A scenic landscape photograph of Lake Maggiore in St. Petersburg under a dramatic sunrise or sunset sky. On the right side of the frame, the dark silhouette of a single palm tree stands prominently in the foreground. The sky is filled with textured, sweeping clouds, with the sun glowing softly near the distant tree-lined horizon, casting warm orange and yellow light. In the foreground, the calm, shallow water perfectly reflects the colorful sky and clouds above. Small, dark patches of grassy land and vegetation break the surface of the water in the lower left. — Lake Maggiore in St. Petersburg, Florida on Sept. 18, 2021 Credit: cityofstpete / Flickr

Salt Creek runs quietly through the Old Southeast neighborhood of St. Petersburg, past Bartlett Park and beneath a canopy of oaks, connected at its southern end to Lake Maggiore. To people driving through the neighborhood, it might seem like a drainage ditch, but it is far more.

“Salt Creek and Booker Creek are natural creeks. They’re not ditches or dredge canals. They’re natural hydrological features of our area,” Kira Barrera, an environmental scientist, city water resources manager, and Sierra Club leader, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay

Creeks are vital to Florida’s ecosystem. They serve as natural nurseries for species like tarpon and snook, conduits of freshwater that balance the salinity of Tampa Bay, and they help connect inland and coastal ecosystems.

“Changing rainfall patterns, harbor temperatures, and sea level rise are all things that profoundly affect the ecology of these creeks,” Maya Burke, a tidal creek scientist with the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, added.

While the creekshed face pressure from development and a changing climate, we are losing the ability to protect our water for a less visible reason—we’ve largely stalled on measuring its health.

“The majority of creeks are still understudied or not studied at all. That represents a list of opportunities for additional data collection, but there’s no active plan or effort for people to take up additional monitoring in those areas,” Burke noted.

A digital screenshot of an interactive map from the Tampa Bay Estuary Program's tidal creeks dashboard. The light gray basemap displays the geography of the Tampa Bay region, including Old Tampa Bay and Hillsborough Bay. Dozens of tidal creeks along the coastlines and inland areas are highlighted as colored lines. In the top right corner, a 'Creek scores' legend correlates the colors to specific environmental action statuses: light blue for 'No Data', green for 'Monitor', yellow for 'Caution', orange for 'Investigate', and red for 'Prioritize'. The map displays a varied mix of all these color scores across the region's creek systems. — A screengrab of Tampa Bay Estuary Program’s tidal creeks dashboard, taken May 22, 2026. Credit: Tampa Bay Estuary Program

TBEP maintains a tidal creeks dashboard updated every two years where color-coded creeks reveal their health at a glance—Salt Creek in yellow for caution, Bayou Creek in red for priority, and large clusters of light blue lines representing creeks with no data at all.

When a water body is officially designated as impaired under Florida’s Impaired Waters Rule, local governments become legally obligated to take remedial action.

“If you’re waiting for an impairment to be listed through the impaired waters rule, you’ve waited longer than I would like to see,” Burke said. “With water quality, it’s always easier to prevent an impairment than it is to try and remediate one after the fact.”

Without consistent data, we cannot tell whether or not a water body is impaired or if preventative and remedial measures are working. Where data is collected, it enables people to approach the problem.

For Salt Creek, volunteers and the city work together to gather data and preserve the creek, which helped drive its restoration process.

“I’m a St. Pete native. I went to school at USF St. Pete, and all of those campuses are right there hugging Booker Creek and Salt Creek. I got to see them and work on and around them every day. And it just seemed like a really special, under-loved, underserved water body,” Barrera said.

Barrera was a citizen leader in the community effort by Sierra Club, the Old Southeast Neighborhood Association, and USF St. Petersburg to form Friends of Salt Creek. Then she was hired by the city to help work on its restoration.

“We had canine sewage detection dogs flown in to walk the watershed,” she said.

The broader restoration effort involved testing for all kinds of different things that can get into the water in a city.

“We tested for bird indicators, dog genetic markers, human DNA, and even reclaimed water signatures. We did dye testing studies, sewer inspections, stormwater inspections, looking for any cross connections or defects in those pipes that might be leaking into the watershed,” Barrera added. “For Salt Creek, we’ve been able to select projects in a more strategic way. Having the data to make those informed decisions about what type of restoration activity is going to have the most impact has been really awesome.”

However, government monitoring has plateaued.

“There is a cost associated with monitoring programs. The city goes above and beyond what is required for compliance monitoring by FDEP. But not every city, especially with everything that’s going on with state budgets right now, is probably able to contemplate expanding programs,” Barrera said.

A bright, outdoor daytime photograph of Kira Barrera volunteering at a community planting event with the Florida Suncoast Sierra Club. In the center foreground, they are crouching in a large pile of brown pine straw mulch, looking upward and smiling warmly. They are wearing a red, white, and dark blue plaid flannel shirt over a dark top, dark pants, sunglasses, and colorful patterned work gloves. In the background to the left, a newly planted slender sapling tree stands supported by stakes under a clear, vibrant blue sky. To the right, an outdoor park pavilion with a blue-trimmed roof is visible with other individuals volunteering in the background. — Kira Barrera Credit: SuncoastSierra / Facevook

The most expansive data has come from citizen initiatives. Government monitoring and community-driven monitoring are often out of step with each other, testing for different parameters and using different locations on waterbodies. For Salt Creek, community-driven monitoring accounts for four locations sampled monthly. The city monitors one.

“Most local governments are capped on the monitoring side of things,” Burke said. “None of them are looking to add to their ongoing routine water quality monitoring because they don’t have staff time, staff capacity, or the money to process lab samples.”

Florida Lakewatch, a volunteer-program in partnership with the University of Florida, has been effective in training citizens and connecting them with university resources to conduct more testing. The expansion of community-driven monitoring is uniquely positioned to address gaps in data across the creekshed.

Volunteer water quality data can identify trends and flag problems, which is valuable, but under Florida’s impaired waters rule it cannot on its own compel regulatory action.

“If you live near one of these creeks that is colored blue with no data, you could form a little neighborhood team and participate in this community science program to collect these data and contribute. But if we don’t have volunteers to do that, or we don’t have anybody actively coordinating that program, then we just continue to have those data gaps,” Burke said.

There’s not a magic bullet usually in environmental restoration.
Kira Barrera

“Stewardship is commitment, and it’s an ongoing process, and it takes time. There’s not a magic bullet usually in environmental restoration,” Barrera said.

Florida Lakewatch offers training to help communities start tracking water quality in their areas.

Restoration often looks like a leaking pipe traced and repaired, a sediment sample taken, or an invasive plant pulled from a streambed.

“We’re not done with Salt Creek. I think we’re really just getting started, but I do think that it is an early success story and could be used as a bit of a framework for other watersheds and creeksheds,” Barrera said.

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