They also worry what the dredging of acres of wetlands to build the project will do to an area already prone to flooding even during seasonal rains, and that the depot will be built on the site of a former fertilizer plant where samples of arsenic and lead in the soil exceed regulatory limits.
The suit, originally filed in 2019, says the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality’s permit board issued a Clean Water Act Section 401 permit — which affirms that a development’s discharge into nearby waters meets water quality standards — erroneously and without following internal regulations established by state law, such as determining whether explosive ammunition will be stored at the site or conducting an alternative site analysis.
But 8 of 10 judges on the state's appeals court ruled in favor of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality in late February, saying MDEQ did undergo proper procedure according to law and in effect granted the permit .
Katherine Egland, co-founder of the Gulfport-based Education, Economics, Environmental, Climate And Health Organization -- or EEECHO – has been organizing alongside residents in these communities for decades.
“We're absolutely devastated. We wish that decision makers would come into the communities and actually see, and experience, what residents are going through: the fears and how residents live,” she said.
“People are robbed of their heritage and robbed of their culture. We have three alternatives that we've suggested where these projects can actually be located. So why locate them in the middle of a residential African-American community?”
Environmental hazards like contamination and increased flooding are among some of the biggest concerns that residents and advocates have in the historically Black community, where more than 150 years of culture developed under segregation and Jim Crow-era laws is now at risk.
Origins of Turkey Creek
In 1866, shortly after the end of the Civil War and formal slavery in the American South, a group of emancipated African Americans settled more than 300 acres of low-lying land running along Turkey Creek, forming the modern-day sister neighborhoods of North Gulfport, Forest Heights and Turkey Creek.
Many families living in those historically Black communities today can trace ancestors back to when the area was first settled, where original wood-framed houses and historic churches further drive in the area’s connection to its past.
With segregation and Jim Crow laws in effect across Mississippi until the 1960s, those living further inland from the Mississippi coast and along the 13-mile river found it to be a place of cultural refuge, a food source and a place for spiritual connection.
“This was after the Civil War and Reconstruction, but it was also before desegregation, and Black people were not allowed on the beachfront so they couldn't get baptized there, and so they were baptized in Turkey Creek,” Katherine Egland. “The late Rose Johnson was baptized there and so were a lot of other people, and that's sacred.”
Egland says much of the issue with the proposed development is zoning still in effect from the pre-desegregation era.
As the city of Gulfport began expanding northward in the mid-century – primarily in the form of industry, highways and infrastructure – residential communities along Turkey Creek were increasingly surrounded by impervious surfaces like concrete that both increased flooding and encouraged further development.
That development led to the City of Gulfport formally annexing the historically Black communities of North Gulfport in 1994, which brought with it yet more industrial development and, albeit slowly, increased access to some municipal services and at least formal representation on the city council.
Of those services not extended to these communities was rezoning to better reflect the area’s residential nature.
“We do redistricting every ten years after the census, but this zoning has been in place for over 50 years. It's the same zoning that was in place that mandated African-Americans to live in this community,” said Egland, who connected the zoning to Jim Crow Era policies.
“They put the project in a low lying area because those were the areas zoned for heavy industrial, because African-Americans were not allowed to live anywhere else.And so we're in the second generation of some of these fights, and we don't want them to go on.”
A community's legacy at risk
About a week after the Mississippi State Court of Appeals ruled on the project’s permit, I met with Egland and her co-founder, Ruth Story, at the Forest Heights Baptist Church, which has become one of many de facto organizing spaces for residents in the area.
On the far side of a grass lot and halfway between the church and Forest Heights the neighborhood is Turkey Creek itself, a 13-mile long river that begins as a freshwater stream and connects to Bayou St. Bernard, a brackish estuary, to the east.
As a subsistence fishery, Turkey Creek supports species such as bluegill, largemouth bass, gar and crappie; as a crucial coastal nursery it’s home to a myriad of Gulf shellfish species and even serves as part of a stopover habitat for migrating birds, part of the larger Mississippi Flyway.
But it’s also prone to flooding, according to Kenneth Taylor, Deacon at the church since 1976.
“Over the years, we've had flooding from the creek there a number of times. Katrina, all the major storms and even just rainstorms,” he told MPB News, pointing to a faded water line about 5 feet up a white brick wall. “The creek overflows because the water has nowhere to go. It goes West, but then it starts backing up and goes back to the Bayou because it hasn’t been dredged out and hasn’t been cleaned.”
He says that not only makes it hard for community members to attend services, but also means that the dozens of homes nearby flood just as badly.
It’s at that point the flooding becomes a community-organized response where certain residents will take it upon themselves to warn others of where the water is rising and whether or not they should relocate their cars.
A majority of Taylor’s congregation lives just north of the church and over Turkey Creek in the Forest Heights community, a sprawling 107 acres of single family homes established in 1966 by the National Council of Negro Women.
In the extreme northwest of Gulfport, the community was founded as one of the nation’s first developments to offer integrated home ownership for low-income families, and especially Black families moving from Northern Mississippi further South, like the Taylors. It also represents where the city of Gulfport and its white power structure drew their line in the sand – the furthest point they allowed Black families to settle in the city itself.
Taylor says in some way, that allowed the communities of north Gulfport to establish a culture of being proudly Black-owned.
“Turkey Creek and Forest Heights were established to make use of a Black majority. Back in the 1970s, all of north Gulfport was Black owned. They had their own business, their own stores and all of that. Even a water company in the 60s,” he said.
But, decades of industrial development in and surrounding Forest Heights has made the experience of living there more difficult, and more dangerous.
Aundrea Maxwell and her parents were one of the first twenty families to build a house in Forest Heights in the 1960's, a wood-paneled Ranch style home painted yellow, matching the flower beds out front.
From the driveway of the Maxwell’s, along the Western edge of the road that loops around the community, one can see what’s left of the levee that once protected the community from Turkey Creek flooding its banks. But with the construction of the Gulfport Premium Outlets less than two miles north, engineers recommended reducing the size of the levee to allow any water that collects there to better drain to the south.
Maxwell says reducing the size of that levee, and other development nearby such as numerous hotels, strip malls and industrial projects, significantly worsened both the frequency and impact of flooding in Forest Heights.
“At the time, they said they were fixing it, but they did more damage than they did good. And I think they’re supposed to be coming and back and redoing it, but none of us know when,” said Maxwell. “So now we don't have anything to stop the water from coming. And when it comes, sometimes you can’t get in or out for up to a week.”
“And they cut down all the trees around here. Over by the Church there used to be a lot of trees, and between us and Turkey Creek. That was a buffer for us and the water, and now it’s all gone.”
From her front porch, where Maxwell often gazes out over the dozens of neighboring houses, she wonders how many more families will elect to leave the community when these challenges become too much.
She lists off a few families whose eldest members – many of whom were founding members of the neighborhood alongside her own parents – have died in recent years and passed the homes onto younger relatives.
But those younger generations don’t know the value of what they hold, she says, and either want to relocate away from frequent flooding or are too keen to sell the homes to the first bidder.
Maxwell worries what that could mean for the cultural and historical standing of Forest Heights, as well as the larger Black community in North Gulfport.
“My mom passed in January, and this house will never be sold to anybody. It's going to always be somebody in the family at this house. We will never sell this because my mom and dad worked too hard,” she said. “But I can see why, if development continues how it has been here, why people would consider leaving.”
Kathy Egland says she wasn’t surprised by the Court’s ruling, but that residents and EEECHO plan to appeal it to the Mississippi Supreme Court.
