Palm Bay restoring Turkey Creek with $1M grant to address 2025 sewage spill

Palm Bay restoring Turkey Creek with $1M grant

The City of Palm Bay is taking steps to restore Turkey Creek after a massive sewage spill.

PALM BAY, Fla. - Back in June, a pipe broke on Clearmont Street and sent more than two million gallons of raw sewage into Turkey Creek. 

The city recovered a lot of it, but a million gallons could not be removed.

What we know:

The pipe broke years before it was supposed to, according to the city. The issue went on for weeks. Residents were devastated at the impact to wildlife, water quality and the ecosystem.

New money to help

On Thursday, the city council approved 4-1 to accept a grant from the Florida DEP to help restore the area and improve water quality in the creek going forward.

According to the city agenda item on the project, the grant includes, "the proactive replacement of existing compromised stormwater infrastructure such as pipe culverts, inlets, and headwalls on Meadowbrook Road NE and the installation of 4 nutrient-separating baffle boxes with filtration media. The project will minimize future failures of our existing stormwater piping and minimize potential impacts to utility systems in the area while improving the quality of water entering the Melbourne-Tillman Water Control District Canal C-1 which flows into Turkey Creek and eventually the Indian River Lagoon."

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Cleaning up the water has been a focus for city leaders even before the latest spill.

"Trying to get the muck before it gets in, just county wide there’s an effort to improve the lagoon and this is just a little piece to the puzzle," said Mayor Rob Medina who’s been working on water restoration in his town and with other state politicians for years.

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The city will fund $800,000, and the state will cover $1 million.

What residents are saying

People who live near the creek are thankful for the grant and focus on the area but wish more could be done to impact the water directly.

"We want to make sure it is going exactly where it needs to go," said Sandi Finch who lives on the water.

She thinks the city should focus on long-term maintenance, preventing infrastructure failures and prevention policies.

"I want to make sure the resources we’ve been given are going to be used properly. They’re going to be monitored regularly," she said. "We’re going to put a new system in place for how we go about moving forward to make sure everything is being done correctly."

What we don't know:

There’s no timeline for when the boxes will be installed in the city yet. (edited)