Urban Jacksonville

Well… its a little more complicated than that…

The storm thats currently hitting us is coming at us from the North east. This causes the St Johns river to back up as though it were high tide. This is sometimes called “on shore flow”. Since Hogans Creek is effected by tidal surge and rises and falls along with the river normally, when the St Johns is High, so too is Hogans. Also, the entire Hogans creek basin is a stage one flood zone, so when its at high or elevated levels and you add several inches of rain in a short time, this is what you get.

Now add to that the fact that almost all of Springfield and the North end of downtown uses Hogans Creek for storm water drainage, and you exacerbate the problem even further. This can be controlled to some degree with a retention pond system. When Klutho re-channelized the creek in 29′ he added flood gates and pumps at the mouth of the creek. This effectively stemmed the tidal flow issue, and with it, the flooding issue.

I have heard a few people say that the city allows this to happen because this is still considered a poor part of town, but historically this has happened for as long as there has been a creek. Here is a great story from Bill Foley that talks about the zoo in 1915 when it was in what was then called “Springfield Park” having to release all of the animals into the streets of Springfield because of the very same flooding.

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/122399/mom_1613065.html

This doesn’t excuse the problems like what you see at 7th and Silver. That is a good old fashion drainage problem.

So, what I really want to know is, can I go swim in the overflow? Because it smells great.

San Marco is a huge mess. The storm drains on the blocks surrounding my neighborhood (Palm and Cedar) are filled with dirt.

The cops blocked every possible (yet fairly shallow) passageway to my a house, but failed to block the lake at an intersection on LaSalle. The water was over the hood of the car!

That video is fresh. I found a great James Brown Pavarotti joint on the qtube. Awesome.

riverside ave in front of my apt was shut down too. only for about an hour though. my dog and i enjoyed walking in the freezing cold water. though there is some weird thing with eyes and one tooth growing on my toe now.

That is why there is a park surrounding Hogan’s Creek…

Wait till Dora II comes rolling up the river. perhaps during a full moon flood tide….
surf up!

Anybody got any pics from 64?

Its when you have to block off evacuation routes (i-95/10) because of a few inches of rain, you know you have a problem..

We have to remember that Jacksonville is sitting on abused land. It should flood. What would be really cool and trend-setting for the city is to
look at the establishment of Urban Wetlands. We should replant native wetland plants and encourage water to slow instead of draining it off quickly.
Klutho park is a great place to start, remove fill and let the water flow. Wouldn’t a board walk through an Urban Wetland be a cool feature for downtown?