{"id":194236,"date":"2026-03-17T00:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T00:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/194236\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T00:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T00:28:12","slug":"bill-to-restore-ocklawaha-river-dies-in-legislature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/194236\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill to restore Ocklawaha River dies in Legislature"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senate President Ben Albritton couldn\u2019t say if the chamber had enough support for a House-backed proposal that directed the Department of Environmental Protection to develop a plan for restoring the Ocklawaha River<\/a>, which is a tributary of the St. Johns River.<\/p>\n

The river cleanup was among the measures that failed to advance in the Senate as the regular session ended Friday. Albritton said some senators \u201chad real concerns\u201d over the proposal (HB 981<\/a>), while others \u201cwere supportive of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The House bill was filed<\/a> by Rep. Wyman Duggan, R-Jacksonville.<\/p>\n

The plan called for the department to restore conditions to before the waterway was altered by construction of the aborted attempt to create the Cross Florida Barge Canal and its associated projects, including the Kirkpatrick Dam, which is also known as the Rodman Dam<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The House voted 107-3 in support of the proposal on March 4.<\/p>\n

However, Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed a similar measure last year and in January he indicated his position hadn\u2019t changed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Albritton said that while the region may need to have a conversation on the future of the waterway, he added \u201cthat\u2019s up for the local community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was plenty of opposition to it too, right, so you know, I expect the idea of restoring that is not going to go away,\u201d Albritton continued.<\/p>\n

Work on the canal started in the 1960s to create a waterway from Northeast Florida to Yankeetown on the Gulf Coast. The federal government halted the barge canal project in 1971, with the dam and reservoir remaining.<\/p>\n

Many officials and businesspeople in areas such as Putnam County have fought tearing down the dam because they say the reservoir, known for its fishing, is an economic engine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senate President Ben Albritton couldn\u2019t say if the chamber had enough support for a House-backed proposal that directed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-194236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}