Cleaning Up A Jacksonville Environmental Hazard
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From the 1890s until 1978, the old Kerr-McGee property in Jacksonville was home to a fertilizer and chemical plant. Now the site encorporates the polluted Talleyrand waterfront area. The land is vacant, and a bulkhead is built over contaminated sediments at the bottom of the St. Johns River that runs through our city.
How to clean up the site has been a headache but now the area may see state money for cleanup and community projects. Under the plan, the site owner, Tronox Inc. would purchase the river bottom as part of a cleanup of the river and the shore.
In return, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection wants most of the proceeds to return to neighborhood projects. The cost of the river bottom is still undetermined but could run into a six-figure amount.
"It's an environmental justice issue, when you look at it," Jim Maher, a longtime agency administrator now in the submerged lands office, told Eastside neighborhood groups and the Florida Times Union during a meeting this week.
Tronox would then cover the cost of a cleanup at about $18.6 million to dig a trench and fill it with a type of cement to keep pollutants in ground water from seeping out. Another plan would haul polluted soil away, but the cost goes up to $22 million.
Neighborhood groups plan to visit Tallahassee next month to rally for this unusual win-win for the city which could result in park improvements or developing more green space. As it stands now, no one can live in the area of the site which has been found to contain benzene, DDT, arsenic, lead and other pollutants.
The hope is that one day the property could be used for new industrial use that might include the nearby Port Authority.