Sebastian Stormwater Park — Sebastian, Florida

The Sebastian Stormwater Park is a city-run stormwater treatment site that doubles as a nature park in the middle of Sebastian's residential neighborhoods. The City of Sebastian now lists it as the Stormwater Treatment Area at 297 Englar Drive, and states that it was dedicated to the city in a cooperative effort with the St. John's River Water Management District to promote storm-water treatment. Older local reporting calls it Englar Stormwater Park, after the street that serves as its front door.

The site has two jobs. The first is to clean runoff from the surrounding Sebastian streets and yards before it moves downstream toward the St. Sebastian River and the Indian River Lagoon. The second is public open space: in creating the retention areas, the city says, 163 acres were set aside for dynamic walking trails. The park appears on the city's Parks and Recreation facility list alongside Hardee Park, Riverview Park and Schumann Drive Park.

The City of Sebastian's own explanation is direct: untreated storm water is the leading source of water pollution in many waterways, including the Indian River Lagoon. The city lists what that runoff carries, from lawn clippings, fertilizers and soils to pet wastes, pesticides and household chemicals, and links it to algal blooms, muck deposits, fish kills and other problems in the lagoon east of Sebastian.

The Stormwater Treatment Area is designed to intercept that load. According to the city, it will remove an estimated 80% of the total nitrogen and 56% of total phosphorous, both largely from fertilizers, along with 79% of sediments and suspended solids. Those figures are the city's design estimates for the Englar Drive site, not measured annual results, and no recent monitoring report was located in public sources.

The broader program dates to 2000. A Florida Senate community budget request submitted in January 2000 by the St. Johns River Water Management District, titled Local Government Cooperative Stormwater Programs, Sebastian, sought state money for the construction of a stormwater management system within the City of Sebastian, Indian River County. It listed a total project cost of $3,348,000, asked the state for $1,000,000, and named reduced sediment and nutrient loadings to the Sebastian River as the benefit. The request does not name the park itself, so it shows the funding context in Sebastian rather than a confirmed park budget.

The water side of the park is described in the land management plan that the St. Johns River Water Management District approved in March 2009, prepared by the City of Sebastian. The plan describes a treatment train for an approximately 1,400-acre watershed in Sebastian: a series of stormwater detention basins and structural and non-structural best management practices that treat runoff before it reaches the site's wetlands, which act as natural storm water basins.

According to the 2009 plan, the Sebastian system consists of four stormwater treatment facilities, a pump station and numerous water control structures. Their operation, including the pump station and the adjustable control structures, is assigned to the City of Sebastian Public Works Division, while the Parks and Recreation Department handles mowing and invasive plant removal. The treated outfall goes to the Collier Canal Waterway, which borders the park on the south and west and discharges into the St. Sebastian River, which the plan identifies as a state SWIM priority water body flowing to the Indian River Lagoon.

The ground under the park was once platted for houses. The 2009 SJRWMD plan states that the Sebastian site was originally purchased by Atlantic Gulf Communities to be developed as residential lots, that two tracts were later sold to another developer and re-platted as a subdivision, and that the water management district bought them in two pieces: Lot 1, about 144.49 acres, in May 2000, and Lot 2, about 30.60 acres, in December 2000. The plan describes the managed area as about 175 acres inside Sebastian city limits, roughly 2 miles west of the Indian River Lagoon.

Management was then handed to the city. The plan records a cooperative agreement between the St. Johns River Water Management District and the City of Sebastian signed on January 20, 2004, which renews in five-year increments, to protect regional wildlife habitat and maintain stormwater treatment for the park and the Collier Canal. Acreage figures differ by source: the plan uses about 175 acres for the managed site, while the City of Sebastian and a 2015 Vero News report both cite 163 acres of trails and passive green space.

The City of Sebastian describes nature trails that showcase several important habitat types, including oak hammocks, pine flatwoods, scrub and herbaceous wetlands, and states that three threatened species are among the park's residents. The 2009 SJRWMD plan gives more detail: about 18.54 acres of scrub occupied by the Florida scrub jay and the gopher tortoise, and roughly 30 acres of wetland habitat used by migratory birds, reptiles and amphibians.

The same plan records a southeastern American kestrel in the shrub wetland, a family of red-shouldered hawks and river otters using the Stormwater Park ponds. It places the park between two other protected tracts: the Sebastian Harbor Preserve conservation lands to the north and the Sebastian Scrub Conservation Area to the east. The plan notes that the scrub may be folded into Sebastian's area-wide scrub jay habitat management, which grew out of a Habitat Conservation Plan adopted jointly by the City of Sebastian and Indian River County in March 2000.

According to the City of Sebastian, the entrance and parking areas are on the south side of Englar Drive, centrally located between Barber Street and Schumann Drive. The 2009 plan notes an educational display at the Englar Drive trail entrance explaining storm water runoff and its treatment. In August 2015, Vero News described Englar Stormwater Park as providing 163 acres of passive green space, with lakes and trails, and counted it among 20 parks in the Sebastian city inventory.

The rules in the 2009 Sebastian plan allow leashed dogs, hiking, jogging and bird watching, and bicycling on designated trails. At that time the plan prohibited boating, swimming and fishing on the treatment ponds because of the contaminated nature of the water and the heavy equipment in the system, along with fires, camping and motorized vehicles. Current posted rules at the Englar Drive entrance may differ from the 2009 document; the city's Parks and Recreation Department is the source for present-day rules.