The long-running battle over the Rodman dam in Putnam County ended its latest chapter with Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoing a directive by the state Legislature to remove the dam over the next decade.
State lawmakers added $6.25 million to the 2025-26 budget for restoring the free flow of the Ocklawaha River from Silver Springs all the way to the St. Johns River. The funding carried a July 1, 2026 deadline for the state Department of Environmental Protection to develop a plan that would unblock the Ocklawaha by the end of 2035.
DeSantis struck the spending when he used his line-item veto power for knocking $576 million from the budget he signed into law on June 30.
The fate of the Rodman dam, also called the Kirkpatrick Dam, has been debated for decades. The inclusion of the deadlines for removing the dam in the budget approved by lawmakers marked the closest the the state has come to setting a binding timeline for taking the dam down.
Originally built in 1968 for the Cross Florida Barge Canal, which was killed in the early 1970s, the dam created a reservoir that Putnam County officials have fought to keep for its bass fishing.
The St. Johns Riverkeeper has called restoring the Ocklawaha the single most important project for the health of the St. Johns River that flows north through northeast Florida and Jacksonville on its way to the Atlantic Ocean.
Among other Jacksonville area items added by lawmakers to the budget, DeSantis left untouched $14.84 million for a new Hicks Honor College academic building at the University of North Florida. UNF will construct the academic building next to the 520-room Hicks Honors College residence that will open in the fall semester.
UNF has scored funding for campus expansion the past three sessions as a result of spending inserted by lawmakers into the budget.
UNF won $40 million in 2024 for a student support and academic building. The university locked down $26 million for expansion and upgrades to the Coggin College of Business plus $7.4 million for remodeling the Brooks College of Health in 2023.
Other member-sponsored projects that avoided vetoes in the Jacksonville area included $6 million for a new four-lane road being built through the Southside in a public-private partnership and $5 million for the planned Wigmore Street overpass spanning railroad tracks at the Keystone Properties terminal in the Talleyrand area.
In contrast to budgets the past three years, the Jacksonville area did not have have any big-ticket items comparable to $80 million for a new trauma center and emergency room at UF Health Jacksonville in 2022 and $150 million over two years in 2023 and 2024 for a new University of Florida graduate campus.
But the vast majority of Jacksonville area projects that made it into the budget in the session of stayed there.
In a split decision, DeSantis vetoed $2.66 million for a Jacksonville University program aimed at expanding nursing education programs. But DeSantis let stand about $1.34 million in a separate appropriation for the JU program called GROW.
In two projects sought by the city of Jacksonville, he vetoed $2 million for a drainage improvement project for Armsdale Road and $1.14 million for a traffic signal at University Boulevard and Edenfield Road.
He let stand $4 million to help Fernandina Beach build a seawall protecting its historic downtown, $3.25 million for a new Jacksonville fairgrounds being built on the Westside and $3 million for a Jacksonville Classical Academy gym building.
He also signed off on $2.5 million for a new bridge on Clay County Road 217, $2.5 million for a St. Augustine fire station relocation serving Anastasia Island, and $2.5 million toward the planned new Museum of Science and History building in downtown Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoes removing Rodman dam on Ocklawaha River but supports UNF building
Reporting by David Bauerlein, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
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