For years, homeowners living near Phillippi Creek warned Sarasota County the sediment-choked waterway needed dredging, then demanded answers when its overflowing banks flooded them during Tropical Storm Debby.
Now, with hurricane season already underway, those same neighborhoods remain vulnerable.
The county fumbled an emergency dredging request, filing paperwork at the last possible moment — and without key details — prompting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to deny the expedited request and reclassify it as a standard application, according to interviews and documents obtained by Florida Trident and Suncoast Searchlight.
The move could delay permitting of the project by up to eight months, pushing it well beyond the original estimate of late July.
County commissioners were not told about the situation until Tuesday; three weeks after staff first learned of the agency’s decision.
“County staff totally missed the ball on the maintenance of Phillippi Creek,” County Commissioner Tom Knight told reporters. “I would go so far as to call it negligence. Unfortunately, now our citizens are dealing with the consequences of that.”
The stalled permit is the latest in a series of missteps by Sarasota County’s stormwater division, which had long denied responsibility for the creek. A five-month investigation by Florida Trident and Suncoast Searchlight found critical staff positions were left unfilled during last year’s storms, key infrastructure like Phillippi Creek was neglected for decades, and essential flood protection protocols were ignored or forgotten.
Following a series of stormwater workshops this year, Sarasota County Commissioners agreed on a plan to restore the creek’s capacity through an estimated $60 million dredging project. The decision came in the wake of intense pressure from Phillippi Creek residents, who packed meeting after meeting to voice dismay.
The county applied for the permit to dredge the channel in 11 separate segments, hoping for a fast-track of the review. But the Army Corps of Engineers told reporters in June that the request did not qualify for emergency status because the area is too large and lacks prior dredging records.
Even after obtaining the permit, the county will likely have to solicit bids and select a contractor for the work, adding additional time until the project can begin.
By then, another storm could wash away neighborhood efforts to rebuild. The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season is forecast to be above average, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicting a range of 13 to 19 named storms, a higher-than-normal number between June 1 and November 30.
“It’s just another example of county leadership not having a sense of urgency,” said Kristy Molyneaux, a Sarasota County resident whose home near Phillippi Creek took on 10 inches of water during last year’s storm.
Her family had to move their belongings upstairs to salvage what they could and spent more than a day paddling on and off their flooded street.
Molyneaux, who has lived on the creek for a decade, has since become a fixture at the county’s stormwater workshops and commission meetings — attending every session this year — and is part of a group of residents who meet weekly with stormwater staff.
“It’s always a word salad. Deny and delay,” Molyneaux told reporters. “Someone needs to be held accountable. It’s ultimately Spencer Anderson and Jonathan Lewis.”
Sarasota County staff did not respond to reporters' written questions before publication. However, in an internal email obtained by reporters, county officials said the decision by the Army Corps of Engineers came as a “significant surprise” and contradicted discussions with the agency in mid-April.
“There are no elements of this waterway that county staff considers to be of federal interest, other than limited submerged aquatic vegetation that could be impacted by the proposed dredging,” Assistant County Administrator Mark Cunningham wrote in the email. “The creek is not a shipping corridor, there is no port, major or minor, and there is no marine commerce in this geographic area. In our opinion, the only federal interest is issuing the permit.”
Phillippi Creek is the most populated watershed in Sarasota County, spanning more than 55 square miles of neighborhoods from south of Clark Road to north of University Parkway that all direct stormwater runoff into the creek.
The creek was last dredged more than two decades ago in response to substantial floods in the 1990s. Since then, decades of neglect have left tree limbs, debris and new islands blocking the flow of water. Banks are falling in, and shallow portions are now just ankle-deep.
The third-party West Coast Inland Navigation District, which has its own countywide mileage rate, has a project to dredge the creek from Sarasota Bay to the bridge at U.S. 41 for boater navigability, estimated to cost more than $1.7 million.The county hoped to piggyback off those blueprints and dredge further upstream to Beneva Road. Staff first sought to use federal HUD grants — designed for housing — to cover the expense, even as the stormwater utility carried $18 million in reserves.
But Anderson told reporters last week the county staff agreed to use its own money, including a portion of the millions held in savings.
To speed the process, staff turned to an emergency dredging application filed on April 13 through the Army Corps of Engineers, which grants expedited dredging permits exclusively for storm-related damage.
But the county initially omitted critical details, including dredging volume and a sediment management plan, prompting the Corps to request additional information. After reviewing the county’s subsequent submission, the Corps determined the application did not qualify for expedited processing.
That’s because the agency determined in May the sediment in the creek had built up over the course of several years rather than the recent storm events, according to Jennifer Alexander, a biologist with the Corps handling the permit.
“Mistakes and transgressions could be put aside if the county was working to right the wrong,” Molyneaux wrote in an email Wednesday to County Administrator Jonathan Lewis. “All you have to do is look at the buildup in the creek, and common sense tells you that it needs to be removed to mitigate possible future flooding … Steps need to be implemented now to move forward.”
This story was produced by Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom of the Community News Collaborative serving Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties; and Florida Trident, a nonprofit newsroom of the Florida Center for Government Accountability. Learn more at suncoastsearchlight.org and floridatrident.org
