Work wraps up on first segment of Phillippi Creek dredging

Work on the first segment of a wider project to dredge thousands of cubic yards of sediment from the bottom of flood-prone Phillippi Creek is complete, though more work is planned, said Sarasota County Stormwater Director Ben Quartermaine in a video released by the county.

The $14 million project, from Tuttle Avenue to Beneva Road, was designed to alleviate the worst choke points in the waterway that drains much of the northern half of Sarasota County. It began in late 2025 and came to a close recently.

About 60,000 cubic yards of material was removed, Quartermain said, the equivalent of about 5,400 standard dump-truck loads. The work created, according to design specifications, a channel 50 feet wide by 4 feet deep at mean low water along the center of the creek.

“What we’ve done is effectively remove high spots in the creek from Tuttle to Beneva,’’ Quartermain said, adding thousands of pounds of organic material such as nitrogen and phosphate were also removed as part of the project, aiding water quality in Sarasota Bay.

Image courtesy of Sarasota County

Additional projects along Phillippi Creek include a West Coast Inland Navigational District dredge from the waterway’s mouth to just east of the U.S. 41 bridge. That work is funded by $3 million in WCIND money.

Longer-term, the county aims to embark on a deeper dredging project which Quartermain calls the maximum allowable dredge from around U.S. 41, upstream to Beneva Road. That project calls for removal of about 100,000 cubic yards of material from the creek and some of the residential canals – or oxbows – between Bee Ridge Road and Bahia Vista Street.

Following permitting, that could begin in early 2027, Quartermain said.

Proposals for the multi-phased have been underway since not long after 2024’s devastating tropical-weather season delivered wave upon wave of rain and rising waters along the waterway on the periphery of Sarasota’s city limits,

Phillippi Creek runs just over 7 miles from Beneva Road between Fruitville Road and Bahia Vista Street to its mouth at Little Sarasota Bay, just west of Tamiami Trail. Its watershed, though, covers about 56 square miles, ranging as far north as University Parkway, as far east as Rothenbach Park and as far south as Clark Road. Dozens of branching canals find their way into the creek’s main channel.

Runoff from the watershed ultimately brings sediment of all sorts to Phillippi Creek, depositing it along the way and reducing its effectiveness as a stormwater drainage artery.