Steve Gardner won’t ever forget the moment his family’s pleasant afternoon on Spruce Creek took a dangerous turn.

The swiftly moving current under the railroad trestle bridge over the creek grabbed the family’s pontoon boat, pinned it and threw his kids off the seat. The boat listed and began taking on water.

“It was the most serious thing I’ve ever experienced,” Gardner said.

His family isn’t the only one to run afoul of the trestle bridge between U.S. Highway 1 and Interstate 95 in Port Orange. Now Gardner and other residents who have protested problems at the trestle for several years have ramped up their efforts to get some help.

The situation has become critical, said Debra Trovato, who lives two docks from the bridge. “Someone will be hurt or even killed.”

A group of nearby homeowners, who organized themselves as Spruce Creek Rising Inc., turned to Volusia County for help. They hope county officials can assist in seeking funding and permission for a small-scale dredging to ensure safer passage under the creek for watercraft and for the wildlife that uses the creek, including manatees, dolphins and turtles.

After a group of county staff toured the creek and rail trestle recently with Robert Lloyd, who heads up Spruce Creek Rising, County Manager Jim Dinneen said the county will delve a little further into the issue.

The staff concluded it isn't likely that a deep channel could be dug under the bridge, Dinneen said. "But, is it possible to make a safer channel, especially on the one side, to make it a little better or a little deeper? It's a possibility."

But no one is sure what it would take, Dinneen added. In the weeks ahead, the county staff will try to determine who owns the land under the rail trestle and reach out to the Florida East Coast Railway.

"We're not sure who owns the underlying rights," Dinneen said, "whether it's us, or the railroad, or the state.

"We'll ask if they (the railroad company) will work with us on exploring this issue to see if anything can be done," he added. "If there's no interest in working with us, I think it may be dead on arrival."

Both New Smyrna Beach and Port Orange have unanimously approved resolutions of support for Spruce Creek Rising.

The problem isn't new. In a study by the University of Florida-based research program Florida Sea Grant, commissioned by the homeowners, documents show one of the early residents along the Creek, James N. Gamble, wrote to the Army Corps of Engineers 100 years ago seeking a remedy for the waterway under the railroad bridge. County commissioners at that time sent a letter of support to the corps.

Gardner has been navigating the trestle bridge at the creek for 12 or 13 years. His father-in-law lives on Spruce Creek, an Outstanding Florida Water, and the family takes boat trips on the creek.

But over the past four years, passage under the bridge has become more treacherous.

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Gardner, Lloyd and others believe stray ballast rock, dumped along the railroad track on either side of the bridge during maintenance, is falling into the creek and impeding the water and navigation. They say the rocks also have helped oysters get a foothold, with a growing reef that further impedes traffic.

The “time to act is now," Lloyd wrote in a letter to the county. "The paralysis of inaction in dealing with the FEC railroad trestle and the flow of water, watercraft and wildlife under it must be remedied."

Most of the creek has been filled in and there’s only one way to go in and out, Trovato said. “The water is moving at such a rapid pace, it’s like Niagara Falls.”

Another resident, Edward Donini, said the trestle has become impassable during low tide.

As Gardner tried to navigate through there on a weekend last summer, the current threw the boat into the side of one of the bridge supports.

“We managed to push the boat back through and I anchored it, and we had to wait several hours for the tide to calm down,” he said. The whole family, his wife and children included, walked across the trestle in a thunderstorm to get to a nearby house to get a ride home. He said he went back later for the boat.

“I won’t go through there ever again,” he said. “It’s very dangerous.”

He once saw a jon boat pinned to the bridge, “bent around like a banana,” he said. 

Lloyd is optimistic efforts to improve the navigability under the trestle could get financial assistance from the Florida Inland Navigation District. The issue, he said, is just getting someone to take responsibility for making something happen.

An attorney for the railway, Robert Ledoux, declined to comment on the issue.

In 2015, Ledoux said the railway inspects the bridge annually and adds rock along the railroad every five to 10 years as necessary. The railway does not use rock on the trestle bridge. 

The railway can't take any action regarding the creek because it's controlled by the U.S. Coast Guard, Ledoux said in 2015. Permission to dredge the creek would have to come from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, he said.

The corps and the U.S. Coast Guard could not be reached for comment.

Lloyd hopes the county or the state will step in and help them apply for grants and funding to correct the problems.

“I’m not asking the railroad company to remove their trestle,” he said. “It’s not crazy. We’re just trying to do something simple, and everybody is in paralysis. Nobody wants to make a move.

“Is it going to take somebody dying at that railroad trestle for somebody to do something about it?”