Newmarket Creek is one of the peninsula's last tidal creeks. It could become a symbol of renewal.

As it peels away from the Cooper River, Newmarket Creek snakes under Morrison Drive and into the peninsula’s east side.

The Ravenel Bridge leaves much of the ailing waterbody — one of the peninsula’s last tidal creeks — shrouded in permanent shadow. Its banks and shallow waters are filled with debris and trash. Newmarket once likely had a vibrant soundscape of creaking bugs, squawking birds and lapping water. Now it’s filled with the constant din of traffic.

For all of its problems, city leaders see a bright future for this humble creek — and they view it as a piece of a much bigger puzzle. 

The city has applied for a $6 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to kickstart a restoration process, the early steps in what would be a significant overhaul of the area. The Newmarket Creek Headwaters, the city’s working name for the project, would ease flooding across east side neighborhoods by equipping a stormwater park with a pump system, according to the city’s Water Plan. 

The Headwaters is part of a larger strategy. Across Charleston, public parks and greenspaces are becoming a critical tool in city leaders’ climate change adaptation toolkit. Those parks not only have the capacity to capture and control millions of gallons of floodwater, city leaders aim to make them a critical connecting link in Charleston’s pedestrian network and a balm for some of the Holy City’s hottest neighborhoods.

The Headwaters is more than just a flood control project. Early renderings call for kayak launch spots, and raised walking paths between communities separated by the interstate. The area around Newmarket Creek is notoriously dangerous for pedestrians, and lacks many safety measures for non-motorists. 

“These are places where we’re making space for water,” said Bradford Watson, the director of the Clemson Architecture Center in Charleston. “On the peninsula, we’re really land-limited. So we’re being really strategic. What could Newmarket Creek provide for us? What could Halsey Creek or Gadsden Creek provide for us?”

Newmarket Creek is one link in a chain that city leaders and local activists have dubbed the “Just Corridor” — a series of interconnected parks and green spaces which could someday include Newmarket, Gadsden and Halsey Creeks. Newmarket Creek’s next connecting point is the Lowcountry Lowline, the planned pedestrian greenway under I-26.

“It’s great if we can build a pedestrian path down this line, but if it’s going to be routinely under water because of tidal flooding from Newmarket Creek, we need to address that,” Kaylan Koszela, Charleston’s director of resiliency, said at a May 15 city Resilience Committee meeting.

The Just Corridor project is named after Ernest Everett Just, a pioneering early 20th century Black biologist, philosopher and Charleston native.

“E.E. Just believed that your environment shaped who you are morally, it shaped character,” Mika Gadsden, Charleston’s director of sustainability, said in a presentation to the Resilience Committee. “As a city, we are duty-bound to deliver clean air, clean water and green spaces to our residents.”

Beyond flood control, parks offer an important respite from another hazard of a warming world: extreme heat. Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States, the National Weather Service reports. As the climate heats up, Charleston has added two weeks-worth of “extremely hot” days (higher than 92-degrees) since 1970, according to the advocacy group Climate Central.

“Tree canopy helps us reduce urban heat islands, (which is) something that we face on portions of the peninsula here in Charleston,” Watson said. One 2020 report by the Trust for Public Land found that areas within a 10-minute walk to a public park are as much as six degrees cooler than their “park desert” counterparts. 

A greener tomorrow?

The peninsula isn’t the only place where the future is looking greener.

In West Ashley, part of the oft-flooded Shadowmoss neighborhood was turned into an eco-park after the city partnered with FEMA to buy out homes in the area. On Johns Island, the Barberry Woods Drainage Improvement Project currently under construction includes the Dale Morris Ecological Park, named after the city’s former Chief Resilience Officer who died in April. The planned Willow Walk Stormwater Park could someday weave picturesque pedestrian paths through James Island.

The Water Plan, which aims to guide Charleston through the next several decades of rising seas, is littered with public parks, pedestrian paths, and new green spaces. 

“We’re really trying to move forward with projects … that kind of marry that public amenity as well as the functionality of flood management,” said Koszela.

And beyond the city limits, new conservation easements and protected greenspaces pop up regularly. In an area where the cost of property is skyrocketing, many local leaders and landowners are choosing to set aside valuable acreage for conservation in perpetuity.

“In the Lowcountry, we see the effects that the climate is taking probably more than most places outside of the coasts,” said Matthew Moldenhauer, a senior planner at Charleston County Parks and Recreation. “There’s a constant give and take between development and protection.”