The ability to reveal the hidden layers of hydrology can take many forms. Public art is a great mechanism for telling stories in ways that engage and reveal that which is often missing from our day to day experiences. These artworks also highlight key contributions of communities that are often marginalized in the official histories we are taught. Artists Shu-Ju Wang and Lynn Yarne developed a vibrant example of this at the new Lincoln High School in Portland with a large exterior mural called Restoration Roadmaps which locates the hidden hydrology story within the context of the urban high school. The summary of the project, from the artistโs website for Restoration Roadmaps provides some of processes and the outcomes:
โThe process enabled us to come to a final design that is a combination of several forms of maps to describe the neighborhoodโfrom historical to a hoped for future, from topographical to ecological, from google map to the old fashioned foldout map. Student and community responses are recorded as part of the topographical contours and inset panels.โ
The images are rich with detail, focusing on the high school site and the contemporary grid, juxtaposed with the Tanner Creek historical route with other water bodies that have been erased. The creek gulches were the locations of highly productive garden areas farmed by Chinese immigrants and also provided historical areas of Native American occupation. The mural includes smaller square panels with community work done by other artists and students, and the perimeter of the mural provides detailed assemblages of 40 species of flora and fauna Indigenous to the area.
It was fun to see the process evolve and the final product โin the wildโ below. Let me know if youโre local and have seen the mural, or if there are other murals in your community celebrating hidden hydrology. Would love to hear from you.
Beyond helping with some mapping for the mural, my other contribution was this short video, Tanner Creek Hidden Hydrology, walking through the history of the area in the context of the historical water. Iโve included the video below:
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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 02/28/25 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/20/25.
There are a number of stories that occasionally receive comments and inquiries on posts from back in the day. This past few weeks, readers reached out related to the 2017 post โSan Franciscoโs Hidden Water Tanksโ (Hidden Hydrology, 12.15.17), inquiring about a really cool hidden feature of the urban realm.
The post drew on a great article published at the time by CityLab/Bloomberg, โThe Sublime Cisterns of San Francisco” (05.01.17), which explains the presence of brick circles located at numerous intersections around the downtown core of the city, such as the image below.
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Brick circles denote the location of old cisterns (via Bloomberg)
These reference the locations of underground cisterns, dating back to the 1850s, which were state-of-the-art in fire protection in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These cisterns were distributed around the downtown area and filled with water, which supplemented fire brigades and enabled them to pump water for fire-fighting prior to implementing pressurized water systems and fire hydrants. As noted in the Bloomberg article related to the need for new modern fire protection in cities:
โOne of the ways officials responded to these blazes was to build cisterns. These subterranean vitrines were designed as a last-resort source of agua for firefighting. San Franciscoโs 19th-century cistern system was reinforced with more, larger cisterns after the Earthquake of 1906, whose subsequent firestorm killed roughly 3,000 and left much of the cityโs land looking like a blasted moon. To date there are 170 to 200 of the tanks stashed around town.โ
Many of the remaining cisterns are intact below ground, revealing subterranean spaces unknown to those walking and driving above. Many are empty, but some are still used as emergency water sources today.
John Oram, aka the prolific Bay Area blogger Burrito Justice, dug deep into the cisterns as far back as 2011. Around 2016, when the original Bloomberg article was published, he created an interactive map (unfortunately no longer available) of their subterranean locations. The map represented the intersections where the cisterns were located, scaled by the capacity of the cistern below.
Another resource for these cisterns, which Oram used in his mapping project, was a 2014 project by Scott Kildall. As part of an art project called โWater Works,โ Kildall focused on โโฆa 3D data visualization and mapping of the water infrastructure of San Francisco.โ He also created an interactive map (now also unavailable) of the cisterns, and the project generated some interesting maps and art around the locations of key infrastructure, including cisterns, as seen below.
