'A lost neighborhood': Residents seek action on decades of flooding in Sylvania Heights

Longtime community leader Barry Gray, 56, grew up on Burnette Avenue Northwest in the W.E. Combs neighborhood, where he said many of his neighbors couldn’t leave their houses when it rained because of flooding. 

The neighborhood backs up to Gap Creek, which begins on the eastern edge of Hurlburt Field and makes its way east through Fort Walton Beach and parts of unincorporated Okaloosa County before feeding into Cinco Bayou.

The watershed moves northeast through the area, and residents say decades of “neglect” have caused the creek to overflow during storms. 

There since have been some improvements made by the city in the W.E. Combs neighborhood, but Gray said residents just a few blocks over in the unincorporated  neighborhood of Sylvania Heights have yet to see any real improvements to the “inadequate” stormwater facilities.

While the W.E. Combs neighborhood was voluntarily annexed into the city in 1977, previous efforts to annex Sylvania Heights into the city have failed. 

“There’s a boundary issue. A lot of the area we’re talking about is in the county,” said Davey Jones, vice-chair of the Okaloosa County Democratic Executive Committee. “So while the city of Fort Walton Beach has done some adequate work, the county has not.” 

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Okaloosa County Public Works Director Jason Autrey said the county considers stormwater “a priority regardless of the neighborhood.” Autrey said some projects are in the works in the area, but that the county has encountered many setbacks because of environmental factors and more. 

Lovejoy residents like Gray, however, are not convinced. The predominantly black community, which has a median household income of $36,573, has been advocating for improvements for decades. 

“Some of them have just given up on local government,” Gray said of the residents. “They’re like, ‘They’re not going to do anything for us.’ It’s like a lost neighborhood.” 

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Tracey Tapp, chairwoman of the county Democratic Executive Committee, called the situation an example of “environmental injustice.” She and members of the Okaloosa County Democratic Environmental Caucus recently have been working with residents to push the county to take action on the issues.

The Democratic Executive Committee volunteers took interest in the community issues while doing polling in the area in 2020. But area residents' fight to create change in their neighborhood goes back decades. 

“The resilience that they’ve had to deal with this for 40 years is inspiring,” Tapp said.

‘The land of honey’

Documents dating back to 1978 detail studies of the Gap Creek Basin. Numerous other neighborhood assessments also have been conducted during the years at the request of residents. 

Possible groundwater contamination was investigated by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in 2002. Four years later the University of West Florida Department of Environmental Studies conducted an assessment of the neighborhood offering recommendations for improved stormwater management. 

“A lot of people say, ‘I don’t like going to Lovejoy, it’s a dangerous neighborhood.’ I live in Lovejoy and it’s a good neighborhood,” Gray said. “The thing about it is, you need investments. What is missing is investments.”

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The neighborhood was centralized around the first and only high school for black students to attend in Fort Walton Beach. W.E. Combs High School, built in 1961, functioned as a segregated high school for six years and before it closed as a part of desegregation. 

During a period from 1966 through 1968, Gray said Eglin Air Force Base began upgrading housing for military personnel in an area of the facility known as Plew Heights. The barracks were sold to a Fort Walton Beach businessman who placed them on lots in Sylvania Heights. 

Several people, including Gray’s family who lived in downtown Fort Walton Beach, were encouraged to move to the area to be closer to the school. Gray said it was “supposed to be ’the land of honey.’ ” 

“Well, what happened was the local government never lived up to their promises,” Gray said. “They sold all this land out here for pretty cheap, but they didn’t finish all the projects they said they were going to do. There was no stormwater facility put in here, none of that.” 

Many of the barracks still can be found throughout the neighborhood, and because they are sitting atop cinder blocks, residents say the houses shift when high water comes through. Cabinets and doors appear to be crooked while floors crack because of the years of structural damage. 

“They’ve got all kinds of problems,” Gray said. “So until you fix the stormwater problem in this community, you can’t really do anything with the houses.” 

Fighting for the community

As the leader of the Greater Sylvania Heights Front Porch organization, Gray and others have worked to achieve several designations for the community to help spur economic growth. 

Gray said the community’s census tract was changed three years ago to more accurately represent the neighborhood’s population. Before, it was included in a census tract with the Northgate and Overbook communities, which are higher-income areas. 

“That’s our ultimate goal, is the redevelopment and the revitalization of Sylvania Heights. That’s what we’ve been fighting for the last 30 years,” Gray said. “We’ve busted our butts for the last 30 years trying to get all these designations to change the community.” 

Sylvania Heights is on its way to becoming a HUBZone, and in 2010 part of the neighborhood also was established as a Brownfield site, an area where the expansion or redevelopment might be hindered by actual or perceived environmental contamination. 

“We went to workshops in Miami and Atlanta and we went to people and said ‘How can we get these designations to change our community?’” Gray said. “We went and sat down with DEP (Department of Environmental Protection), not the county or the city. The community leaders did.” 

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State officials in early 2009 found toxic chemicals at the former site of the Chromalloy company south of the neighborhood on Anchors Street. 

An adjacent former industrial site also was found to have been contaminated, but the Florida Department of Environmental Protection determined that residents who get their drinking water from the city and county were not at risk. 

In the past, many houses in the neighborhood got their water from wells. Although Gray said they are no longer on well water, the community's residents have faced a plethora of health issues. 

“There’s a big health cluster here, and over the years lots of people have gotten sick. That’s why people have gotten off the well water and hopefully that will diminish the problem,” said John Yost, chairman of the Okaloosa Democratic Environmental Caucus. “But it’s still there. It’s running under the ground and it’s going into Cinco Bayou and into the bay.” 

Gray said almost every household where the majority of flooding occurs has had someone die from either cancer or kidney failure. Although there has been no confirmed link, Gray said the community has been pushing for years to have a health study conducted.  

