Excerpt from Jacksonville.com, February 18, 2019. Read full story here.
by Steve Patterson
A land swap that clears the way for cleanup of an Eastside Jacksonville Superfund site has also expanded state parkland on Fort George Island, a nonprofit that was part of the deal said Monday.
The North Florida Land Trust set up the exchange between Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection and the Greenfield Environmental Multistate Trust, an organization responsible for cleaning up the former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. property at 1611 Talleyrand Ave.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had documented that pollution from the old insecticide and fertilizer warehouse was seeping beyond the Kerr-McGee property and into land beneath the St. Johns River.
The EPA had approved a plan to lock the pollution in place and stop it from damaging the river further, but following that plan required work on the riverbed, which the state owns.
The deal announced Monday let Greenfield take title to 2.8 acres of underwater land next to the Kerr-McGee site in return for Greenfield buying and giving the state 14 acres on Fort George Island for conservation.