"Now let's pull up those sheet piles and watch the creek flow."
The half-underwater wall of steel pilings jutting from the bottom of the new McCoys Creek channel had been the only barrier separating the creek from flowing all the way to the St. Johns River.
Then a heavy-duty crane gradually pulled the pilings from the creek bottom on Oct. 2 like a dentist extracting teeth.
The elimination of the pilings moved the city one step closer to finishing one of the biggest flood control projects in the city while also "sunlighting" what had been a hidden piece of McCoys Creek that went under building structures for decades where it emptied into the St. Johns River.
"This project is about so much more than moving dirt and water," Mayor Donna Deegan said in remarks before watchng the first piling come out of the creek.
Read more at the Florida Times-Union