Northwest Jacksonville top list of neighborhoods for septic tank removal

Mayor Lenny Curry’s statement that it is time for Jacksonville to face the monumental septic tank leakage task would not focus on a single part of town.

The long and costly list of septic tank “failure areas” covers areas scattered across Jacksonville on both sides of the St. Johns River. This can be seen from the ranking that the city created years ago and updated annually.

Curry has met with members of the city council and not said what the funding plan would be for such a massive business, but if the city council hits that goal, the long-running list will show where the hot spots are.

More:Curry: It’s time to worry about getting the sewers into the septic tank districts once and for all

More:Hazouri says he will ask for $ 100 million to replace septic tanks in Jacksonville

Top list from Biltmore, Beverly Hills, Christobel and Riverview

The top 4 are in northwest Jacksonville, a neighborhood that comes up frequently when city guides talk about broken promises from the historic vote that created a consolidated city-county government in 1968.

The city committed to doing three of these in 2016 – Biltmore, Beverly Hills, and Christobel. Curry announced a plan last Thursday to raise enough funds to complete this trio of projects involving around 1,600 septic tanks in partnership with JEA.

Next on the list is Riverview, which ranks # 4 and is located near the Trout River just west of Interstate 95. There is currently no funding.

After that, the list for the other churches in the top 10 projects shifts focus to churches in the St. Nicholas, Southside, Arlington, Mandarin, and San Jose areas and across the St. Johns River to a project on the west side.

More:Jacksonville evaluated 35 neighborhoods to replace septic tanks with sewers. Here is a list.

The cost of sewing all 10 of these boroughs would cost an estimated $ 562 million and allow owners to remove approximately 11,000 septic tanks. Leaking all 65,000 Jacksonville septic tanks would cost more than $ 2 billion.

Curry plans to take a community-wide push by meeting with members of the city council and partnering with civic groups for their buy-in.

“It’s not a sexy project,” he said last week. “This is not a project that people can touch and feel, but it is a project that people in their neighborhood and in their homes live every day.”

St. John’s riverkeeper Lisa Rinaman said Monday it was “definitely a step in the right direction”.

“Counties across the state are trying to figure out how to remove septic tanks so we are not alone in this,” she said.

22,000 septic tanks in Jacksonville’s “failure areas”

Leaking septic tanks can cause harmful bacteria to pollute waterways, making them unsafe. Septic tanks are also a cause of blue algae bloom when nutrients overload waterways like the St. Johns River.

Rinaman said the cost of “not getting it right is much riskier and more expensive” than the cost of leaking septic tanks, so she is “cautiously optimistic” that a funded plan will emerge from the town hall.

The list of “failure areas” of the septic tanks in the city targets 35 digits with a total of about 22,000 septic tanks. To classify them, each area is given a rating based 70 percent on environmental, health and welfare factors.

The other 30 percent are “collaborative considerations,” e.g. B. Whether the development is before the consolidation of the city-county government, the middle house values ​​and the water supply of the city districts.

According to an October report by JEA, the cost for all 35 of these areas would be about $ 1.1 billion.

The list can be changed by vote of the city council. Councilor Brenda Priestly Jackson, co-chair of the Special Committee on Social Justice and Community Investment, wants that committee to analyze the list and adjust the areas with high rates of poverty.

“It is these neighbors who have been overlooked and often find themselves financially challenged,” she said.

City Council President Tommy Hazouri tabled a bill calling for $ 100 million for exits from septic tanks. This should be in addition to the work in the Biltmore, Beverly Hills and Christobel neighborhoods.

Riverview, the next area on the list, has an estimated cost of $ 92 million to build sewers that would enable 1,812 septic tanks to be cleared. It would cost an additional $ 7 million to build a JEA water supply for homes in the neighborhood.

The area number 5 is in the St. Nicholas neighborhoods east of downtown on Atlantic Boulevard, where the estimated cost of an area of ​​623 septic tanks is about $ 32 million.

# 6 is on Southside in an area of ​​Emerson Street west of I-95 where the price would be $ 38 million and cover 751 septic tanks.

Area # 7 is Champion Forest on 103rd Street on the west side. The cost of 610 septic tanks is $ 31 million. The cost of expanding the water service to Champion Forest would be an additional $ 3.6 million.

Egglestown Heights in Arlington ranks 8th. It’s the largest area on the list with 3,416 septic tanks and an estimated cost of nearly $ 174 million.

The Julington Creek area in Mandarin is # 9. It has 2,000 septic tanks and the cost of expanding the JEA sewage service would be $ 102 million. Another $ 7.8 million would be required to expand JEA’s water service.

The Oak Lawn neighborhood in the San Jose area ranks 10th with 230 septic tanks and an estimated cost of nearly $ 12 million to provide sewage services.

The other 25 areas on the list are also spread across the city.