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Nature park does double duty

It is possible to manage flooding problems without lining creek beds with concrete or digging ugly retention ponds surrounded by chain-link fencing. The proof of that is Clearwater's new Kapok Park.

This is a flood control project masquerading as a nature park - and doing it quite well. Many of those who have been walking, jogging, skating and riding bikes in the new park probably have no idea that the recreational aspects of the 37-acre facility are secondary to a more important purpose.

Until three years ago, much of Kapok Park's acreage had been occupied by a 230-lot mobile home park, the Friendly Village of Kapok. Though the land clearly was a floodplain for Alligator Creek, which cuts through the area, someone built the mobile home park there in the mid 1960s.

People who lived in Friendly Village loved it because of the creek, the abundance of big shade trees and the peaceful atmosphere only blocks from busy McMullen-Booth Road. However, Alligator Creek frequently left its banks during periods of extended or heavy rain, causing flooding problems throughout the drainage basin.

In 2002, Clearwater bought the Friendly Village of Kapok, hired a company to relocate about 200 residents in alternative housing, and leveled the mobile home park to reclaim the low-lying area for its natural purpose: as a floodplain and wetland area.

Clearwater officials have worked hard for more than a decade to find solutions to the city's flooding problems. The city's stormwater management program uses a number of flood-fighting tactics, including dredging creeks, purchasing homes and land where flood waters collect, building new retention areas and redesigning some stormwater drainage systems.

City officials didn't want to just pipe water underground and dig a bunch of new retention ponds - the approach many urban areas of the United States have used to control flooding. Clearwater's goal was to take a cue from nature and create naturally functioning systems wherever possible, and then make them do double duty as parks or attractive open spaces in a built-out city. The approach is more expensive - the Kapok Park project cost $19.3-million - but it is more aesthetically pleasing and ultimately more successful. Many communities that paved their streams or created concrete-lined retention ponds found those techniques did not solve their flooding and erosion problems.

Clearwater city government got its feet, so to speak, several years ago with the conversion of the old downtown city retention pond, a concrete-lined eyesore full of greenish water, into a lake with grassy banks and fountains to aerate the water. However, that project is not in the same league as Kapok Park, which opened Dec. 13.

Kapok Park is 37 wide-open acres of green grass, mature shade trees and ponds. A wide paved path cuts through the park and connects with Clearwater's popular East-West Trail. Boardwalks and bridges allow visitors to walk over the wetland areas and ponds and look down at the water. Though houses ring the park and the noise of traffic on McMullen-Booth Road is apparent, the park itself is a green oasis.

The city no doubt learned lessons with the construction of Kapok Park that it will put to good use in its third big water management project, the transformation of the former Glen Oaks Golf Course into a water retention area/park. That project is well under way along Court Street near downtown. The Glen Oaks project, unlike Kapok Park or the downtown lake, will include sports fields and restroom facilities.

Clearwater deserves accolades for taking the environmental high road on stormwater management and also finding a way to make the areas appealing to the public.

Kapok Park is at 2950 Glen Oak Ave. in Clearwater. Glen Oak Avenue is on the west side of McMullen-Booth Road just north of Drew Street. Grass parking spaces are provided at the park, which is open during daylight hours only.

[Last modified January 4, 2006, 01:06:11]