Editor’s note: This is part one of a two-part series on the Carpenter Creek Restoration Project, with next week’s report continuing to note the creek’s history and future from residents and officials.
(PENSACOLA, F.L.) --- OpGov.News has been covering former Councilwoman Sheri Myers Carpenter’s Creek fight for nearly a year, making it an honor to feature the cause in the first Gulf Coast Weekly.
From high-level restoration professionals to residents who have lived on Carpenter’s Creek for more than three decades, everyone agrees with Myers that the local waterway, home to baptisms, family picnics, and swimming holes, must be saved.
“Of all the elected officials that have served since I moved here in 1990, Sheri Meyers is the only one that has knocked on my door dozens of times, come into my house and sat down and said what your problems are and then actually delivered and came through on it,” Marshall Mott, a decades-long Carpenter’s Creek property owner.
Mott is not the only person Myers has approached over the years, also working with Pensacola & Perdido Bays Estuary Program (PPBEP) Project Coordinator Zach Schang, who said saving the creek within a highly urbanized and significantly altered landscape is a priority in the Carpenter’s Creek Restoration Project.
Always working against time, global changes, and human damage, Carpenter’s Creek has drawn the attention of the Project Team, managed by PPBEP and led by Moffat & Nichol, with stream restoration expertise provided by Black & Veatch and community engagement support provided by Waggoner & Ball.
Photo: YouTube video
Myers recently posted a five-minute YouTube video on Carpenters’ Creek on her Facebook page, featuring Black & Veatch Stream Restoration Specialist John Keifer, who stands in the creek while educating viewers.
“Flowing water does such amazing things,” Keifer said in the video. “It’s an inexorable force that creates these wonderful habitats, and when it is out of equilibrium, there are ways to give the system what it needs.”
Those needs include special attention, according to Schang, who explained that Carpenter Creek has been heavily altered in the last 100 years, with much of the creek’s floodplain developed and sections of the creek ditched or channelized.
“These impacts are compounded by Pensacola’s population growth, increased runoff and historic rain events,” Schang said.
PPBEP partnered with Escambia County and the City of Pensacola “to improve water quality, restore habitat and strengthen community resilience along a 2.5-mile stretch of Carpenter Creek in the heart of Pensacola,” Schang said of the area extending from Interstate 1-10 to 12th Avenue.
However, no matter how much experience the team has, nobody knows the creek’s beauty and history like Mott.
“I'm really concerned about the wildlife,” Mott said. “When we first moved here, I would go on the back porch at night, and one night I was out there, and these huge orange eyes were staring back at me from behind the fence line.”
Photo: YouTube video
Long gone are the days Mott found out with an infrared camera the eyes of a Florida Black Panther and when he could fish in his backyard.
“It's such a natural nature preserve, and it acts as a filter,” Mott said.
Stormwater filtration is one facet of the Carpenter Creek Restoration Project, according to Schang, who said the team is looking at developing solutions to address current stormwater issues and plan for future capacity through infrastructure retrofits, repairs, and new treatment facilities.
“These strategies will be paired with hydrological restoration projects to address erosion and flooding issues in the system and downstream,” Schang said.
Pick up next week's Gulf Coast Weekly or come back to OpGov.News for the second part of the two-report creek series.
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