San Francisco Cisterns by Scott Kildall (via Scott Kildall)
For those interested in a deeper dive from these past sources, I recommend โWhatโs Underneath Those Brick Circles?โ (Burrito Justice, 03.08.13), and โCistern Mapping Project Reportback.โ (Scott Kildall, 01.07.16). Although a seemingly hot topic in the mid-2010s, I only found a few scant more recent references to these cisterns. A good one worth listening to is part of a self-guided tour of these cisterns as part of the Exploratorium installation Buried History – Water Underground along with a link to a downloadable, printable map here.
I would appreciate any input from anyone in the Bay Area with up-to-date information or ongoing projects related to the cisterns.
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 01/31/25 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.
My first Substack publication, The Climate Landscape, explored various themes related to our changing climate and landscape architecture to examine nature-based solutions to climate change impacts. I recently decided to shelve that particular project and focus exclusively on writing about hidden hydrology; however, a few of those early essays were worth retaining here as they showed good overlap and connections between the two topics.
There is a direct connection between our citiesโ buried and lost rivers and climate change. I touched on climate here previously in this post โLost Rivers for Underground Energy. It took me some time to make a direct connection between my research on climate and lost waterways until more recently, and the revelation allowed me to weave together these two passions.
Iโve continued connecting the dots and trying to build a case for the importance of historical ecology and hidden hydrology in being the locus for solutions to contemporary issues, and not just focused on nostalgia. One aspect of this is looking first at causes and effects โ looking back at the erasure of waterways from cities and demonstrating that the loss of ecological and hydrological systems exacerbates climate impacts such as urban heat, flooding, and sea level rise. I also looked forward to showing the patterns of historical hydrological systems that can act as frameworks for innovative climate solutions to provide adaptation and mitigation opportunities. The idea of โhydrological retro-futuresโ is the term I chose for this backward-forward process, which allows us to connect the historical ecology to the modern metropolis and tell these stories in an engaging, visual format.
One aspect of this project is visual. By using various graphical generative AI resources like DALL-E (see image below), I have been creating speculative images of hidden hydrology in the urban context, and exploring ways that revealing, restoring, and reconnecting with lost rivers can help us imagine the potential visual impacts that could be gained. I will share more in-depth on this project and some of the interesting graphics in a later post.
Hydrologic Retrofutures: Portland Series 1 (Generated in DALL-E via prompts Jason King)
The other aspect is research and case-study-based. Brainstorming a few key topics areas, I will continue to explore here, including:
MICROCLIMATE COOLINGThe daylighted streams will restore ecosystem services lost when buried, such as the presence of cooling surface water and vegetation that can aid in mitigating urban heat islands.
FLOOD STORAGE CAPACITYDaylighting streams and springs currently in pipes will increase the capacity of infrastructure systems and make them more effective for flood resilience.
SEA LEVEL RISEAreas of made-land in cities as a proxy for areas of flooding due to SLR and storm surge and ways to adapt these to absorb with more resilience
WATER HARVESTING TO SUPPORT URBAN BIODIVERSITYDiversion of water that would be piped into uses for support of landscape vegetation and urban greening
WATER USE FOR COOLING ENVIRONMENTSTapping into water from subsurface water pipes to help cool cities – use in pools, water features, misters, etc.
WATER FOR HEATING & COOLING BUILDINGSUsing water from buried sewer pipes for heating buildings
PALEO VALLEYSLooking at hidden ancient river valleys as sources for groundwater recharge and storage as new aquifers
By exploring these topics, I aim to gather feedback and generate a complete toolkit of solutions that can provide designers, planners, and policy-makers with options that work in multiple climates and scales and provide cascading benefits when implemented. Iโd be interested to know of other topics and solution areas out there beyond this list, as well as any case studies, writings, or research on these topics.
Below are a handful of previous stories that cover some of these topics.
