JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Today the Jacksonville Special Committee on Drowning Prevention held its first meeting.
Action New Jax told you the committee was formed in response to the drownings of two autistic children last month in retention ponds.
The meeting was all about mapping out what the next several weeks will look like and gathering the facts.
Jacksonville City Council President Nick Howland charged the committee with making recommendations in six specific areas:
- Emergency response data
- Prevention, public education and awareness
- Youth, autistic child elopement, and special needs water safety
- Public residential retention and stormwater facility safety
- Interagency and community partnerships
- Best practices, legislative authority and recommendations
Committee chair Reggie Gaffney Jr. also requested data on the number of both public and private ponds in the city.
“Before we can even move forward, I think we need to identify the high-risk ponds and the low-risk ponds because, like I said, if this is over 1,500 ponds we’re not going to be able to do everything for every pond,” he said.
“But what we can do as a committee….what we could do now is to identify the high-risk ponds and potentially put some type of guard rails or safeguards in place,’ said Councilman Gaffney Jr.
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Councilman Mike Gay wants to look at what measures are in place with the st. johns water management when it comes to pond construction and design.
“Those are the questions we are going to try to get a baseline. What is already implemented? Are we overlooking it? Is it being enforced? And set our baseline in this and start working from there,” said Councilman Gay.
Gaffney Jr. requested to have the number of both private and publicly owned ponds by the next meeting as well as the best practices from five local counties and/or cities.
The next meeting will be on September 23rd.
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