Nocatee, Florida Superfund Site

The Davis family (Winn-Dixie supermarkets) chose the name of Nocatee for their massive housing development in St. Johns and Duval County forests. Nocatee was a perfectly good name for an existing town in DeSoto County, with its own Zip code.

Steamrollering environmentalists, the PARC group and the Davises got approval for Nocatee, tree-killing and all, with a few crumbs (parks in wetlands they could not develop anyway).

Now it turns out there's a Superfund site associated with that other Nocatee.

Public relations and marketing people from the Davis' Nocatee will now get to knock themselves out distinguishing their Nocatee from the other one -- the one with the Superfund site and litigation.


So eager to steal and exploit a perfectly good indigenous tribal name (and existing Florida place name), Nocatee's speculators must be waiting for their South Sea bubble to burst. Who knows, maybe people won't buy fancy homes in forests and wetlands in the middle of nowhere. Maybe the wildlife will survive the speculators who would crush their bodies into burning pyres of trees and animals.

Maybe Nocatee will be a spectacular speculator failure, foremost among many.

Meanwhile, since Folio Weekly reported several years ago pollution on some of the Davises' other land, has anyone bothered to do their due diligence about illegal dumping in this Nocatee? Has anyone used ground-penetrating radar and helicopter sensors to look for illegal dumping?

Or will homeowners be left to find barrels for themselves> That's the way they may find other surprises from real estate speculators (one of whom was recently caught trying to build a house on top of unremediated septic tanks/fields, until the St. Johns County Health Department, on referral from County Commission Chairman Ben Rich, saved the day (after EPA and DEP officials were inscouciant).