ANCIENT WATERWAYS FOR COOLING CITIES
A recent article in Fast Company outlines the idea of โHow ancient waterways could be tapped to cool scorching citiesโ. The focus is on new scanning methods to reveal buried streams and โancient waterwaysโ and how to see the hidden infrastructure and potentially repurpose the water for climate change adaptation strategies. The group leading this effort is Cool City, an offshoot of the Korean Pavilion as part of the 2021 Venice Biennale, with projects using mapping underway in both Naples and Seoul. The unique idea here is to use handheld 3D scanning technology to provide more detailed scans of systems and then to use the gathered data to inform decisions for climate.
3D scanning of โCasa dellโAcquaโ Municipality of Volla (via Cool City)
Thereโs merit to this as a way of approaching climate change through the use of these buried systems, both as a resource for water for irrigation and a passive cooling system and as a way to increase pipe capacity by removing underground streams through daylighting which frees up vital volume for additional stormwater management.
Mapping these has been done for many years, either as a GIS exercise with overlays of historical maps on current conditions and subsequent field verification or looking at current sewer and water and combined systems. This provides a good working system network to understand this hidden potential but not forgotten water in the city. Still, Cool City is taking it to the next level, as mentioned in the article, quoting a project collaborator, Nick De Pace, a professor of architecture and landscape architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design:
โBuried streams and old waterways are not totally lost to time. Many cities have maps showing where a former creek has been shunted into an underground tunnel to make way for aboveground urban development, for example. But De Pace says many of these maps are imprecise, and the new digital scanning and mapping of the Cool City project can bring much more actionable detail to buried streams, aqueducts, and springs. By using this water to irrigate green roofs, parks, and other urban vegetation, cities can counterbalance their heat-trapping hardscapes.โ
A low-resolution snapshot of the scan below shows how compelling this composite imagery may be, showing the spaces above and below. Does it aid in climate planning, maybe? They mention that it can be used for irrigation, for more green spaces to mitigate urban heat islands, and for having more water on the surface to reduce heat and provide more cooling. Additionally, the mix of green and blue infrastructure systems can tap into the buried water to help adapt to climate change impacts.
Composite scan of subsurface conditions (via Fast Company)
I wonder, however, how feasible it will be to scan much of the sub-surface infrastructure as proposed above by Cool City, as itโs a mixed bag of small and large pipes and some more expansive and cavernous sewers, depending on the location and the era in which they were implemented. Itโs a question to me if it is helpful to have 3D versions of these systems, or is mapping or modeling adequate to see the potential system components and flows and determine how it can be โtappedโ to become a tool to fight climate change?
3D scanning is an excellent visualization tool, as it is often difficult to imagine what lies beneath, which is less compelling than a line on a map. As mentioned in the article, understanding the available water resources more clearly is half the battle. The next part is how to operationalize this water for climate strategies. I am interested in seeing more from Cool City, how the technology works, and what solutions come up for using hidden hydrology for climate solutions.
While tying flooding to historically buried waterways isnโt novel, this is a unique idea, using mapping to overlay the Home Ownersโ Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps showing redlining categories, which are well-documented spatial histories of racial and socioeconomic discrimination. The researchers used these factors (buried streams and redlining grade) as two of the criteria for flood risk along with proximity to coastal zones and intensity of vegetative cover.
The article is a deep dive, so I will skim on the surface with a bit on the methodology and findings, which are engaging and would be replicable anywhere using similar criteria. The mapping processes, including mapping and DEMs, were interesting. The inference of buried water bodies and flood risk has been borne out in recent events. The authors explain the connections between mapping and current flood risk:
โAlthough the actual stream channel or wetland surface were buried and built upon, high resolution elevation models (e.g., LiDAR) can be used to reveal the remnants of distinct depressions from these structures, such as meandering stream valleys, in heavily urbanized landscapes. The authors assume that, although no longer occupied by active streams or wetlands, residential homes built on buried stream valleys will experience an elevated probability of flood risk not included in floodplain maps, but also that the process of burial and removal were influenced by income and race embedded in some of the racist housing policies of the 1930s and 1940s.โ
Figure from article: โAn example of a river in Southwest Detroit identified by the first United States Geological Survey (USGS) topographic map from 1905 (top left), the existing buried stream valley, as evidence from LiDAR data from 2020 (elevation units in feet above sea level), that is capped with residential development (top right), and the intense First Street Foundation Flood Factor risk of parcels near the ghost river (bottom).โ
The flood risk data came from First Street Foundationโs Flood Factor, which would be good to explore in more detail. As described, the flood risk of parcels is rated 1 to 10 based on the chance of flooding in a time interval. There were also additional criteria, as mentioned, with coastal proximity, using available data, and vegetation density using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data to describe the level of vegetationโmore on both of these in the article, along with all the analyses.
