Whose design is it anyway?

A Clarification Regarding Carpenters Creek’s Vortechs Vault
by Jeremy Morrison

Nobody appears anxious to take full credit for a stormwater filtration system installed at Carpenters Creek near Davis Highway and suspected by some to have sped up erosion in the area, but the project— installation of a so-called Vortechs Vault — was handled by the city of Pensacola.

“The Vortechs structure? That was installed by the city,” stressed Florida Department of Transportation Spokesperson Ian Satter Wednesday, clarifying that the state only signed off on the permit and had no involvement in the project’s engineering or installation. “No. Again, this is a city project.”

On Monday, Pensacola Mayor Grover Robinson said that FDOT had been involved in the filtration system project, specifically that the state participated in its engineering.

“That was all done through them,” the mayor said.

While some environmentalists, and also Pensacola City Councilwoman Sherri Myers, have asserted that the installation of this filtration system, which diverts the creek and creates an outflow source downstream, significantly contributed to the collapse of an embankment that FDOT is currently shoring up, Mayor Robinson contends that the erosion “didn’t happen over night,” but is rather due to many years of over development in the area.

“You took a tributary draw and you turned it into a significant drainage way, that happens with overdevelopment,” Robinson said. “It’s basically a hundred years of development have created the problem we’re solving for.”

FDOT isn’t taking an official position on the cause of the embankment collapse, the state agency is just focused on shoring it up because the property falls within the state right of way.

“Whatever the cause, our issue is protecting the slope,” Satter said.

Asked to clarify the city’s position on the installation of the Vortechs Vault system, Public Information Officer Kaycee Lagarde confirmed that the project was a city job, though FDOT participated in and signed off on the work.

“The project was initiated, designed, and engineered by the City of Pensacola. The project was constructed in an FDOT owned parcel, and an FDOT drainage connection permit was obtained. Both City of Pensacola and FDOT employees performed construction inspections,” Lagarde wrote in an email Wednesday.

City officials are currently working with Escambia County in an effort to get the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to engage in further restoration efforts in the area. Mayor Robinson intends to have consulting firm Wood — a firm actively engaged in planning restoration projects within the Carpenters Creek watershed, including at this particular site — brief the Pensacola City Council on the best path forward when it comes to environmental remediation efforts.

— For more on this issue, check out next week’s issue of Inweekly