Florida's Boondoggle: FOX 13 investigates the Cross Florida Canal Part 2 of 4

TAMPA, Fla. - Our federal government tried to build a canal through the middle of Florida and repeatedly failed. And the damage they left behind set off a dispute that's still playing out. 

First, in the 1930s, FDR's plan to build a ship canal through the middle of Florida nearly spoiled our primary source of drinking water, by polluting the Floridan Aquifer with salt water.  

Congress suspended the Florida Ship Canal in 1936, but World War II brought it back to life when a German U-boat sank the SS Gulfamerica oil tanker five miles from the coast of Jacksonville. 

Congress reauthorized the canal to help protect tankers from deep water attacks, and the design changed, so it wouldn't rip into the aquifer. 

Instead of it being 40 feet deep, it would be 12 feet deep--and designed for barges instead of large ships through a series of locks and steps.

They changed the name from the Cross Florida Ship Canal to the Cross Florida Barge Canal and promoted it as a project that would drive industrial development and new recreational offerings. 

FLORIDA'S BOONDOGGLE: PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4

"It would look like New Jersey, and they said that in a positive way," said University of Florida History Professor Dr. Steven Noll. "They also said we can have water-skiing ... One of the never-ending ironies. The idea of having water-skiing in an industrial waterway."

While Congress authorized it during World War II, it did not appropriate any money, until President Kennedy pushed for it in 1963 under the advice and urging of Florida Senator George Smathers. 

Congress approved $4 million dollars as a down payment days before Kennedy's assassination. And three months later, LBJ followed through on it. 

Tom Deputy’s grandparents received a coveted invitation to the groundbreaking that promoters claimed would be bigger than the Beatles. 

"I was six years old and living with my grandparents. So, grandmother loaded us up and drove us up here," Deputy said. "It was a rainy cold day, and we came out here and we watched LBJ drive up in a big black limousine right through the mud and all… And there was one of those box plungers. We watched him. They did a countdown and he pushed it down." 

President Johnson blew up a huge mound of peat moss engineers had trucked in just for the event. 

Unlike the 1930s canal project when workers largely used mules, in the 1960s they used something they called ‘The Crusher’ to blitz through forests about an acre per hour and change natural rivers. 

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"Instead of cutting things down, this huge tank, like a military tank would go running across and crush them in," said Florida Defenders of the Environment Executive Director Jim Gross. "It was like a war-scene. That's the closest analogy I can come up with. It looked like it had been bombed!"

Meanwhile, there was waning interest in using the canal to transport shipments by barge. 

"Moving freight by barge canal was out of date because the interstate highway system was largely constructed by then," Gross noted. 

"The assumption we can use it for this is not there," Noll added. "So, in addition to the environmental and ecological damage, once again it’s a boondoggle, a waste of money. We’re throwing money into a rathole."

The project also inflicted lasting damage to one of Florida's natural treasures. The Ocklawaha River remains dammed up and cut off long after the barge canal was suspended due to mounting costs and environmental damage. 

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