“You can’t relocate your heritage.” Anxiety growing in Turkey Creek over proposed military site

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,” said Katherine Egland, co-founder of the climate and health organization EEECHO. “The late Rose Johnson was baptized there and so were a lot of other people, and that's sacred.” 

Egland, a Gulfport native, 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 representation on the city council. 

Of those services not extended to these communities was rezoning to better reflect the area’s residential nature.

“The zoning in this area, as is the case with most of Mississippi, is outdated. It's a pre-segregation era of zoning that is still in effect, and this zoning has to be changed because the reason Turkey Creek was able to be established is that it was the only land they would allow African Americans to purchase, because it was originally felt to be worthless,” said Egland. “And so now the population is overwhelmingly residential, but the zoning has never changed."

Draining essential wetlands

Beginning as a freshwater stream and ending as a brackish estuary when it connects to Bayou St. Bernard to the east, the 13-mile long river also holds a profound ecological importance to the region. 

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 of Mexico shellfish species and even serves as a stopover habitat for migrating birds part of the larger Mississippi Flyway. 

In 2021, largely due to a combination of the post-Katrina development and the proposed military storage site, American Rivers named it one of the nation’s most endangered waterways. 

When Hurricane Katrina struck the northern Gulf in 2005, reducing much of coastal Mississippi to rubble, coastal sprawl reached further northward as numerous commercial and industrial interests that previously operated between Bay St. Louis and Biloxi began to expand away from storm-related risks. 

Already beset by flooding from extreme events like Katrina – where all but five of the 200 homes flooded – and heavy seasonal rainfall, communities along Turkey Creek faced increased flood risk as yet more impervious surfaces in the form of sprawling parking lots were introduced to the area. 

The proposed development would sit on 16 acres and calls for the drainage of an additional 3.15 acres of surrounding wetlands, according to the Port of Gulfport’s renderings, which leads some to believe that the increased risk of flooding would also bring with it an increased presence of contaminants in the water. 

“They’re going to create all of this impervious surface and disturb all of those toxic chemicals in the soil. And then you're going to have the drainage from all of that going into these floodwaters, not only into the creek but into the other water areas around there,” said Egland.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the importance of wetlands to flood mitigation is two-fold: while soil absorbs and slows the release of water, wetland vegetation like trees and root mats slows the speed of floodwaters and evenly distributes them across its plain. This role is especially important when surrounding areas are developed with impervious surfaces that are designed to reject water and drain it elsewhere. 

"Even after Hurricane Katrina, just to show how important those wetlands are, when the area flooded the water quickly receded because the wetlands did their job. So they really need every inch of those wetlands to protect this climate-vulnerable community from climate change impacts that are definitely getting progressively more intense and more frequent. We really should be embracing and uplifting the historical significance of these communities, not finding ways to over develop them," said Egland. 

Historic community ‘under siege’

Another major complaint at the center of the four-year lawsuit is what the plaintiffs describe as a lack of willingness to conduct an environmental justice impact analysis before issuing the permit. 

The ACLU’s Joshua Tom says it’s no surprise a project such as this – with the permit approved in such a manner as to where it remains unclear whether explosives will be stored at the site – is proposed to be constructed in a historically Black community. He hopes that the appeals court’s decision will, in the very least, set a precedent of transparency for how similar projects in the future are permitted. 

“One of the things that our appeal, if successful, would do is clarify what the permit board is required to do when analyzing permits -- what type of public notice they have to do, what type of alternative analysis they have to do, what type of environmental justice review they have to do. And so, our case, if successful, will make it clear,” said Tom. 

While it remains unclear when that decision will be reached as the court has no set deadline to hear the case and has yet to move forward with oral arguments, Egland worries how some of the secondary effects of the flooding may worsen life for residents of the historically Black community.

“We noticed when the Mississippi Department of Health was publishing contributing factors to COVID deaths and severity in cases, the comorbidity factors were almost all environmental health related, and those were more significant in African Americans. So that just gave us more of an idea that these projects shouldn’t keep happening in these communities, and it’s always the same communities,” said Egland. 

She says she’s even more concerned by the prospect that families, many of whom have lived along Turkey Creek since its founding, might consider leaving whether or not the military storage site is constructed. 

"There's nowhere to go. You know, once you have your home and your family established and you've put down roots there's really no place affordable. And I don't think people should move,” Egland said. 

“You were relegated to these places, you laid your roots and your foundation in these places because they were the only places that you were allowed, and now you’re under siege and don’t have any other place to go. You're left to constantly fend to protect your home, your community, your history and your heritage.”