The story of the Walnut Creek Wetland Park and the community impact.
The story of the Walnut Creek Wetland Park and the community impact.
Wading Deep Podcast
Stacie Hagwood
SPEAKERS: 2
Speaker 1–Reverend Jemonde Taylor, Rector – St. Ambrose Episcopal Church
Speaker 2–Stacie Hagwood - Former Director of Walnut Creek Wetland Park
1
Speaker 1
0:27
This is waiting deep, a podcast that explores the connection between environmental justice and race. I'm your host, the Reverend Jimana Taylor, Rector of St. Ambrose Episcopal Church Raleigh, North Carolina, a congregation with a long history, challenging environmental racism. I am honored to welcome today's guest, Stacy hag wood Park Manager for the Walnut Creek wetland Park, Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome, Stacey.
0:54
Thank you so much for having me.
0:57
So Stacy, how do you define environmental racism in your own words,
2
Speaker 2
1:02
I talk about environmental justice on a regular basis, because the park that I manage is the fruition of an environmental justice movement. And I environmental justice, environmental racism. Very, very similar. And I often ask people, to tell me what it means to them. They don't they don't have too much trouble breaking down for the environmental Park. Because most of them, particularly young people will say it has to do with nature, the environment. But when it gets to the justice part, they're not really sure once in a while, they can come up with my favorite word, which is fairness. And so when I think about environmental racism and environmental justice, I think about situations that have been unfair, think of think of in justices. And I tell people that what it boils down to, is whatever point in time we're at whatever is considered the modern amenities of, of our current society. It is when somebody, some group of people, whether by virtue of their race or ethnicity, are first forced to bear the burdens of those modern societies while other people benefit. And I think that's essentially where what I talk about with the park is the threefold environmental injustices that have occurred in the community, and how it Pisco Episcopalians for environmental justice, which then transformed into partners for environmental justice, work to help overcome to educate people and to take a degraded 50 acres or so that is adjacent to St. Ambrose that the city owned and take it as a lemon and make lemonade out of it.
3:29
Appreciate you're placing this in the context of fairness. That's a good way to frame it. And you really started talking about what you do there at Walnut Creek wetland
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Speaker 1
3:41
Park. Can you talk more about the work you do not only to advocacy, but what is the Walnut Creek wetland Park? How it came to being I know you gave a nod to Episcopalians whenever I'm gonna justice but you can give us a history of how it What was his Genesis and what it does now?
2
Speaker 2
4:00
Sure, sure. So Walnut Creek wetland Park is a city of Raleigh Park. It opened in 2009 with a building on a site called the Walnut Creek wetlands center that has since been named the Norman and Betty camp Education Center. And it is named for Dr. Norman camp who lead Episcopalians for environmental justice and later partners for environmental justice to building a nature park in southeast Raleigh on land that couldn't other was be built on because it's in a floodplain. But that group came to fruition because of a series of chronic environmental injustices over many, many, many decades. Going back to Well over 100 150 years, from raw sewage being discharged into Little Rock Creek as one of several outflows for the City of Raleigh, to trash being regularly dumped around the Rochester Heights community and within this wetland, and also chronic flooding that caused tremendous problems for people who lived in Rochester heights. And even to this day, there are still flooding issues. But led by Dr. Norman camp in the mid 1990s. They this particular group, which started out again as his companions for environmental justice, began to raise awareness of these historic and justices that had happened in this community and began doing regular cleanups in the area. And when after Hurricane Fran just devastated Rochester heights. It devastated a lot of places, but Rochester Heights was hit particularly hard, because not only was it built in a floodplain, and it had to deal with rising floodwaters from Walnut Creek which ran adjacent to it. It also had to contend with interstate 40, which had been built on a hill. And so it was demonstrated quite well with Hurricane Fran, that Rochester Heights was a bowl that was collecting more water than that certainly it can handle. And through that particular storm. There were many houses lost, that could never be rebuilt, because of how devastating it was. And because of the increasing impervious surfaces that had been built upstream. There just wasn't really a feasible way to bring those residences back. But as Episcopalians for environmental justice, we're reckoning with this flooding, and the trash dumping and so forth, other people got excited about what they were doing, and wanted to be a part of that. And it became less a group just connected to the Episcopal faith and less about a black church, and more about a community group. So it became more diverse, more racially diverse, more theologically diverse, and they changed the name to partners for environmental justice. Again, under Dr. camps, leadership, and dark camp had a vision he had grown up maybe a mile and a half, from where our park is I grew up playing in Little Rock Creek loved nature. One thing that I didn't know until
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Speaker 2
8:21
I started writing a children's book about his life and the evolution of the park was that even as a child he taught pigeons how to carry messages to his friend John's house. He was a lover of nature and a lover of science. And he had a dream with this park, that children who lived in southeast Raleigh, in particular black children who lived in southeast Raleigh did not need to get on a bus to go someplace to learn about nature that they could learn about that and their own community in their own backyard. They just needed a place to be able to expose them to those those things that he was so passionate about. And to this day, we are living out Dr. Camps dream we have nature programming, we for all ages. We expose people to our site through something as simple as rentals for baby showers. That is a way to get people into the building who might not otherwise go to a nature park. But you have a group of people that come they might have young children who come into the lobby and just planting those seeds of of learning about nature and learning to love nature as as he did and the people who to this day with partners for environmental justice are still working on To support the park and to also raise awareness of environmental injustices that continued to this day.
