The Florida Times-Union Jacksonville by Christopher Hong and Nate Monroe
May 25, 2018
The episode in Starke is notable not just because it eventually left city officials embittered and suspicious of the company, according to public documents, but also because it highlights another speed bump in Aaron Zahn’s former job that was previously not known outside Starke city limits, where some have watched his meteoric JEA rise in Jacksonville with some bemusement.
STARKE — Off a dirt road in this small North Florida town, a nondescript building contains four large vats of dangerous chemicals city officials can’t convince anybody to haul away.
The building is now little more than a storage shed, although Starke taxpayers paid more than $1 million in 2009 for it because they were told it would be a cutting-edge sewage processing facility. It will be years before the revenue-starved city pays off the debt.
These are the remnants of a business deal gone bad.
One of the people at the center of this controversy is Aaron Zahn, the newly named CEO of JEA, Jacksonville’s city-owned water and electric utility.
Zahn is the former CEO of BCR Environmental, the company that built the facility for Starke but ultimately failed to deliver the cleaner and cheaper disposal of sewage sludge that it promised the city, according to officials here.
The episode in Starke is notable not just because it eventually left city officials embittered and suspicious of the company, according to a trail of public documents, but also because it highlights another speed bump in Zahn’s former job that was previously not known outside Starke city limits, where some have watched his meteoric rise in Jacksonville with some bemusement.
It’s not clear what effort, if any, the JEA board of directors made to vet Zahn’s background or merits before unexpectedly naming him the interim JEA CEO in April, a $330,000 a year job. The board picked Zahn in a public meeting last month with no discussion about why he’s the man to lead the utility.
Board chairman Alan Howard recently responded to a series of questions about Zahn’s hiring from the City Council president by assuring her JEA is “in good hands” with him at the helm.
Starke officials said the only people who’ve contacted them about their experience with BCR have been Times-Union reporters.