The Essentials
Staff from NSB, Edgewater raise idea of cooperating on acquisition
Applying for a Resilient Florida grant could be an option
Decision needed over whether to construct one or more storage ponds or leave headwaters natural
The Story
The cities of New Smyrna Beach and Edgewater are discussing possible collaboration to acquire the Turnbull Creek headwaters mainly for flood control, staff from each city said.
A 40-acre housing development called Oakwood Cove has long been planned for the jungle-like expanse along Old Mission Road in Edgewater, but the start of work has been stalled for years by the cost of the needed traffic upgrades, said Ryan Solstice, the director of development services and the floodplain manager for the City of Edgewater.
If acquired, the property could be kept natural or one or more ponds could be built to collect flood water and protect homes near the headwaters and along the initial stretch of the creek.
The Turnbull Creek headwaters are located within the dotted black lines. The green area denotes wetlands. Credit: City of Edgewater
The headwaters lie across the road from the Sugar Mill Ruins Travel Park and the New Smyrna Beach RV Park. The expanse of wetlands, palmettos, and evergreens feeds water into a culvert that comes out roughly between the two parks, marking the start of the creek. The narrow waterway and its associated canals, some centuries old, drain northward for about four miles through New Smyrna Beach to Turnbull Bay. The creek and canals overflowed badly during Hurricane Ian in 2022, flooding numerous homes.
Because the headwaters are in Edgewater, and Turnbull Creek runs through New Smyrna Beach, staff from the two cities chose to jointly discuss the future of the headwaters.
Edgewater is “interested in working with us to try to acquire this property,” Ralph “Tony” Miller told the Turnbull Creek Land Preservation Committee on Jan. 12. Miller, who was hired in December as New Smyrna Beach’s first natural resources director, helps guide the committee’s deliberations about which privately owned parcels along the creek to recommend for acquisition.
Turnbull Creek begins inconspicuously along the New Smyrna Beach-side of Old Mission Road. A culvert under the road delivers water from the headwaters across the street in Edgewater. Credit: Ben Iannotta
The increasing flooding risks due to saltwater storm surge and rainwater have pushed Miller and Solstice together. Both cities have ordered vulnerability assessments that will weigh the storm surge risks for the decades ahead and depict the possible flooding on color-coded maps.
Neither study has been fully released, but maps displayed at NSB’s Brannon Center in October showed an alarming amount of purple shades representing water. Solstice said the draft of Edgewater’s assessment is “kind of shocking” because it “is showing significant storm surge through the Turnbull Creek, even in Edgewater. So, [the headwaters are] probably a property that’s worth considering purchasing.”
Turnbull Creek flows north past neighborhoods, businesses and parks to Turnbull Bay, whose waters ultimately reach the Atlantic Ocean at Ponce Inlet. Credit: City of Edgewater
A big question is where the funding to purchase the headwaters would come from. New Smyrna Beach voters in 2018 authorized the city to purchase property along Turnbull Creek for preservation, but the headwaters are across the road in Edgewater.
Those preservation funds might not be an option, but Edgewater and New Smyrna Beach could cooperate to apply for a grant or grants, given that preserving the headwaters would affect the water quality of the creek in New Smyrna Beach and help alleviate flooding along the creek’s south end, said Solstice. He cited the Trophy Hunter Trail and Burma Road areas in NSB as places that could benefit if the headwaters were acquired. “If you're closer to this new, huge volume of storage, there's more benefits to you than there are for people, say, all the way up on Turnbull Bay Road,” he said.
As a first step, the cities need to agree “whether it's worthwhile to dig a compensating storage pond, or if we're just going to try and leave it completely natural,” Solstice said. “We need to perform this analysis to then kind of direct where we're going to search for grant funding. What's the most appropriate source to then go after?”
One option, given the pending vulnerability assessments, could be to seek a Resilient Florida grant from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Solstice said. The FDEP website explains that these grants “address the impacts of flooding and sea level rise,” and provide funds to “analyze and plan for vulnerabilities, as well as implement projects for adaptation and mitigation.”
Neither Solstice nor Miller gave any indication whether Mission Oaks, LLC, of Miami, which owns the property, according to Volusia County records, would be willing to sell.
For sure, said Solstice, the start of construction on Oakwood Cove is not imminent. A planned unit development agreement describing the subdivision has been in place for years. “They would have to come back in and reengineer the whole thing at this point, because it’s been too long,” he said.
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