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Speaker 1
10:11
I appreciate your giving us that history and I learned something new about Dr. Camp, which is we talked about training pigeons. I did not know that that part of his history. He's like, Yeah, I mean, he's a giant of a man and in many ways, like one of these giant water oaks that's around Saint Ambrose and Rochester heights. Can you talk a little bit about programming at Walnut Creek wetland Park, how many people on average, you see a week or year how many young people school age folk involve good paint a picture of that?
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Speaker 2
10:47
Sure. So we're kind of all over the place and what we offer. We also offer a lot of passive recreation. So people just come they'll park, they'll use the Greenway, they'll bike though you strollers, the walk their dogs. We have some new amenities. In fact, today, which is September the 26, they are removing a lot of the orange tree protection fencing today from our new amenities that are on the north side. So we have an accessible connection to the Greenway where it was a little wonky. Before that, so there's a lot of passive recreation going on. We offer a lot for people to do that doesn't cost anything. People can come in and say I'd like to check out and explore a backpack and take their kid out and they can study trees or birds or amphibians or bugs. We have four different topics for that. If they want to explore do some water exploration. We have probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 pairs of boots that range from toddler sizes to men's 14. They just come and they borrow them. We have nets. We have a man made pond off the deck called Langston spawn. Langston was a a Oblak wreck leader that we had years ago who took kids from the community and dug a hole and they created their little pond. Well, it's a wetland and wetlands are sponges so it never held water. So we redid it and put a liner in it and called it Langston pond. And it's full of small like mosquito fish and lots and lots of tadpoles and crayfish and things like that. So kids can just take a net in there and see what they can find. And there's a lot of joy in that. They can also go into the creek but we prefer that older kids go into the creek. We do have planned programming this month we've had it's been taco month, which is stands for take a child outside month or so actually, it's Taco week. And so we had a dendrology for kids, which is kind of the basics of kids learning about trees. We had herping for adults. So we had a class for adults where they went out into the park and looked for reptiles and amphibians and found salamanders and lizards and a snake and things like that. In next month, we have a family naturalist program, we have two of them. One is called gardening for pollinators. And the other is nocturnal nature. So they'll do a night hike, and learn about what animals are active at night. So that's kind of an example of the types of programming that we do. We also do field trips. So we have schools that bring kids here for field trips, mostly Elementary School. We also engage a lot of volunteers for both litter pickups, as well as invasive species removal. In October, November, we're gonna have roughly 160 students from NC State. In the environmental first year program. We'll be removing invasive species and also planting trees and shrubs to restore areas where we've had to remove invasive species. Just a little tidbit of all the organizations and departments See, and community centers. Our Park was number three for all of Parks Recreation and cultural resources for the number of volunteers that we had. That was behind a general parks and a general something else. There were no other community centers, no other programs that had more than we did, we're really blessed. And what I think really makes that special is that whenever you're bringing new people into the fold, and you tell the story of how we came to be,
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Speaker 2
15:41
you help those people become part of the legacy that those original partners for environmental justice members brought forth. And the more people you can bring into that fold, who know the story, when you know the story, it is a place that has meaning. And when a place has meaning, you'll support what they're trying to do, versus just being a place. And that's what I've tried to express with people is many times the City of Raleigh just takes piece of land says you know what, it'd be nice, neat to have a park here. But I remind them, this is not that kind of park, we are a park that came to being because of the blood, sweat and tears of, of this group of partners for environmental justice. So that's kind of a overall, the types of things we do.
