JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 A proposed no-wake zone could soon slow boaters down at the Fort George River sandbar. <\/p>\n
A special task force said a no-wake zone at the sandbar is 20 years past due, as growth brings more people and boats to the area.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n A commission member said Wednesday that \u201cover 400,000 people\u201d go to the Fort George Island and Huguenot Park area every year.<\/p>\n Law enforcement and local boaters weighed in today on congestion and safety concerns.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause of all of the growth of the boats and because of having less water out there, it just creates much more of a propensity for an accident to happen,\u201d Lisa Almeida of the Freedom Boat Club said.<\/p>\n It was the first of several discussions. Some asked whether the zone should be seasonal.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n \u201cIt is very, very populated and congested during the summer,\u201d Jacksonville City Councilman Mike Gay said.<\/p>\n Advocates say the sandbar itself is a hazard.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they lost control of their jet ski and somebody\u2019s swimming, because it\u2019s just a smaller area of water now, people can get hurt. And I\u2019ve seen accidents out there,\u201d Almeida said.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Leaders want a decision before next summer.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a reasonable fix is that it would be a no-wake zone out at the Fort George area,\u201d Almeida said.<\/p>\n The task force is set to meet again on October 22. Ultimately, they\u2019ll pass along their formal recommendations to city leaders for consideration.<\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 A proposed no-wake zone could soon slow boaters down at the Fort George River sandbar.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5228,639,139994,168314,168312,139341,168313,116,118,117,634,88117,43190,159931],"class_list":["post-428185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news_jacks","tag-duval_county","tag-fort_george","tag-fort_george_island","tag-fort_george_river_sandbar","tag-huguenot_park","tag-jacks_taylor","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-local","tag-sandbar","tag-stewart","tag-taylor_stewart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428185","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=428185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}