St. Johns Riverkeeper

Litigation

In 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) delegated the Clean Water Act wetland permitting program to the State of Florida, allowing it to determine when developers in the state could and could not build on wetlands. In January 2021, Earthjustice sued the federal government on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, the Conservancy Southwest Florida, the Florida Wildlife Federation, Miami Waterkeeper, and St. Johns Riverkeeper. A federal judge ruled that the EPA and FWS were in violation of the Endangered Species Act and the wetland permitting powers were returned to the federal government. ²

In 2014, Florida voters passed Amendment 1, a conservation law that moved 33 percent of tax revenue from excise taxes on documents to the Land Acquisition Trust Fund. ³ In 2015, St. Johns Riverkeeper filed a lawsuit in conjunction with the Florida Wildlife Federation, the Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida, and the Sierra Club claiming that money was improperly diverted from conservation purposes. ⁴ The state successfully appealed a ruling in favor of the conservation groups with the First District Court of Appeals, and in 2024, the state Supreme Court declined to hear the case. ¹

Advocacy

St. Johns Riverkeeper subscribes to the idea that humans are the cause of climate change. It states that emissions from landfills, agriculture, and oil and coal fuel sources are causing more extreme weather patterns in Florida, which are negatively impacting the St. Johns River. It proposes that the state must pursue aggressive left-of-center environmentalist policies that focus on investment in solar panels, wind turbines, and watershed conservation programs. ⁵

St. Johns Riverkeeper is a founding member of the Reunite the Rivers coalition, a network of organizations that advocate for the removal of the Kirkpatrick Dam, which was built as part of an unfinished canal project on the Ocklawaha River. St. Johns Riverkeeper wants the dam torn down so that the Ocklawaha, Silver, and St. Johns Rivers allow for the free movement of manatee and fish. ⁶

In 2023, St. Johns Riverkeeper launched a five-year research program on the underwater vegetation in the St. Johns River called the Save Our River’s Grasses Expedition. The program works to build data sheets by surveying eighty miles of water that could help explain why the vegetation is struggling to grow, and offer possible solutions to build back the plant life. ⁷

In 2023, St. Johns Riverkeeper launched the Resilient Ribault initiative in conjunction with the Local Initiative Support Coalition Jacksonville (LISC Jacksonville). The program researches the Ribault River and Moncrief Creek, tributaries of the St. Johns River, to find causes of increasing flooding. The initiative aims for this research to help groups in the area build homes and buildings that are more resistant to floods and make sure that water quality does not drop to unhealthy levels when flooding occurs. ⁸

In 2025, the City of Jacksonville announced that it would be investing over $1.5 billion into a natural gas power plant. St. Johns Riverkeeper publicly opposed the power plant because it did not use solar and wind energy sources. Lisa Rinaman of St. Johns Riverkeeper noted that the group did not like how close the plant would be to the St. Johns River and that the program was “‘basically locking our community into relying on [traditional] fuels for 30 something years.’” ⁹