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Speaker 1
16:42
And from a numbers standpoint, you'd mentioned third volunteers and volunteers. How many volunteers on average, do you see over the year or people coming through the doors you keep track of those numbers, I
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Speaker 2
16:55
think it was 1500 volunteers for last year. In terms of people coming through the door, we probably average over the course of the year, probably 350 to 400. And that's not including rentals, or that's just walk ins, not including rentals not include people who are coming in as part of our program, or or field trip. I'm sure we have probably at least twice that who are actually coming into the park. But they're not stopping in the station and into the office or lobby. Back to the passive you know, there are people who are able to come and use the park. But our lobby kind of acts as a passive Nature Center as well. We have several live animals we have an Eastern king snake whose name norm for Norman camp, and we have a black rat snake. His name is Brimley, who is named for the Brimley brothers, who sad fact. For all intents and purposes, were the founders of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences back in the early 1900s. And then we have a tree frog that doesn't have any us and we have Mr. T, who is our ambassador box turtle. And then we have a rotating theme every month. So this month it's pollinators next month, it'll be nocturnal animals. So every month people can come in, learn something about that particular theme, meet the animals. We have lots of children's books, and a comfortable place for you to sit down with your child and read stories. And generally we have a make it take it craft that is related to the theme of the month.
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Speaker 1
18:52
Can you talk a little bit about the grimly brothers to early engagement with what we now call Walnut Creek speak about the uniqueness ecologically of Walnut Creek?
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Speaker 2
19:06
Sure, um, the Bramley brothers were h h and CES. I can't remember what the H was it was like Herbert or something and climate. Bramley, they immigrated here in the late 1800s from England, and they were naturalist and they used the the wetlands around Saint Ambrose Episcopal and our park as a place to collect specimens that they would sell or donate to museums all over the world. And CES was actually wrote a lot of field guides for our birds and other nature around this area. And then hh became the first curator for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and And I read something that one of them had done that I found that something that they had written and they referred to boneyard Lake. Well boneyard Lake is down the Greenway right before if you're leaving our park right there at State Street and take the Greenway East right before you get the rock quarry road is is this lake or this pond and it's called boneyard lake. And nobody ever knew why it was called that. And because it's bordered by the North Carolina Department of Corrections land all around it. We always figured, hey, you know, it had something to do with prisoners or whatever. But long before the state owned the land, it was still referred to as boneyard like so we don't really know why it was called that. But so yeah, that's that's how the brenly brothers got started. And did you ask me about something else? I feel like I didn't fully get to that.
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Speaker 1
21:09
Some of the unique items I know. The lawn pray, this is unique. You know me just talk about how unique the Walnut Creek wetland is.