A figure from the article showing flood risks by type of area โassociated with inland, coastal zone, ghost streams, and ghost wetlands within redlined neighborhoods.โ
The results reinforce other narratives of disproportionate risk tied to redlining districts that had more marginalized populations. The level of parcels at risk in zones C and D from the HOLC maps, although the amount of burial varied with the presence of most buried streams in HOLC Grade A & B and more buried wetlands in HOLC Grades C & D. As the authors mention:
โFlood risk is disproportionately distributed, caused in part by outlawed, racist housing policies. Understanding where risk is highest can help identify optimum locations for adaptation measures to minimize flood damage in these neighborhoods.โ
This does bring up why mapping these streams is important, and the connections to climate change, although not overt, are implied as changes in precipitation and storm intensity make flood risks more frequent and more damaging. As the authors conclude (with a nice reference to hidden hydrology (citation please), the โโฆrole of redlining in present day flood risk applies to cities throughout the United States, as does the importance of mapping ghost streams and wetlands to inform residents of the role โhidden hydrologyโ may play in increasing flood risk.โ
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SAVING SWAMPS TO SAVE OURSELVES
It was a treat to read one of my favorite authors, Annie Proulx (Swamps can protect against climate change if we only let them, New Yorker – 06.27.22), discussing wetlands and their potential for climate change protection. She includes tales of killer herons, stolen rafts, and evocative ideas on our complex relationship with swamps, noting that โMany modern Americans do not like swamps, herons or no herons, and experience discomfort, irritation, bewilderment, and frustration when coaxed or forced into oneโฆโ
Swamps were not always reviled or out of favor, as Proulx recounts, in particular the views of Henry David Thoreau, on the subject:
โThoreau has been called the patron saint of swamps, because in them he found the deepest kind of beauty and interest. He wrote of his fondness for swamps throughout his life, most feelingly in his essay โWalkingโ: โYes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human art contrived, or else of a Dismal Swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp.โ
The connection to hidden hydrology lies in the massive loss of wetlands and the subsequent loss of function to reduce carbon and the numerous ecosystem services beyond that are provided by wetlands in filtering and mediating water in our landscapes. Development in the US meant filling wetlands for farmland, pasture, and eventually cities. The swamps often were a barrier to progress and Proulx notes:
โAcross the country, the ongoing stories of vile adventures in the muck made it clear to military, government, and citizenry that something had to be done about the swamps so universally detested. Everywhere there were horrendous mixtures of fen, bog, swamp, river, pond, lake, and human frustration. This was a country of rich, absorbent wetlands that increasingly no one wanted.โ
As this occurred, there were impacts, but climate change, and sea level rise in particular, exacerbates flooding, and filled-in wetlands at the margins are poor habitats for the buildings or fields we placed on them that are now in danger of being washed away with more intense storms. There were impacts to landscapes and plantings that reduced habitat. Beyond biodiversity loss, humans will feel the overall loss of resilience more acutely. Still, it is hard to save or restore these landscapes, as Proulx notes in her story of the Black Swamp.
