September, JEA will begin planned outages while connecting the towers. JEA officials emphasized that while the planned outages would affect the city-owned utility’s operations, no customers would lose power during the project.
Total cost of the project is estimated at $117 million, JEA spokesperson Karen McAllister said. JEA and JaxPort would each contribute $32.5 million, the city would contribute $29.5 million and a grant from the Florida Department of Transportation would add $22.5 million.
The July 27 operation was coordinated with the U.S. Coast Guard, the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, according to JEA officials. Those organizations were assigned to create a “safe zone” in the river for six hours while the helicopter worked overhead. According to a bulletin from the Coast Guard, any person or vessel seeking passage through the safe zone would need approval from the captain of the port, Capt. Jason Aleksak of the Coast Guard.
Hamilton described the helicopter operations as a “major milestone” of the Fulton Cut project, which he said has come in on budget and on schedule.
“That’s our goal – to exceed expectations,” Hamilton said. “We (have) a really good team behind us working on it.”
The electrical work is one of two projects aimed at making Blount Island more accessible to larger ships.
In 2022, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed a $420 million project in which the 11-mile federal shipping channel in the St. Johns was deepened to 47 feet from 40 feet.
The federal government, state of Florida, JaxPort and SSA Atlantic contributed funding for the harbor deepening project.
