Nestled between Pensacola and Fort Walton Beach, Santa Rosa County is home to Whispering Pines Concerned Citizens, an all-volunteer non profit fighting runaway growth, drainage problems, and flooded homes. As well, PFAS contamination infiltrates local aquifers—their primary drinking water source—from surrounding industrial sites, wastewater disposal, and military facilities. The population has almost doubled since 2000, with new development demanding access to water, energy, space, and other county and municipal services – in an area already facing extreme risk from flooding and increasingly strong hurricanes. Policy and code development have been inadequate to keep up with growth in use of county resources or to protect the natural features that attract citizens in the first place. Whispering Pines Concerned Citizens works to inventory and map elements that influence quality of life to form a critical foundation for community science initiatives, including creating and advocating for good policy, applying for FEMA and other grants, and building a sustainable development plan.
Cheryl Martin and Carmen Reynolds work on Petitions against Apartments.
Partnering with Thriving Earth Exchange and several other Florida Panhandle organizations, they completed a detailed map of contaminated sites, the existing built flood control infrastructure, and the area’s natural flood control features, such as wetlands and forest. The board of directors, led by Carmen Reynolds, used their Facebook page to inform and encourage their more than 800 followers to keep up the pressure on an uncooperative county government and uncaring real estate developers. Though the county approved development of 900 new homes in 2022, Whispering Pines won a tough round the following year, when they celebrated establishment of a 545-acre county wetlands preserve in the midst of the new housing. The preserve was acquired with species recovery funds from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The people of Whispering Pines, though not considered endangered by the state government, should also benefit—from reduced flooding of their homes and property.
Fill and build development in Navarre, Florida.