Upper St. Johns River Basin Project — Melbourne, Florida

The Upper St. Johns River Basin Project is a flood control and wetland restoration system spread across the marshes west of Melbourne, at the headwaters of the St. Johns River in Brevard and Indian River counties. According to the Florida Specifier (April 2, 2024), the St. Johns River Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began the work in 1977 and used a semi-structural design to reclaim approximately 166,500 acres of floodplain marsh. Planning for this $250 million project began in 1977, and construction ran from 1988 to 2016.

Instead of dams, the design leans on the marsh itself. The St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) describes four water management areas, four marsh conservation areas and two marsh restoration areas, with dikes strengthened and farm drainage routed into treatment reservoirs. For Melbourne the project matters in two ways: it holds back floodwater that once poured east toward the Indian River Lagoon, and it surrounds Lake Washington, the lake that feeds the city's surface water treatment plant.

The marsh west of Melbourne was once far larger. SJRWMD reports that the upper basin originally held more than 400,000 acres of floodplain marsh, and that farmers diked and drained it in the early 1900s for the peat soils beneath the water. By the early 1970s, 62 percent of the marsh was gone, and canals were carrying St. Johns River floodwater east into the Indian River Lagoon.

Hurricanes in the 1920s and 1940s pushed the Corps to plan a federal flood control project for the basin in the 1950s. Its largest canal, C-54, was designed to move up to 6,000 cubic feet per second of water from the St. Johns River to the Indian River. Environmental studies found that dumping that much fresh water would hurt shellfish and swing the salinity of the lagoon off Brevard County, and that losing the water would harm the St. Johns as a source of public supply. SJRWMD records that construction of the federal flood control project was halted in 1973 by President Richard Nixon.

SJRWMD took over in 1977 and worked with the Corps on a redesign that stores water in restored marshes rather than shipping it through C-54. In May 2016 the District and the Corps celebrated completion, and the project moved into long-term maintenance. The work has drawn the International Thiess River Prize from an Australian river foundation in October 2008, a Project of the Century award from the Florida Engineering Society in August 2016, and a 2019 case study from the Association of State Wetland Managers, according to SJRWMD and the Florida Specifier.

The marshes work as a giant sponge west of Interstate 95. Under maximum storm conditions, SJRWMD says the project is designed to hold 500,000 acre-feet of water, enough to cover its 200,000 acres to an average depth of 2.5 feet, and to release that water slowly north down the St. Johns River instead of discharging it to the Indian River Lagoon through the C-54 canal.

Hurricane Matthew tested the system in October 2016. In a news release dated Oct. 13, 2016 from its Palm Bay headquarters, SJRWMD reported that between five and six inches of rain fell in the upper St. Johns River Basin during the storm. Executive Director Ann Shortelle said the project had once again protected western Brevard and Indian River counties from flooding, and that water levels never reached maximum elevations during or after Matthew.

The Florida Specifier adds that the restored marshes stored floodwater during Hurricane Irma in 2017 and again in October 2022, when Hurricane Ian flooded the District's 39,000-plus acre River Lakes Conservation Area at the river's headwaters. That conservation area lies directly west of Melbourne, and the property's vehicle gate sits at the western end of Wickham Road, according to the SJRWMD River Lakes page.

The River Lakes Conservation Area, acquired as part of the basin project, includes lakes Washington, Winder and Poinsett. SJRWMD notes that river flow in this reach is regulated at a single point, a fixed-crest weir just north of Lake Washington, which helps ensure the water supply for Melbourne. The Florida Specifier reports that in drier periods, water stored in the restored wetlands has been released to augment Lake Washington.

The City of Melbourne draws that lake water into the John A. Buckley Surface Water Treatment Plant. The city describes Lake Washington as the third uppermost of the naturally connected upper St. Johns River lakes and as one of the few surface water supplies of drinking water in Florida. Melbourne's second plant, the Joe Mullins Reverse Osmosis facility, opened in 1995 with 5 million gallons per day of capacity and draws on four Floridan Aquifer wells. Water from the city system serves Melbourne, Melbourne Beach, Indialantic, Indian Harbour Beach, Satellite Beach, Palm Shores and Melbourne Village, so the condition of the upper basin marsh reaches taps on the barrier island as well as on the mainland.

The St. Johns itself starts close by. SJRWMD's river overview says the 310-mile river begins in marshes in Indian River County, and that from its source in the marshes south of Melbourne to its mouth at Mayport the river drops less than 30 feet in total, roughly an inch per mile.

A newer piece of the basin work sits on the Melbourne and Palm Bay side. SJRWMD explains that in 1922 the Ten-Mile Ridge, an old dune line that once separated the St. Johns floodplain from Turkey Creek, was breached, and a 180-mile grid of 80 canals was dug to drain the wetlands toward Turkey Creek and the Indian River Lagoon. Canal 1 (C-1), the trunk of that system, is maintained by the Melbourne-Tillman Water Control District to provide flood protection to more than 80,000 people.

The Melbourne-Tillman Water Control District was established in 1922 by the Florida Legislature. It covers about 100 square miles (roughly 64,500 acres) of southern Brevard County, Palm Bay and West Melbourne, maintains 163 miles of canals, and operates the MS-1 gate structure at the east end of C-1. Under the Canal 1 Rediversion Project, the district and SJRWMD send part of the C-1 flow back west of Interstate 95. SJRWMD estimates that returning up to 39 percent of those discharges to the Upper St. Johns River Basin cuts 148,000 pounds of nitrogen and 13,000 pounds of phosphorus a year, with the water polished in the Sawgrass Lake Water Management Area before it reaches the St. Johns River.

Much of the project land west of Melbourne is open for low-impact use. SJRWMD lists more than 7 miles of trails and boat-access primitive campsites in the River Lakes Conservation Area, with boat ramps on State Road 520, U.S. 192 and at Lake Washington County Park, which has picnic pavilions, a fishing pier and airboat ramps. Listed species recorded there include wood storks, bald eagles, Florida sandhill cranes and river otters, and most of the property lies within the Upper St. Johns River Marsh Wildlife Management Area.

Farther south, the Florida Specifier names the Stick Marsh, Farm 13, Headwaters Lake and the Fellsmere Water Management Area as District properties managed within the upper basin. SJRWMD reports that the Headwaters Lake Boat Ramp opened on Aug. 10, 2020, with $842,000 from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The FWC manages T.M. Goodwin Waterfowl Management Area, located near Fellsmere on the east side of the St. Johns River in southern Brevard County. In the marsh, SJRWMD staff count apple snail eggs because the snails are the main food of the endangered snail kite, and the District Governing Board adopted a 2021 Environmental Water Management Plan to set water levels for each area of the upper basin.