Blount Island
Template: Infobox Island / Maintenance / image missing template: Infobox Island / Maintenance / height missing
Blount Iceland is an island with an area of 663 acres in the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, Florida, about 7 km above the river mouth in the Atlantic Ocean. One of the three public goods handling facilities of the Port of Jacksonville is located there. In addition, the United States Marine Corps maintains the base Blount Iceland Command.
The island belongs to the northern districts ( North Side neighborhood ) of Jacksonville.
- 3.1 transport links
History
The St. Johns River meanders widely between Jacksonville and the Atlantic Ocean. Until the Second World War, this did not pose any particular problem, but then the cargo ships were getting bigger. The United States Army Corps of Engineers began therefore with the straightening of the river, the James Point Cut, a straight channel of abridging the natural course of the river and several of the sharpest curves leveled. The dredged material was deposited on four Schwemmlandinseln, which Blount Iceland emerged. The other islands were Alligator Iceland ( west), Le Baron Iceland (east) and Vicks Iceland (north). The new island has been overwritten, founded in 1963 Jacksonville Port Authority ( JAXPORT ) for further development. The western part of the island was opened up. In the late 1960s the new port facilities received siding to the west of the island.
Geography
The island has an area of 6.63 km ². Of this, 0.6 km ² on inland waters without the port Back River, which extends over 0.4 km ². The population of the island was 45 the state of the 2000 census.
Offshore Power Systems
Offshore Power Systems (OPS ) was a joint venture founded in 1970 between Westinghouse Electric and shipbuilders Tenneco. The joint venture planned the manufacture and assembly of floating nuclear power plants. The eastern half of the island was unused and quite swampy, OPS to an area of 850 acres ( 170 hectares ) received by JAXPORT, the marshes dry laid and the grounds auffüllte. Facilities, roads and other infrastructure buildings were erected at a cost of 15 million U.S. dollars, the then largest crane in the world was built with a height of 38 floors and a carrying capacity of 990 tons. The total investment amounted to 125 million U.S. dollars, but as a result of the nuclear plant accident at Three Mile Iceland no power stations were built and the company was liquidated in 1984.
Westinghouse sold his property on Blount Iceland 1985 at Gate Petroleum and received 17 million U.S. dollars.
Gate Petroleum
From 1986, Gate Petroleum leased a portion of the property on Blount Iceland to the United States Marine Corps. Signed in 1989, the U.S. Navy into a lease with a rent of 5 million U.S. dollars per year to moor two ships at the new quay can that were built for this purpose. The construction required the dredging of the channel and called by fishermen, environmentalists and residents resistance forth. Gates project was to be reversed in line with the development plan of the Municipality, but the gate opted for image reasons, to abandon the project and asked the Navy, this part of the bargain.
The huge, twenty years old crane was sold in November 1990 by the gate for three million U.S. dollars to the China State Shipbuilding Corporation, whose workers dismantled the plant and shipped to China.
Naval Base
Blount Iceland Command are under Maritime Prepositioning Ships three seasons, each consisting of several ships that are strategically distributed in the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific Ocean. These ships have enough food, equipment, supplies and ammunition loaded to provide a Marine Air-Ground Task Force for a month.
The U.S. Marine Corps in 1986 founded the Biennial Maintenance Command ( BMC) on the east side of Blount Iceland on an area of 262 acres ( approximately 1.06 km ²), which were leased from Gate Maritime Properties for 11 million U.S. dollars annually. The lease agreement between the gate and the Marine Corps would end in 2004 and due in 2000 presented the Streif forces realized that they wanted to buy the property after the end of the lease. The Marine Corps had planned 115.7 million U.S. dollars for the purchase, but the negotiations for the sale did not come to an agreement. Gate was assumed that the land value was 160-200 million dollars. In August 2004, the Marine Corps confiscated 1100 acres ( 4.5 km ²) of land on Blount Iceland - this area corresponded to the entire possession Gates on Blount Iceland - and paid 101 million U.S. dollars as compensation for expropriation (the sum was later on 106 million U.S. dollars increased). If it is expropriated in the United States private land from Allgemeinnutz, the state is obliged to pay the owners a "just compensation " and so applied gate that a jury about the value of the land decide. Presented on 14 November 2005, a jury determined that the government had to pay 162 million dollars for the property.
Port facilities
The 150 -acre Blount Iceland Marine Terminal is the largest establishment for the handling of containers in the port of Jacksonville. Here 80 percent of all container cargo JAXPORTs be settled. In addition, the handling of RoRo cargoes, heavy goods, bulk cargo and liquid goods takes place. The terminal has a Tiefwasserkailänge of around 2000 meters.
Blount Iceland is equipped with a 112 -ton crane and since the autumn of 2011 with a total of eight container bridges ( five of them lift 50 tons, a 45 ton and two 40 ton ). There is also a 22,300 -square-foot bonded warehouse available.
Besides its function as an import harbor several companies offer the dispatch of goods to the Caribbean, including Trailer Bridge and Crowley Maritime.
The closest
More than 30% of the cargo handling carried out under utilization of operated by the CSX Corporation railway facilities. JAXPORT itself has the approximately 25 km long railway network, which was moved in the late 1960s. In the fall of 2009, the Port Authority received a grant of almost six million U.S. dollars, to improve the rail network on the island, which is also used by the U.S. Marine Corps. The United States Department of Transportation awarded a means under the condition that JAXPORT contributing 1.7 million dollars of its own funds. With the money, around 6 km of track and 12,000 poor sleepers were replaced.
The island has access to the U.S. highway network. The ramp to Interstate 295 ( State Road 9-A ) is located less than two kilometers west of the island. About this route Interstate 95 and Interstate 10 are accessible, to Interstate 75, the drive takes about an hour to the west.