Here is a link with more information on this lawsuit and a summary of the huge costs to maintain this illegal and environmentally destructive dam.
There is a group called Save Rodman Reservoir which has lately placed several full-page ads containing misinformation about the dam and the river in the Gainesville Sun.
Read the original article here at NewsforJax.com.
Comments by OSFR historian Jim Tatum.
jim.tatum@oursantaferiver.org
– A river is like a life: once taken,
it cannot be brought back © Jim Tatum
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Siding with the U.S. Forest Service, a federal appeals court Monday rejected a lawsuit that has been part of a decades-long effort by environmentalists to remove North Florida’s Rodman dam and restore the Ocklawaha River.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the group Florida Defenders of the Environment in a case that centered on the state’s lack of a permit to operate part of the dam and the Rodman Reservoir in the Ocala National Forest.
What is known as a special-use permit expired in 2002, and the environmental group and individual plaintiffs Bruce Kaster and Joseph Little contended that the U.S. Forest Service should require removal of the dam, according to Monday’s ruling.
But the appeals court upheld a 2019 decision by U.S. District Judge Harvey Schlesinger, who pointed to the federal agency’s “prosecutorial discretion” in determining whether to remove the dam. The panel cited part of the federal Administrative Procedure Act in agreeing with Schlesinger.
While the Atlanta-based appeals court upheld Schlesinger’s decision, it also sent the case back to district court to make a change reflecting that the lawsuit was dismissed “without prejudice” — which could open the door to the plaintiffs filing a revised version.
Work started in the 1960s on the project, which was planned to create a barge canal from Northeast Florida to Yankeetown on the Gulf Coast and included damming the Ocklawaha River. The federal government halted the project in 1971, with the dam and reservoir remaining.
Environmentalists have sought to remove the dam to try to restore the flow of the Ocklawaha but have faced opposition from many state leaders and local officials in areas such as Putnam County. In part, dam supporters have pointed to fishing that draws visitors to the reservoir and the region.
In the lawsuit, Florida Defenders of the Environment alleged “decades of inaction by the U.S. Forest Service.” It also said the termination of the special-use permit mandated removal of parts of the dam, which is formally named after the late state Sen. George Kirkpatrick, an adamant defender of the reservoir and dam.
“Today, FDEP (the Florida Department of Environmental Protection) is occupying Ocala National Forest both without a permit and in violation of the terms of the original SUP (special-use permit), long since expired,” the 2017 lawsuit said. “Those terms mandate compensation for damage to natural resources on USFS (U.S. Forest Service) land by the permit holder, mandate removal of structures built on Forest Service land by the holder upon termination or expiration of the permit and mandate restoration of the land by the holder….”
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