Coastal_Urban_Conservation_Jennifer_Casey_2022.07.18.pptx
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Our nation’s coasts are home to almost 40% of the U.S. population and many of our urban communities. Continued population growth along the coasts, and urbanization pose challenges and opportunities for coastal and urban conservation. Learn from Florida’s Duval SWCD, which serves coastal Duval County and the city of Jacksonville, about their urban conservation initiatives and partnerships to help protect watersheds and the St. Johns River as it flows into the Atlantic Ocean.
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Coastal_Urban_Conservation_Jennifer_Casey_2022.07.18.pptx
- 13. DEMONSTRATION PROJECT • Urban Agriculture Coordinator • Building with Nature workshops • Volunteer workdays • Earth Day celebrations • Healthy soil with wood chips • Cover crops • Bioswale • Pollinator garden
- 14. RESOURCES • Over $81,500 in grant awards • Over $30,000 in in kind donations • Over 300 new volunteers
- 15. • Member of our initial working group • Provided consultation on bioswale • Taught workshop
Editor's Notes
- Good afternoon. My name is Jennifer Casey and I am the Chair of the DSWCD in Jacksonville, FL. I am enjoying this panel and have taken a few notes to take home with me! I think my role today is to take a look at what these coastal and urban efforts look like on the ground level with local conservation districts.
- 874 square miles. 80,000 acres of parks, 7 state parks, 3 national parks and 400 city parks. 1,100 miles of shoreline. Being such a large city with nearly one million residents and having both a river and the beaches present certain conservation challenges.
- Coastal and Urban challenges came together in a dramatic way with Irma in 2017. Over 5.5’ flooding in Jacksonville setting a record in downtown and flooding businesses and hospitals. But although crisis events like this are a challenge and get a lot of attention, there are actually a lot of challenges that are affecting our lives daily and on a routine basis that are going unaddressed. I’m not going to be able to hit on everything but I will try to highlight a few.
- A couple of years ago a study determined that Jacksonville Would Be Nation's Most Expensive City To Protect With Seawalls - $3.5 billion to construct 632 miles of seawalls. While that sounds drastic and gets the headline, we really have a rising threat with just afternoon thunderstorms. This was 2 weeks ago.
- This was at the beach on the same day. I’m a third generation Jax girl and we did not have this routine flooding in the past like we see today. Whether that flooding is the result of stormwater drainage issues, river flooding or coastal events like hurricanes….flooding is beginning to present itself in such a way that we don’t have the option of looking away or putting our heads in the sand.
- We also see challenges with protecting our watersheds from harmful pollutants, in some cases pesticides and fertilizers are a concern bc they are causing harmful algae blooms with increasing frequency.
- Daytime temperatures can be as much as 7 degrees higher in the urban core neighborhoods with abundant concrete and asphalt and very little tree canopy – profound affects on health and contribute to poverty as hotter homes cost more to cool.
- Jacksonville has over 24,000 acres of identified brownfields (land contaminated w/harmful pollutants and hazardous substances) which are vacant bc of environmental cleanup fears. We still have a handful of Superfund sites, although in recent years we have had a number of EPA cleanups to address them. Educating the public and elected officials can be difficult and instilling a conservation ethic takes time and trust.
- This came after the city formed a Special Committee on Resiliency. One of our SWCD members sat on this committee. The committee identified areas of concerns and one result was that we hired a CRO. Working on a climate change vulnerability assessment and will be presenting her strategic plan in September. While she will be focusing a lot of attention on our watersheds, she has also identified addressing urban heat as a priority. She partnered with UNF to do a heat mapping study. This involved citizen scientists putting sensors on vehicles and driving around 300 square miles within the beltway to gather heat and humidity data. This data will be used by our urban forestry office and others to mitigate heat in the areas most affected. The COJ partnered with Groundwork Jacksonville in 2014 to begin building the Emerald Trail and restore McCoys Creek and Hogans Creek. The city has earmarked $132 million of local gas tax revenue for 30 miles of trails, greenways and parks that encircle the urban core. Another example: Jacksonville University and UNF do an annual state of the river report, funded by JEPB this gives our city government guidance on how to address water quality issues. Local business and environmental agencies work together every year to host an environmental symposium.They highlight businesses like Coca-cola have invested in projects to help promote green and blue infrastructure. Jacksonville Zoo -living shoreline demonstration project. In 2021 our SWCD established Regeneration Park.
- What is Regeneration Park? A green infrastructure and community stewardship project creating a safe space to demonstrate urban agriculture, cultivate environmental stewardship and empower residents to build with nature for social, economic and environmental health. It is situated on a half acre of public land that was a brownfield having been contaminated by the rail yard many decades ago.
- The COJ remediated the site decades ago with an asphalt cap, but the land sat vacant.
- I was on a trash cleanup with a community organization and we began to brainstorm what we could do with this property.
- In May 2021 we were one of 20 conservation districts in the nation to receive a $50,000 grant from NACD for phase 1 of the project. That allowed us to… The best thing is that we were able to address multiple conservation challenges with this one project: we addressed brownfields, watersheds, urban heat and education! This is why locally led voluntary conservation is so important because it gives you the flexibility to meet the needs of your community.
- We’ve now matched that 50k from NACD with 63k additional dollars pledged over the next 2.5 years. It’s been so successful that the city has asked us to consider a playground on the site and are actively engaged in helping the District move into a second phase of the project. We are thrilled that the Regeneration Park project is bringing technical assistance from soil scientists, farmers and conservationists directly to residents right where they live and work.
- We couldn’t have done it without our partners like the St. Johns Riverkeeper. In the lower St Johns…70 tributaries flow into the river and out to the ocean. No matter where you are in Jacksonville you are impacting our waterways.
- Complex problems require complex solutions and that requires a number of different partners in order to address them. We have been fortunate to have been able to work with these great organizations on our Regeneration Park demonstration project and are always looking for new partners to bring in.
- Close with this story…son shot and killed…do something good where something terrible happened. The conservation district has a uniquely personal role in the community. Not just to heal the land, but to heal the community.
- Thank you for having me.