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Speaker 2
21:20
A lot of people don't understand that even though we are here in this really urban area where maybe a half mile from Shaw University in downtown Raleigh, certainly less than a mile as the crow flies. Because we're this riparian edge and riparian means it's along this body of water. And there's a lot of woods in this low lying area. We do get a lot of unique species. lamprey have been found in Walnut Creek. Now what that is is, is this weird, like a sucker fish. We have not found any. But students from explorist Middle School found them before a park was ever built. I've also seen documentation that the Brownlee brothers identified something called a black rail, which is a type of like a shorebird. But it hasn't been found since then. And but that doesn't keep people from the Audubon Society, not occasionally coming going, hoping to find this elusive black rail. But But what we do know is what we've learned, either from catching something in the creek or we're catching stuff on wildlife camera, and we've gotten some things that we were really surprised to see. Of course, we got the usual suspects you got the deer and the possums and raccoons and squirrels, Canada ducks, Canadian geese, not kind of Canada dogs, but Canadian geese. But we've gotten we have a lot of beavers. We have otters. We have gotten a bobcat on wildlife camera. We have minks, we have a stuffed mink that apparently was hit on State State Street and before my tenure, somebody had it stuffed for us. Of course, lots of groundhogs trying to thing coyotes, foxes have seen a lot of gray foxes haven't seen any red foxes. But we've seen gray fox and so it is this rich, rich habitat that we don't always think about we look at it, it's a swamp. It's full of trees, you know gets flooded easily, but it is can be really great habitat, our biggest challenges. We are overrun with invasive plant species. We have also lost about 40% of our forest cover to the emerald ash borer, which is another invasive insect that killed most of our ash trees. So if you look and if you're running by Saint Ambrose, and you look to the north, and you see what looks like all these trees that are sticking up that are dead, those are ash trees. We do have some live some living small ash trees so they will regenerate it just will take you know, many decades for them to reach the stature that they once had. But yes, preserving the wetland and the the rich habitat is is important and it's something that we take seriously
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Speaker 1
24:58
Stacey Thank you so much for taking time to talk with us. You're quite welcome. The waiting deep podcast comes to you from a place we affectionately call the bros. Saint Ambrose Episcopal Church Raleigh, North Carolina. Follow us on Facebook, YouTube, the bros and see on Twitter and Ambrose 1868 on Instagram. I am your host, the Reverend your mind, Taylor. God's going to trouble the water of environmental racism resurrecting a river of life clear as crystal. Shalom. Salaam. Peace.
25:36
Now, Stacy, we had so much good content. I wanted to do another segment. Do you have 20 more minutes? Or you got a one o'clock heart heart stop.
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Speaker 2
25:46
I need to actually I don't have work work. But I need to go see my mother in law. She's She's. She's dying.
25:54
Oh, I'm so sorry. What's her name? Emma hag would Emma OCALI wake med but okay, they're delivering
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Speaker 2
26:00
bed to her house today. And hopefully we can get some she's been put into hospice. Yeah.
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Speaker 1
26:10
Okay. I'll be praying for me. What time do you need to peel off? One, one? Yeah, well, let's do. Let's do another quick segment. Yeah, would like 103 B. Okay. Now give us 14 minutes. That's okay. Sure. Okay. All right. Let's just start again. Starting now. This is waiting deep, a podcast that explores the connection between environmental justice and race. I'm your host, the Reverend Jumaane Taylor, Rector of St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Raleigh, North Carolina congregation with a long history of challenging environmental racism. I am honored to welcome today's guests Stacy hag wood Park Manager for the Walnut Creek wetland Park Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome, Stacey. Thank you. So I want to pick up where we left off. How did you get involved in environmental justice advocacy,
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Speaker 2
27:15
frankly, never considered environmental justice advocacy before I took this position almost seven years ago. But learning how Walnut Creek wetland Park came to be. And all of the passionate people that worked hard to make it come to fruition was my first introduction to environmental justice issues. And I love to tell the story of how we came to be because that you it helps people to see in front of their own eyes that it's not just something that you see on television or you read about the newspaper that that there is a rich history right here under our very noses.
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Speaker 1
28:09
What are some of the most challenging environmental justice issues
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Speaker 2
28:20
from a park manager standpoint, I still have issues with people dumping stuff into our park. The complete disregard for this community. The not just our park, but the community surrounding and the amount of stuff that people just throw out into somebody else's neighborhood is can be pretty depressing. So I think at least from my standpoint, that is the biggest challenge as a park manager. That doesn't mean that there are other issues in the larger community. But from our park stand for standpoint, dumping we also have are working with a group called Sound rivers. That was Sam crop who is the niche River Keeper and they are in the process of working out an agreement for them to install a trash trout in Little Rock Creek which which is a weird name. But imagine a catch a floating catcher's mitt for trash that's coming in. That sound rivers and its volunteers will then catalog you know what is coming into Little Rock Creek before it actually gets to Walnut Creek.
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Speaker 1
29:57
Sam Sam came and present it to stormwater management recently and showed an image of that I think it's a great idea and certainly much needed.
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Speaker 2
30:09
I'm really excited. I'm really excited for it to get installed. And for the, and for the opportunity to use it with volunteer groups with young people. We have an after school program here called the neighborhood ecology core. That's for middle schoolers, and just to be able to engage them with what's happening in the community and create good stewards with them.
