Saving Mississippi's Inland Wetlands

In part two of her look at Mississippi wetlands, MPB’s Phoebe Judge looks at the impact that development has on inland wetlands.

It’s 9 am and the Sunday Service at Mount Pleasant United Methodist Church in the Turkey Creek Community in North Gulfport is just getting underway.

Mount Pleasant operates as the center of the North Gulfport community. The church, like most of the community lies up against Turkey Creek, a 13 mile long stream which connects to the 17,000 acre Turkey Creek watershed. On almost every Sunday the importance of protecting the environment is brought up sometime during the service. That’s because the survival of the community is closely linked to the protection of that environment. Turkey Creek, home to around 250 people, is basically built on a wetland. The land was first settled right after the civil war by a group of freed slaves. Derrick Evans, founder of Turkey Creek Community Initiatives is a sixth generation resident of the historic community,

“At every layer and level of our community we are very conscious of the role that our wetlands play.”

Over recent decades, as a result of new infrastructure a large number of wetlands south of 1-10 have been filled in for development projects. The problem is that filling in a wetland, completely destroys the function of the wetland says Jeff Clark with Mississippi's Department of Marine Resources,

“The vegetation is now gone, by changing the elevation you have changed the hydrology, the water can’t get into the wetland, the way it did before. The wetland soils are gone, because you have piled upland soils on top of it.”

This poses a real problem say environmental lawyer Robert Wygul,

“You know I think the equation is really simple, water has to go somewhere. If it’s not stored in the wetland it’s going to go somewhere else, and if someone’s house is in the way it’s going to go in their house.”

And that could happen to anyone of the houses in Turkey Creek. The community which is sandwiched between 1-10, US- 49, and the Gulfport Airport has already seen the effects of those development projects, and now it may be facing an even greater challenge.

The proposed Port-Connector road which link the Port of Gulfport to 1-10. It’s an ambitious project and one that is widely acknowledge as necessary. The problem for the Turkey Creek community is that it will involve filling in over 160 acres of wetland in the larger Turkey Creek watershed, and that could have devastating effects says Derrick Evans,

“It’s a disastrous idea, we cannot survive the loss of 168 acres of wetland downstream in particular, because the next rain event or storm surge is just going to be short 168 acres of wetlands for absorption.”

The issue is that the water that cannot be absorbed through the wetlands will come downstream flooding out the Turkey Creek community. The Mississippi Department of Transportation is accountable for mitigation for any wetland losses. But, they are not required to mitigate in the same watershed. Proposed mitigation sites for this project are in Gautier and Lucedale. Claiborne Barnwell, environmental engineer for MDOT, says everything was done to try and avoid wetlands,

“The location we chose was the least impacting to the wetlands. We know highways are linear in nature, they’re going to always impact something, that is unavoidable. If you are going to go from the Port of Gulfport then the only way you are going to be able to build a new road is to go through a wetland, because you certainly wouldn’t want to go through a fully developed subdivision or what have you.”

MDOT is still in discussion with the Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA about wetland mitigation, and Barnwell says they’ve taken concerns from community members from Turkey Creek and other affected communities into consideration. Derrick Evans says healthy development in South Mississippi means always dealing with one thing,

“It’s all about the water at the end of the day, and whenever you propose a project or discussing the way to do a project you’ve really got to ask yourself which way does the water flow.”

Evans says he is going to continue to fight to keep that water flowing into wetlands and not into the community where he lives.