“The thing is, you never know where it’s coming from unless there is a health assessment done," Gray said. "We’ve been trying to put together a health assessment for years." 

Building on a 'flooded community'

Changes in the community have opened up opportunities for development, which Gray said would help bring in revenue to reinvest in the neighborhood if it were not for the flooding issues. 

A 72-unit affordable housing community for seniors is under construction on Dates Avenue Northwest. The development was discussed at an April 1 town hall meeting with District 4 County Commissioner Trey Goodwin. 

Autrey said the developer agreed to have the complex built about 4 feet off the ground so the county could place a retention pond on the property to reduce flooding.

Residents aren’t convinced that will help address the overall flooding issue in Sylvania Heights. 

“He’s doing the right thing. He’s catching his water,” Gray said. “But what’s going to happen with this water? There needs to be a comprehensive plan for the whole neighborhood.”

Until the stormwater issues are addressed, Gray said developers will continue to have to make adjustments to properties to accommodate flooding issues. 

“How can we get new development here to create workforce housing — that’s our goal, affordable housing — when they don’t want to build on a flooded community?” Gray said. 

What can be done? 

The Okaloosa Democratic Executive Committee and Democratic Environmental Caucus hosted a tour of the Gap Creek watershed May 1 to bring attention to some of the issues the Sylvania Heights community continues to face. 

Yost said the first thing they believe needs to take place is the construction of retention ponds or ditches to help divert water away from homes in the neighborhood. 

The tour was led by Gray with officials from Fort Walton Beach and the town of Cinco Bayou in attendance. While representatives from the county were not at the tour, Autrey said the community’s needs have not gone unheard.

A stormwater master plan was developed in 2008 following a study of the Gap Creek watershed, and at least 19 projects were identified to reduce pollutants and the risk of flooding. Autrey said the county has improved conveyance into a stormwater basin west of Poplar Avenue within the past five years. 

The area is one of at least seven parcels in the neighborhood acquired by the county from 1997 to 2004, according to the Okaloosa County Property Appraiser’s website. The site is fenced in and still contains signs reading “site of proposed Okaloosa County stormwater retention area.” 

Residents at the bottom of the street, however, have not seen any improvements to flooding. Yost said when it rains the water appears to flow down Shirley Drive toward the stormwater basin, but still winds up at the bottom of Poplar Avenue. 

“If that’s true, then a simple ditch along those streets in here would solve about 60% or 80% of the problem,” Yost said. “It’s not a complete solution, but they’re already dumping water in here, so I don’t understand what the issue would be.” 

Some of the other parcels were given to the county by the Florida Department of Transportation, and Gray said others were either sold or relinquished by residents so they could be used for stormwater purposes. 

Autrey said he could not confirm whether that was true. However, the county did plan to make improvements to one of the areas at the north end of Poplar Avenue and west of Dates Avenue. 

“We had a whole project that was set up for funding, but we could not pull permits because it is wetland that is regulated by the Army Corps of Engineers,” Autrey said. “There are wetland issues that are out there. There are certainly parcels that people are asking us to look at. Wetlands are a common problem in that area.” 

Making projects happen

Autrey said existing development and environmental factors are the main obstacles to stormwater projects in the area, not funding. Residents like Gray are reluctant to accept that explanation, as records show the land was acquired almost 20 years ago. 

“One thing that Barry (Gray) has told me is that some years ago the county removed dirt from those parcels for road construction,” Tapp said. “Which meant it lowered the elevation and probably contributed to them being designated as wetlands.” 

“Now they’re saying they’re wetlands but they were man-made holes. It wasn’t a wetland 20 years ago,” Gray said. “The county sat on it and didn’t do anything with it. Then over the years the state came in and said, ‘These are wetlands’. So now you have to go through the Army Corps of Engineers and all of that to try to create some stormwater facilities out here.” 

Autrey said stormwater projects are prioritized by where the need is the greatest, but the “land has to be available, funding has to be available, and permitting has to be available to make that project come into play.”

The county is working with the Eglin Air Force Base to mitigate some of the flow from the federal property that goes into the Overbook subdivision behind Sylvania Heights, and plans to restore some pipes in the Sylvania Heights area. But Autrey said the scope of the issue is much broader than just the Sylvania Heights neighborhood.  

“The frustration that this neighborhood feels is similar to what they feel in Overbook. It’s similar to what they feel in west county (U.S. Highway) 98 — all throughout the county,” Autrey said. “I don’t think this area has been neglected. I think it’s one of those things where it’s kind of caught up with us in total.”

Much of the existing infrastructure in the west part of the county in commission District 4 was developed 30 to 40 years ago, Autrey said. The materials used also had about a 30- to 40-year life span and the infrastructure is beginning to fail across the board. 

“Stormwater controls and management that were in place when the Fort Walton Beach area was developed are so far behind where we are today that you see these kinds of issues where you have inadequate stormwater facilities,” Autrey said. 

As for maintenance of Gap Creek, Autrey said dredging the creek has been an “unequivocal no” in the past because it has several natural elements such as wildlife and ecological growth. A cleanup would involve the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and Army Corps of Engineers. 

“I have asked before, but unfortunately this COVID thing, as much as I can’t stand that as an excuse, it has delayed us in getting a response back," he said. "But we have asked before and we’re going to find out if there’s any way the county can clear that out."

The Sylvania Heights community, however, feels it is time to hold officials' “feet to the fire” to ensure action is taken on these issues. Yost said his organization plans to help in any way possible and might consider taking the issues to an environmental rights organization if nothing more is done. 

“It’s just time for them to step in and help us,” Gray said. “We’re not asking for them to give us anything for free. We’ve set the stage so that things can change this neighborhood.”