KEYSTONE HEIGHTS – After campaigning relentlessly for decades to rescue the aquifer recharge and replenish lakes Brooklyn and Geneva, the Save our Lakes Organization can only hurry up and wait for the final few pieces of the Black Creek Restoration Project to be completed.

There are a few pieces for the filtration pieces that remain on back order and there’s about a quarter-of-a-mile of pipe to be fitted before they can flip the switch and start siphoning as much as 10 million gallons of water a day from the South Prong of the Black Creek and pushing it through 17 miles of piping to Alligator Creek, into a drain field and then to the lakes.

“As far as the pumps, the pump station, that’s all done,” said SOLO President Vivian Katz-James. “The filtration fields are ready. Some of the material that goes into the filtration field are running a little behind as far as delivery, which will probably push the flow back into the first of the year.”

After spending nearly 40 years trying to save the lakes, Katz-James said she can wait another two months.

The Save Our Lakes Organization the Keystone Heights Kiwanis hosted a Black Creek Restoration Project celebration last Friday, Oct. 25, at the YMCA Camp Immokalee. Officials from Keystone Heights and Starke joined the St. Johns River Water Management District in recognizing the people who pulled the project together.

Former Florida Sen. Rob Bradley unified several organizations and approached the water management district and he and Florida Rep. Bobby Payne finally got the support necessary to push it across the finish line by focusing more on the aquifer recharge.

Scott Kornegay said the SOLO had campaigned since the 1980s to save the lakes in Keystone Heights. The group attended every SJRWMD meeting and never relinquished their commitment.

“The journey started way before I got to be the City Manager in Keystone Heights,” Kornegay said. “Then right after I started, in 2016 we put together the water summit. We all met there in City Hall in Keystone Heights and that was where this project was born.

“Sen. Bradley was the was the one that did that. He took the ball, and he went over to the Water Management District Office and sat down with the folks over there and said, ‘I need a project that'll recharge the aquifer and fill up the lakes in Keystone Heights as a result.’ That's what he did.”

Like others, Kornegay is eager to see the water flow into the drain field and then into the lakes.

“We can see the finish line,” he said. “It took a lot of relentless people, one relentless group (SOLO). And if it wasn’t for Vivian Katz-James, it probably wouldn’t have happened. She wouldn’t let it go.”

Katz-James was at Camp Immokalee for a celebration Friday, but the real party won’t start until the first drop passes from the Black Creek to Keystone Heights.

“This celebration has been a long time coming,” she said. “I can’t wait to say ‘Hallelujah’ when we get to the finish line.”