(4.9) HISTORY - Rodman Dam: Who Owns The Land That It Occupies?
Who Owns The Land That It Occupies?
An Information, Opinion, & Sources Report
Compiled by Ocklawahaman Paul Nosca
Created: 25 July 2012
Moved to this Webpage: 31 May 2015
Last Revised: 31 May 2015
The northern boundary of the Ocala National Forest is the Ocklawaha River (main channel). This northern limit of the Ocala National Forest was established on 16 July 1938--many years before any construction of the Cross Florida Barge Canal (CFBC) was started.
Rodman Dam (a.k.a. Kirkpatrick Dam) is an approximately 7200-foot long earthen dam that was closed across the Ocklawaha River Valley on 30 September 1968 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as part of the CFBC project. The mostly concrete & steel Rodman Spillway (which has four floodgates, each of them 40 feet wide) that discharges the outflow water from Rodman Reservoir (a.k.a. Lake Ocklawaha or Rodman Pool) into the Rodman Tailrace & thence to the lower Ocklawaha River--is but a short segment of that entire earthen dam.
An online search of the Putnam County (Florida) Property Appraiser office’s website shows that almost 2800 feet of the earthen Rodman Dam (a.k.a. Kirkpatrick Dam)--existing SOUTH of (& including) the location of where the historic Ocklawaha River main channel crosses through it--occupies land (Parcel IDs: 29-11-25-0000-0030-0000 & 28-11-25-0000-0060-0000) that is owned by the "United States of America"--not the State of Florida.
"Kirkpatrick Dam is jointly owned by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and operated by FDEP’s Office of Greenways and Trails (OGT). The USFS owns the portion of the dam from the historic river channel southward."
Also visit this Ocklawahaman webpage for more information:
AN EXCERPT FOLLOWS:
"On January 21, 1994, the Florida DEP applied for and was granted a 5-year Special Use Permit by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) for the occupancy of approximately 600 acres within the Ocala National Forest that included portions of the Kirkpatrick Dam and the Reservoir. The permit stipulated that upon expiration, DEP would remove all structures within a reasonable time. If DEP failed to remove the structures, they would become the property of the United States."
REFERENCE AS: Nosca, P. 2015. "Rodman Dam: Who owns the land that it occupies?" webpage report. "Ocklawahaman" website. Paul Nosca, Eureka, FL.