The Jacksonville Waterways Commission met to talk about better ways to respond to marine incidents like the one last year when thousands of tons of coal ash spilled into the ocean off the coast of Atlantic Beach.
“There is a public address system the Coast Guard uses that notified mariners, but it’s only to mariners and not the general public, and I think that’s what we want to do is inform the public,” said JaxPort board member Ed Fleming.
Fleming offered his insight into the incident after working in the maritime industry for more than 30 years. He and Gibson discussed how the public should be notified about offshore spills, even if the contents -- like coal ash -- aren’t considered hazardous waste. “But we have multiple means of communication in the city, right? And individuals have multiple ways to receive this communication. So it doesn’t have to be an Amber Alert or a Silver Alert in that respect. But certainly, a text message, as is used all the time, the city has the city has a system, I do believe, where it can say there was an incident with the barge,” said Gibson, D-Jacksonville.
It was the I-TEAM and not Jacksonville city officials who alerted the public to the offshore spill, and to this day city officials say they still don’t have the official incident report from the federal government detailing precisely what happened with so many entities involved, including the port, the Coast Guard, the owners of the barge and the tugboat, and the Puerto Rican shippers of the coal ash.
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