โOne authority on water, William Mitsch, has suggested that if ten per cent of the old Black Swamp soils were allowed to become wetlands again they would cleanse the runoff, yet Ohioans remain powerfully anti-wetland. Even private efforts to restore small wetland areas are met with neighborsโ complaints about noisy frogs and fears of flooding.โ
Related are mangroves, which are also summarily destroyed, taking with them the ability to reduce storm surges and protect coastal areas in places like the Everglades. As described: โMangrove swamps have been called the earthโs most important ecosystem, because they form a bristling wall that stabilizes the landโs edge and protects shorelines from hurricanes and erosion, and because they are breeding grounds and protective nurseries for thousands of species, including barracuda, tarpon, snook, crabs, shrimp, and shellfish. They take the full brunt of most storms and hurricanes, and generally surviveโbut not always.โ
Larger, more intense hurricanes can damage mangrove areas with salt or sediment intrusion, reducing their ability to regenerate and removing their support for biodiversity. While natural disasters are a risk, development still threatens these areas despite mounting evidence of their benefits.
โAlthough climate researchers see mangrove swamps as crucially important frontline defenses against rising seawater and as superior absorbers of CO2โthey are five times more efficient than tropical forestsโthey are in big trouble, and mangrove removal is a constant threat.โ
The conclusion for Proulx is to re-establish our love of the swamp, and connect the existential threat of climate change to our ways of life to the natural systems we destroy in the process. Protecting what is there in terms of wetlands and mangroves left standing is the first goal, as well as restoring and expanding these valuable ecosystems, all of which are possible, even necessary as adaptation and mitigation strategies. Proulx ends with a call to action we can all heed:
โIt is usual to think of the vast wetland losses as a tragedy, with hopeless conviction that the past cannot be retrieved. Tragic, indeed, and part of our climate-change anguish. But as we learn how valuable wetlands are in softening the shocks of the changing climate, and how eagerly the natural world responds to concerned care, perhaps we can shift the weight of wetland destruction from inevitable to โnot on my watch.โ Can we become Thoreauvian enough to see wetlands as desirable landscapes that protect the earth while refreshing our joy in existence? For conservationists the world over, finding this joy is central to having a life well lived.โ
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 12/17/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.
In Northwest Portland, Oregon, red-legged frogs living in Forest Park face a dangerous commute in the fall and winter, traversing from their upland homes down to the spawning grounds adjacent to the Willamette River. The species typically is found in conifer hardwood forests that have an aquatic-terrestrial connection to ponds and wetlands as part of their life cycles.
Northern Red-legged Frog
The degree of landscape changes inherent over time is seen in a series of maps spanning the previous century and a half of urbanization, centered near present-day Harborton, the location of a critical habitat connection for the frogs. From the original surveys in the 1850s, the area was lightly developed, and the areas noted as โTimber, Fir, Cedar, Maple, Hemlock, Yew, etc.โ showing the zones that would become modern Forest Park and the uninterrupted upland to lowland connections along the Willamette River.
By the 1900s and the mapping from the USGS Topographic Survey, some development was happening along the water in the early town of Linnton, and the rail lines were built that started to sever these historical ecological connections.
1897 USGS Topographic Survey (via TopoView)
The current aerial image shows the clear line marking upland to lowland as separated by roadways and more impervious industrial development located along the Willamette River, reducing the amount of shoreline habitat.
2024 Aerial Image (via Google Earth)
The historical upland to lowland conditions has been radically disturbed along the entire margin of Forest Park. We could infer from the series of maps that historically, the frogs had significantly more habitat options along a much larger zone (and even more if you look at maps south of here showing additional lakes and wetlands), and that over time, a series of human-made linear barriers (railroad, roads) and urbanization cut off connections while reducing overall shoreline habitat. This ultimately resulted in a severe decline in several species populations, including the red-legged frogs.
As you see from a zoomed-in area, the major impediment for the frogs is a gauntlet, including a four-lane Highway 30, another smaller side road, and railroad tracks that prevent frogs from safely accessing the breeding area around the Willamette. Described by many as a real-life game of Frogger, the result is documented mass killings of frogs that attempt migration to these zones in rainy seasons.
