NEWS RELEASE

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

February 7, 2000

CONTACT: Michael Hill (850) 591-6324

PHASE I COMPLETED; 400,000 CUBIC YARDS OF MUCK REMOVED FROM LAKE JACKSON

(See also the Leon County web site on Lake Jackson Restoration).

Some people are quick to criticize governmental agencies for being slow to act, but a consortium of agencies wanting to clean up the bottom of Lake Jackson put a plan together long before the lake went mostly dry last fall and that plan is now paying dividends.

The group of agencies, which includes the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), Northwest Florida Water Management District, Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and officials from Leon County, saw for more than a year that Lake Jackson's 4,000 acres were receding almost daily. The group, whose acronym is DIRT, for Drawdown Inter-agency Restoration Team, decided on a course of action and when much of the lake was reduced to muck-covered flats Sept. 16, some of it more than two-feet deep in places, they sprang into action.

Through a competitive bid process and using Lake Restoration Funds, which are derived from the sale of fishing licenses, Lisa's Environmental Landscaping of St. Cloud, FL was selected and began work in early October removing the massive accumulations of storm water runoff deposits and decaying plant debris from the Fords Arm section of the lake. The company finished their work in one-half of the allotted 120 days for the job, in the process removing 200,000 cubic yards, or 10,000 dump-truck loads of nutrient-rich mucky sediment to a DEP-approved upland disposal site.

At the same time Leon County officials coordinated the removal of another 200,000 cubic yards of muck and accumulated debris with Mitchell Brothers, Inc. of Tallahassee from Megginnis Arm. That work has been concluded as well.

"We wanted to act fast and fortunately everything fell into place," said Michael Hill, a FWC freshwater fisheries biologist who has been involved in the project from the beginning. "The companies were experienced in this kind of work and the weather was good. It really couldn't have gone any better."

While Phase I of the lake restoration work is finished, Hill said they've already begun Phase II, which involves the removal of an additional 1,000,000 cubic yards of muck. Hill said they are working as quicky as possible due to the uncertainty as to when the lake will begin re-filling.

In 1952 the lake went down and stayed down for 30 months but in the last natural drawdown in 1982, it stayed down only four months. "The objective of this project is to restore as much of the sandy lake bottom as possible, and that will ultimately be the healthiest thing for the lake from a fish and wildlife habitat point-of-view. Mother Nature gave us this opportunity, we can't pass it up," Hill said.