Low key, high powered: Walt Bussells, the quietest mover and shaker in Jacksonville, has kept...

Early this year, as a throng of Jacksonville's business and political elite hobnobbed under a tent at the groundbreaking of St. Joe Co.'s headquarters on the banks of the St. Johns River, one dark-suited attendee planted himself off to the side, a wallflower amid the socializing. Walt Bussells, the 52-year-old chief executive of JEA, the city's powerhouse utility, is neither aloof nor arrogant--lust a shy man who hates attention the way many powerful people seek it.

Bussells may shun the limelight, but he can't hide the impressive reputation he's built for himself and t