As a response to the negative impacts of the species, an intrepid group of volunteers has implemented what they call the Frog Taxi. Starting in 2013, as documented on the site Linnton Frogs, the group has mobilized annually to collect frogs from Forest Park, transporting them across Highway 30 and other roads and railroad tracks to get to the breeding around along the Willamette, and then relocating them back across the roadway to the upland. You can see some stats of the groupโs work from 2013-2021. The work has continued, and Oregon Field Guide recently did a story on this yearโs Frog Taxi, which provides a great overview of the process the volunteers undertake to save this remnant population of red-legged frogs.
Taxi to Where?
Making it across the barrier alone or via taxi only solves one part of the equation. To fully connect the life cycle, viable habitat conditions need to be provided for suitable breeding conditions on the waterside. The landscape of the entire edge of the area used to include the multiple connected ecosystems lakes along a long riverfront edge, including Guildโs, Kitteridge’s, and Doaneโs, which is notable as their surrounding wetland margins have been impacted.
Once the frogs can reach the site, the original habitat must be restored to provide suitable conditions. Currently owned by PGE, the taxi โdrop-off’โ site is the locus of additional restoration efforts, as noted from the PGE site related to the Harborton Habitat Project:
โThe site is one of the largest known breeding grounds for northern red-legged frogs, an amphibian species classified as โsensitiveโ by the state of Oregon and a โspecies of concernโ under Federal listing status. Additionally, the property is situated where the Willamette River meets Multnomah Channel โ a perfect spot for juvenile salmon to rest and find food on their way to the Pacific Ocean.โ
The overall goal is to move from taxi service to more uninterrupted connections from the upland forest to the pools to eliminate the game of Frogger, as well as eliminate the need for volunteers to fill the role of taxi drivers. The next iteration involves increasing overall habitat mobility through an amphibian tunnel that will funnel the frogs along the edges and allow them to move under the roadways and rail lines, connecting Forest Park directly to Harborton. As noted, the Harborton Frog Crossing Project proposed this new connection:
โIn an effort to save the dwindling frog population, local wildlife officials and the Oregon Wildlife Foundation have proposed to build a highway underpass to grant the amphibians safe passage. The project calls for a concrete culvert beneath Northwest St. Helens Road and Marina Way to help the frogs reach their preferred breeding grounds.โ
Other studies are helping pinpoint more specifics related to the locations and magnitude of the problem. There is funding to assess the mortality of the frog populations is underway by Northwest Ecological Research Institute (NERI), and funded by the Oregon Conservation & Recreation Fund Projects and the Oregon Zoo. The specific goals hope to inform the amphibian tunnel, as they state:
โA wildlife undercrossing and/or creating improved wetland spaces that do not require road crossings are the primary proposed solutions. These are expensive, infrastructure-based solutions, and more data is required to find the most appropriate path forward. Specifically, increased data on the rate and location of frogs being killed at road crossings will inform timing and movement patterns to find the best solution.โ
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Wildlife Ways
The Oregon Wildlife Corridor Action Plan (ODFW, January 2024) notes that there are naturally occurring barriers to wildlife movement, but the most critical are human-caused barriers that block movement. Within the context, they also discuss how barriers are relative to species, as quoted:
โThe most readily apparent human-caused barriers to animal movement are the physical structures that impede or outright prevent connectivity, such as buildings, fences, roadways, solar developments, and dams. The response of wildlife to structures varies by structure type and by species. For example, a fox may be able to make its way around a large industrial complex, whereas for a frog the complex might represent an impassable barrier. While not all physical structures will completely block animal movement, these features are often associated with increased risk of mortality for wildlife due to collisions, entanglement, entrapment, and persecution. Two of the most prevalent physical impediments to wildlife connectivity are roadways and fencing.โ
Wildlife crossings, in general, are gaining momentum with various overpass and underpass options that direct and funnel species from habitat areas and provide safe passage through dangerous areas. The focus is often on larger species, specifically deer and elk, here in Oregon, moving between fragmented parcels of land. There is also the potential to reduce vehicle-wildlife collisions, with specific action plans to provide more solutions. These are dynamic opportunities to connect large habitat patches but come at a steep price.
