The Rodman Dam near Palatka.
Published on January 16, 2026 at 11:04 am
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Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday indicated his position hasn’t changed since vetoing a proposal last year about studying the potential impact of tearing down North Florida’s Rodman dam.
“I felt keeping it status quo was the right thing to do,” DeSantis said during an appearance in Jacksonville. “I’m not sure that anything’s changed since I acted last year. But, you know, it was something that we thought about very seriously.”
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Sen. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, and Rep. Wyman Duggan, R-Jacksonville, have filed identical bills (SB 1066 and HB 981) for this year’s legislative session that would require the Department of Environmental Protection to develop a plan for restoring the Ocklawaha River, which is a tributary of the St. Johns River.
Environmentalists have sought for decades to restore the Ocklawaha River, which was dammed to create a reservoir as part of the long-abandoned Cross Florida Barge Canal project.
Work on the canal started in the 1960s to create a waterway from Northeast Florida to Yankeetown on the Gulf Coast. The federal government halted the barge canal project in 1971, with the dam and reservoir remaining.
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Many officials and businesspeople in areas such as Putnam County have fought tearing down the dam because they say the reservoir, known for its fishing, is an economic engine.
Last year, DeSantis used his line-item veto power to reject a budget earmark to provide $500,000 for the University of Florida Water Institute to do an assessment of restoring the river or retaining the dam, which also is known as the Kirkpatrick Dam.
The dam was named after the late state Sen. George Kirkpatrick, who was an adamant foe of tearing down the structure.
“I thought it was something that was very meaningful to people in Putnam, and I didn’t want to be a part of something that was going to end up, you know, really negatively impacting their quality of life,” DeSantis said Thursday.
