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…