Westgate CRA received award for EcoArt Project at the PBC Business Development Board 2014 National Engineers Week

It is not everyday that a Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) gets recognized for a project that promotes environmentally conscious design and placemaking among multi-million dollar super-highway and infrastructure, space orbiter, and aeronautic and astronautic projects. This award confirms that a modest project incorporating humanity with technological innovations will eventually find its way to the top among the giants at the Palm Beach County Business Development Board 2014 National Engineers Week Honors & Awards Banquet.

The Westgate/Belvedere Homes Babbling Brook, as it is lovingly referred to by its project team, the Westgate/Belvedere Homes CRA, Artist of Art & Culture Group, Inc., Keshavarz & Associates, Inc., and Urban Design Kilday Studios, is part of the area’s 6.85 acre Westgate Central Lake excavation for stormwater retention. The overall project consists of the creation of a wet retention pond with littoral plantings for additional storage capacity, an areawide stormwater conveyance system, and an EcoArt element to engage the public. These improvements are anticipated to reduce pollutant loadings to the Intracoastal Waterway or the Lake Worth Lagoon (LWL), the major estuarine resource of Palm Beach County. Both a water quality monitoring and education program will be implemented to gain results. The littoral zone will be maintained around 50% of the pond’s perimeter and a pilot bird sanctuary or other naturalistic element will serve as a focal point of this community feature. In other words, the project is the CRA’s innovative approach to flood mitigation utilizing environmental funds to foster the community’s ecological awareness.

The Babbling Brook incorporates an EcoArt element to assist with the pretreatment of the water and bring environmental awareness to the public. The EcoArt element consists of native plantings designed to thrive in the wet environment surrounding a meandering embankment of recycled concrete slabs. Since flooding has long been problematic for the Westgate Community, the public art component will provide a way to engage and help the community take ownership of the lake. Based on the existing conveyance system, runoff from the entire drainage sub- basin could be collected during small storm events and treated. The stormwater collected by the Westgate Central Lake will discharge to the West Palm Beach Canal, also known as the C-51 Canal. The Canal was originally dug to drain the Everglades and lower Lake Okeechobee for agricultural purposes. It remains an important part of Central and South Florida’s flood control system today but the poor quality of the discharged water into the LWL has severely impaired the productiveness and bio diversity of the estuary. Historical discharge into the Lagoon resulted in accumulation of pollutants and sediments which interferes with the marine biological community. Stormwater storage and pretreatment by these Westgate projects have regional financial and ecological impacts by improving the water quality for the communities downstream and the LWL. Funding from the Lake Worth Lagoon Partnership Grant and CRA Tax Increment Financing were used for the project. All components of the project were completed in October of 2013.