The types of crossings also need to be adapted to the species’ needs. My favorite is the Crab Bridge on Christmas Island in Australia, which provides an almost vertical climb and spans over a roadway to facilitate the migration of red crabs.
Another analog is the work being done for fish passage, including strategies for repairing culverts to provide better access for fish, installing tidal gates to better allow movement up and downstream in fluctuating water cycles and implementing fish screens to limit access to certain waterways while providing access to certain areas necessary for the species to thrive. These are less visible than the larger wildlife connections; however, they also come at a significantly smaller cost and can be localized to specific species migration corridors.
The amphibian connections are a microcosm of these types of projects. More modest in scale, but growing in popularity, there are numerous examples around the globe of different types of passages that work for different amphibian species. The hope is that these will continue to do some of the necessary repair work for the severed connections between critical hydrological habitats, hopefully helping the Harborton Red-Legged Frog populations survive and thrive and give the taxi drivers a break.
Amphibian Crossing example from Doรฑana National Park, Spain (via Research Gate)
If you are aware of other examples of strategies being used to allow amphibians or other species to facilitate movement in fragmented landscapes, particularly those that are disconnected from historical waterways via development, I would love to hear about them.
The recent essay, โDaylighting a Brook in the Bronxโ (Pioneer Works, 10.23.24), by Emily Raboteau, focuses on a high-profile stream daylighting project from a residentโs perspective. The project to daylight Tibbetts Brook has been ongoing for many years. For some quick background, Tibbetts Brook originates north of New York City in Yonkers, where it flows from Tibbetts Brook Park, heading south into the Bronx and reemerging above ground in Van Cortlandt Park. It then flows underground the remainder of the way south through the city, as demonstrated on the graphic below, showing the original course of the now-buried waterway and its eventual connection into the last leg of the Harlem River before draining into the Hudson.
Illustration of Tibbetts Brookโs original course in the Bronx – via Pioneer Works
Raboteau, a resident of the Bronx, outlines the project from a personal and experiential perspective, joining some of the local advocates from the Tibbetts Advisory Group and the Parks Department and others working on the daylighting project and highlighting some of the site-based artworks focused around the brook. The positives of the project are notable, as she mentions early on in the essay:
โDaylighting will abate combined sewage overflow, extend greenspace, absorb heat, and relieve chronic flooding in our areaโs janky, archaic drainage system, in an act of climate mitigation and as a community effort to solve a mess caused by old crimes.โ
Iโm not planning on spending too much time recounting her specific words, which I strongly encourage you to take the time to read. I wanted to extract my reflections on a couple of critical themes she highlighted in her essay.
Perfection and Imperfection in Daylighting Projects
The challenges of these projects are myriad, and while striving for a solution that solves all the problems, trade-offs must often be made. She mentions a couple of issues, including the high cost, resistance from the MTA, and the need to underground the creek under rail lines in some industrialized portions. Additionally, gentrification could arise by โcleaning upโ marginal spaces during the daylighting project. On one hand, revitalization could improve the area and attract new residents and economic activity. Conversely, the improvements could incentivize new developments and rising costs, displacing long-time residents. Another issue she brings up is the potential lack of good access from some of the adjacent neighborhoods, creating questions of ultimately who will benefit and the overall environmental justice issues at heart in any project like this. As she notes:
โI had so many ethical questions without easy answers. It felt uncouth to ask them of a dream thirty years in the makingโฆ. Could it ever be pleasant here? Difficult to picture. Even with the brook resurrected, there would still be the sound of the road.
I wondered: how else might the park change the neighborhood? Will it invite gentrification? Will it grow too expensive to live here? Despite the ecological and economic benefits, will anyone suffer? Can daylighting outpace inundation, or will it be rendered moot by water tables that rise with the sea? If flooding catastrophes continue, what then? Would government funds be better spent moving the most disadvantaged among us out of the watershed to higher ground? Has anyone asked for the brookโs consent? Whose help is sanctioned when it comes to healing the land, and whose is rebuked?
