A.G. Gancarski
Compounding questions and attendant uncertainty about the dredging of the St. Johns River to deepen the channel for JaxPort was a legal challenge filed Friday in federal court.
The St. Johns Riverkeeper filed for declaratory and injunctive relief against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, attempting to stop the 7 foot deepening of the 13 mile mouth of the St. Johns, and widening of six miles of the span.
At issue: the USACE assertion in 2015 that dredging was “economically justified” and “environmentally acceptable.”
That is not the Riverkeeper’s position, as press release copy asserts.
“St. Johns RIVERKEEPER’s complaint seeks review of the FEIS [channel deepening study] under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) citing the USACE’s 1) failure to take the required “hard look” at the environmental consequences of dredging, 2) failure to provide appropriate in-kind mitigation for the environmental damage that will result from the dredging, 3) failure to provide an adequate comprehensive economic analysis to determine the merits of such a massive expenditure of public funds, 4) failure to comply with public participation requirements, and 5) failure to supplement the FEIS when relevant new information or circumstances arose,” the Riverkeeper asserts.
The extant analysis, claims the Riverkeeper, is incomplete, heedless of numerous impacted species and eliding real demonstration of federal and regional economic interests.