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Speaker 1
30:42
On the trash side is interesting that that's your largest challenge. What what are you finding? I know, Dr. Camp always told the story of finding an autoclave, which is a medical device piece of equipment that can be as large as you know, two refrigerators. These are an autoclave is something that comes from educational institutions, not people do not have autoclaves in their homes. So what, what what types of things trashed? Are you finding and can you speak about maybe the volume,
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Speaker 2
31:15
we find everything from cookout and Bojangles to lots of masks? Now, since COVID shoes. When I first started seven years ago, we were doing big sweeps. And we went through this thing where we were finding all these baby doll heads. It's like, where are the bodies? It was just it was really strange. Tires, tires, tires. Now, a big issue is and always has been an issue. It's not as frequent as it used to be, but we get furniture, we get furniture dumped. And that effect, you know, right now there's one on Darby street right next to Saint Ambrose as property that I've taken a picture of that I need to report to. It really could be just about anything. I've seen baby diapers that people have just chucked out the window. Just all kinds of stuff. We also find a lot of glass A lot of what I consider to be antique glass, we have a display in our lobby, that some bottles are probably well over 100 years old. And also found we've also found a lot of bottles that Can you can you hang on one second, let me just grab one yeah. Sorry, if you can, can you see that?
33:26
Yeah, can you describe what it is? No.
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Speaker 2
33:29
Four inches long says cap you don. And we were getting a lot of these that had the same writing on it. Are we getting all kinds of stuff from a we have poison bottles that knock Zima blue nazima glass? Women's tonic. But the cap you don I found interesting because we seem to be getting a lot of them. And it turns out that there was a manufacturer upstream from us. I want to say it may have been maybe for some reason in my brain, I'm thinking it was somewhere off of Western Boulevard. And there was a manufacturer of these dis Cappy down which if I recall correctly may have been not aspirin but it was something similar to some sort of analgesic. But I'm also wondered how much I can remember when I was a kid where Dix Park is now the portion that butts up against Western Boulevard was the city dump. I can I mean I was really, really young. Because I'm old now, but I can remember that being a city dump and I can't help but wonder how much stuff got washed into rocky branch creek that washed into Walnut Creek that washed downstream to where we are now. We have a lot of a lot of broken glass as well, not just in Walnut Creek, but in Little Rock Creek. And we can pick up a five gallon bucket, and the next rain, it looks like we never touched it. It is so buried in with all the sediment and in the walls of the creek that um I just I don't I don't foresee a time when we are ever get it all out.
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Speaker 1
35:45
So from a resource standpoint, do you have staff, dedicated Aneesa, you took a picture, I guess the city will come in and pick it up. But it sounds like a lot of time that could be used in other areas is spent picking up trash trash or taking pictures and sending it to where it's supposed to go.
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Speaker 2
36:06
Sure it is. And it can be very discouraging, as well. Just because, you know you pick it up and you can go back a day or two later and and, you know, pay your son street or State Street along our park looks just as bad as it did before. You come in one day. And somebody has offloaded 10 tires into the into the wetland. So that can be very discouraging. But what gives me hope is that we have so many volunteers. We have so many organizations that come to us and say we want to hear the story or I heard the story of how your park came. And we want I'd like to like to bring my students and if you'll tell them the story and we can help to clean up. That happened last week with Carrie Academy. But that's what gives me hope is people wanting to come in and help and make a difference.
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Speaker 1
37:14
Thank you so much, Stacey for taking time. All right. This is Stacey hag would park manager for the Walnut Creek wetland Park. The waiting deep podcast comes to you from a place where affectionately called the bros. Saint Ambrose Episcopal Church Raleigh, North Carolina. Follow us on Facebook, YouTube, the roads and see on Twitter and Ambrose 1868 on Instagram. I'm your host the Reverend Jimana Taylor. God's going to trouble of water of environmental racism resurrecting a river of life clear as crystal. Shalom. salaam, peace. Thanks so much, Stacy. And I'll be praying for him. I think you said was your mother in law's name.
37:56
Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. All right. Thanks for taking care and I look forward to hearing oh, by the way I gave your your email