A mighty reunion: Mayor Donna Deegan welcomes the joining of McCoys Creek and the St. Johns River
After months of work, McCoys Creek is linked back up with the St. Johns River in a ceremonial event, removing a sheet pile.
- A major flood control project in Jacksonville, Florida, reached a milestone by removing a steel barrier from McCoys Creek.
- The project aims to reduce flooding in the Mixon Town neighborhood and restore the creek’s natural flow.
- Part of the creek, previously hidden under a building for decades, has been “sunlighted” and realigned.
- The restoration will also create new habitats for wildlife and recreational space for residents.
The half-underwater wall of steel pilings jutting from the bottom of the new McCoys Creek channel had been the only barrier separating the creek from flowing all the way to the St. Johns River.
Then a heavy-duty crane gradually pulled the pilings from the creek bottom on Oct. 2 like a dentist extracting teeth.
The elimination of the pilings moved the city one step closer to finishing one of the biggest flood control projects in the city while also “sunlighting” what had been a hidden piece of McCoys Creek that went under building structures for decades where it emptied into the St. Johns River.
“This project is about so much more than moving dirt and water,” Mayor Donna Deegan said in remarks before watchng the first piling come out of the creek.
She said it’s about making the city more resilient against heavy storms, fostering new habitat for fish and birds, and creating new space for where people can “walk, ride and gather together.”
“Now let’s pull up those sheet piles and watch the creek flow,” she said.
The removal of the pilings didn’t cause any great change in the waterway. The level of water was already the same on each side of the barrier so it didn’t bring a rush of water toward the river like what might happen if an opening is pierced in a dam.
But it did mark a milestone for the years-long pursuit of better drainage for the upstream Mixon Town neighborhood where McCoys Creek had constantly flooded streets and homes.
“To say this project has been a long time coming is an understatement,” said Nikita Reed, project manager for the city’s Department of Public Works.
She said she has a poster in her office from 20007 showing a vision of what the McCoys Creek Greenway could look like.
“And I have plenty of friends and family who will talk about how the creek has been pinched and abused and filled in since at least the 1940s as they’ve watched it over time,” she said.
Groundwork Jacksonville CEO Kay Ehas said the effort picked up steam when Groundwork, a nonprofit spearheading restoration of McCoys Creek and Hogans Creek as prongs of the Emerald Trail, met in 2018 with “the late great Sam Mousa” when he was chief administrative officer at City Hall.
She said Mousa agreed Groundwork Jacksonville could develop a 30% design concept for McCoys Creek at Groundwork’s expense. She said there was no guarantee the city would accept the design but after Groundwork turned it in, the city “took it to the finish line.”
Much of the work involves restoring a meandering flow to the creek on a broader floodplain so there’s more room for water to go during heavy storms. The city also built a new bridge with higher elevations where King Street crosses the creek and is doing the same for Stockton Street.
But lack of space prevented using that concept for the final stretch of the creek. It had flowed for decades under the former Florida Times-Union building that’s been demolished to make way for the One Riverside development.
The city built a new channel that shifts the creek so it’s no longer hidden from view. Deegan said realignment brings the creek “back to the light where it belongs.”
That concrete-lined channel has a second set of walls on either side that rise above the walkways along the creek. Reed said that’s creates storage space for higher water. She said if people see the walkways underwater during heavy weather, “that’s okay. That’s means everything is working as planned.”
She said the design of the creek also is aimed at attracting fish from the St. Johns River to swim upstream to fish nurseries where they can mature without being eaten by larger fish. Ehas said future plans will create floating wetlands in the channel to further encourage migration of fish into the creek.
Construction on the channel will continue though the end of the year so the walkways and that part of the creek will remain off-limits until the work is done.
Other future projects will involve rebuilding a piece of elevated Northbank riverwalk that was taken down for the construction activity. The city also is going to construct a new park in the area between the new McCoys Creek channel and the railroad tracks.