Blount Island

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Blount Island
Waters St. Johns River
Geographical location 30 ° 24 ′ 0 ″  N , 81 ° 31 ′ 49 ″  W Coordinates: 30 ° 24 ′ 0 ″  N , 81 ° 31 ′ 49 ″  W
Blount Island (Florida)
Blount Island
length 2.6 km
width 4.1 km
surface 6.627 1  km²
Residents 45 (2000)
6.8 inhabitants / km²
Blount Island Command in 1994
Blount Island Command in 1994

Blount Island is an island with an area of ​​663 hectares in the St. Johns River in Jacksonville , Florida , about 7 km above where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean . One of the Port of Jacksonville's three public goods handling facilities is located there. In addition, the entertains US Marine Corps the base Blount Iceland Command .

The island is part of the Northside neighborhood of Jacksonville .

history

The St. Johns River meanders very strongly between Jacksonville and the Atlantic Ocean. This was not a particular problem until World War II , but after that the cargo ships kept getting bigger. The United States Army Corps of Engineers began straightening the river, the James Point Cut , a straight canal that shortened the natural course of the river and smoothed out several of the sharpest curves. The dredged material was deposited on four alluvial islands , creating Blount Island. The other islands were Alligator Island (west), Le Baron Island (east) and Vicks Island (north). The new island was assigned to the Jacksonville Port Authority (JAXPORT) founded in 1963 for further development. The western part of the island was opened up. At the end of the 1960s, the new port facilities in the west of the island were given siding.

geography

The island has an area of ​​6.63 km². 0.6 km² of this is inland waters, not including the Back River harbor, which extends over 0.4 km². The island's population was 45 at the 2000 census.

Offshore Power Systems

Offshore Power Systems (OPS) was a joint venture established in 1970between Westinghouse Electric and shipbuilder Tenneco . The joint company planned to manufacture and assemble floating nuclear power plants . The eastern half of the island was unused and quite swampy until OPS got 850  acres (around 170 hectares) from JAXPORT, drained the marshland and backfilled the area. Facilities, roads and other infrastructural structures were built, and at a cost of 15 million US dollars, what was then the largest crane in the world with a height of 38 floors and a lifting capacity of 990  tons was erected. The total investment cost was $ 125 million, butno power plants were builtas a result of the Three Mile Island nuclear accidentand the company was liquidated in 1984.

Westinghouse sold its Blount Island property to Gate Petroleum in 1985 for $ 17 million.

Gate Petroleum

From 1986 Gate Petroleum leased part of the property on Blount Island to the United States Marine Corps . In 1989, the US Navy signed a lease of $ 5 million a year to moor two ships to new quays built for this purpose. The construction required the canal to be dredged and aroused resistance from fishermen, environmentalists and local residents. Gate's project was in line with the city council's zoning plan, but for image reasons Gate decided to abandon the project and asked the Navy to reverse that part of the deal.

The giant twenty-year-old crane was sold by Gate for $ 3 million in November 1990 to the China State Shipbuilding Corporation , whose workers dismantled the facility and shipped it to China.

Naval base

Blount Island Command is under three squadrons of Maritime Prepositioning Ships , each composed of multiple ships strategically located in the Mediterranean , Indian and Western Pacific Oceans . These ships have enough food, equipment, supplies and ammunition loaded to supply a Marine Air-Ground Task Force for a month.

The US Marine Corps established the Biennial Maintenance Command (BMC) on the east side of Blount Island in 1986, covering an area of ​​262  acres , leased from Gate Maritime Properties for $ 11 million annually. The lease between Gate and the Marine Corps was due at the end of 2004, and as early as 2000 the armed forces made it clear that they wanted to buy the property after the end of the lease. The Marine Corps had budgeted $ 115.7 million for the acquisition, but negotiations over the sale did not come to an agreement. Gate estimated the property to be worth $ 160–200 million. In August 2004, the Marine Corps confiscated 1,100 acres of land on Blount Island - equivalent to Gates's entire property on Blount Island - and paid $ 101 million in compensation for the expropriation (the amount was later increased to $ 106 million increased). In the United States, when private property is expropriated for public use, the state is required to pay the owners "fair compensation," and Gate requested that a jury determine the property's value. On November 14, 2005, a jury found the government to pay $ 162 million for the property.

Port facilities

The 150-acre Blount Island Marine Terminal is the largest container handling facility in the Port of Jacksonville. 80 percent of all JAXPORT container freight is processed here. In addition, RoRo ship cargoes , heavy goods, bulk cargo and liquid goods are handled. The terminal has a deep water quay of around 2000 meters.

Blount Island is equipped with a 112-ton slewing crane and, since autumn 2011, a total of eight container cranes (five of which lift 50 tons, one 45 tons and two 40 tons). A 22,300 square meter bonded warehouse is also available.

In addition to acting as an import port , several companies offer shipping of goods to the Caribbean , including Trailer Bridge and Crowley Maritime .

Transport links

More than 30% of the cargo handling takes place using the railway facilities operated by the CSX Corporation . JAXPORT itself owns the approximately 25 km long rail network, which was laid at the end of the 1960s. In the fall of 2009, the port administration received a grant of nearly six million US dollars to improve the island's rail network, which is also used by the US Marine Corps. The United States Department of Transportation provided these funds on the condition that JAXPORT contributed $ 1.7 million in its own funds. The money was used to replace around 6 km of tracks and 12,000 poor railway sleepers.

The island has access to the US motorway network. The ramp to Interstate 295 (State Road 9-A) is less than two kilometers west of the island. This route takes you to Interstate 95 and Interstate 10 , and it takes about an hour to get to Interstate 75 to the west.

supporting documents

  1. ^ "Blount Island Command" ( February 4, 2010 memento in the Internet Archive ) Jacksonville Port Authority, Seaports
  2. ^ "Blount Island Command (BICmd)" Global Security, Military
  3. ↑ a b c Port gets $ 6M for Blount railroad system (English) , Jacksonville Business Journal. October 6, 2009. Retrieved July 19, 2010. 
  4. ↑ US Census Bureau: American FactFinder, Census 2000 : Florida, Duval County, Census Tract 101.3, Block Group 1, sum of blocks 1067 to 1075 (island), and block 1993 (Back River)
  5. ↑ a b Across the State (English) , Orlando Sentinel. November 3, 1990. Retrieved July 19, 2010. 
  6. ^ Westinghouse Electric Corp. to close Offshore Power Systems operation. (English) , PR Newswire. February 17, 1984. Accessed on July 19, 2010.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.highbeam.com  
  7. ↑ Newboy: the Autobiography of Herbert Hill Peyton , page 158, Herbert Hill Peyton, ISBN 0-9658277-0-4
  8. ↑ Jacksonville contract canceled (English) , Orlando Sentinel. December 20, 1989. Retrieved July 19, 2010. 
  9. ^ Schoolcraft, Lisa R .: Gate Maritime sinks dock plans on Blount Island (English) , Jacksonville Business Journal. July 6, 2001. Retrieved July 19, 2010. 
  10. ↑ Gibbons, Timothy J .: Florida Times-Union: November 16, 2005-Marines to pay $ 160M for Blount property ( Memento of August 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ Quesada, Tony, Jury: Feds must pay $ 162M for Blount Island property, Jacksonville Business Journal, Nov. 16, 2005
  12. ↑ Luxner, Larry: "Crowley, Trailer Bridge hope to dominate containerized cargo trade" ( Memento of the original from December 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Luxner News, October 2002 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.luxner.com

Web links