The intersecting concerns and challenges are common in similar projects, no less complicated by threading daylighting through a dense urban center. Patience, openness, and creativity are vital, but the lack of these often results in projects never seeing the light of day. Compromises cannot come at the cost of marginalized communities. Yet, the short-sightedness of attempting to achieve โperfectโ restoration in the form of all-or-nothing solutions is equally as damaging to attain nothing. The ability to see multiple solutions that can celebrate, reveal, and restore function requires looking beyond the ecological and including pointing a lens at the cultural context of these projects, balancing imperfection with appropriateness.
Cultural Restoration
The potential of restoration lies beyond the technical aspects and helps us fill the gaps left in implementing imperfect solutions. Raboteau mentions some of the work of artists around the brook, much of it done under the banner of the โRescuing Tibbets Brookโ project as part of the Mary Miss-led project, City as Living Laboratory. Works mentioned include Visions of Tibbetts Brook, Tibbetts Estuary Tapestry, and Estuary Tattoos, all focusing on artistic and community works around the creek restoration.
Other cultural works are mentioned in the essay. Dennis RedMoon Darkeem‘s upcoming work and the planned daylighting project use harvested mugwort, an invasive species growing near the creek in Van Cortlandt Park, and weaving it into large textiles to act as sound barriers along the course of the stream corridor. She goes into more detail about two other artists. Noel Hefele and his Daylighting Tibbetts en Plein Air paintings (see below), and The Buried Brook, an augmented reality installation by Kamala Sankaram that uses a phone app to trace โthe sonic geography of the buried Tibbetts Brook.โ
Numerous documents and reports on the proposed $133 million project to daylight the brook can be discovered online, touching on many technical challenges. The real story is about grounding the technical with the human dimensions while highlighting the more prominent themes of hidden hydrology. Overall, the result of these cultural explorations to complement the hydrological and ecological, to Raboteau, can be revelatory:
โI appreciate how initiatives like these offer an expansive response to catastrophe, a way to gather, and even a sense of hope. Itโs not just the architecture of the daylighting project that interests me, the restitching at the scale of infrastructure, or the civic muscle behind the job, but the metaphysics of the exhumation. Daylighting feels like a cause for ceremony, a chance to pay respect to the body of the ghost river that flows unseen under our feet. Better yet, to imagine the perspective of the brook.โ
Both ideas above are inherent in the conceptual potential of what can be accomplished when we think beyond just daylighting as a functional pursuit. First, we must move beyond unrealistic ideas of โperfectโ and strive to achieve real projects that inevitably fall short of all that can be accomplished but succeed in not collapsing under the weight of being overly idealistic. Second, to achieve the first, we must continue to explore and expand our ways of engaging with lost rivers and buried creeks beyond. These include the incorporation of a continuum of solutions from the artistic to the ecological.
The recollection of the creek can be expressed metaphorically through art and soundscapes, which provide additional layers of meaning and context to the project’s more functional hydrological and ecological goals. This shows how daylighting projects, while aiming for restoration of function, are not really about attempts at pure ecological restoration but a mix of green infrastructure and ecological design aimed at multiple goals like access to nature for humans and other species, reconnecting communities, and achieving climate-positive design, among many other potentialities.
The potential of these solutions highlighted by Raboteau:
โDaylighting feels like a cause for ceremony, a chance to pay respect to the body of the ghost river that flows unseen under our feet.โ
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CONTEXTUAL CODA
Tibbetts Brook has been a topic of interest in my thinking on Hidden Hydrology for some time. I first discussed the Brook in an article on Steve Duncan, a โdrainerโ type of urban explorer focusing on underground and buried creeks and rivers. He has explored and photographed urban creeks around the globe, but focused on many New York City creeks, including Tibbetts Brook, as I wrote about in a post, โNYC: Watercourses to Undercityโ (Hidden Hydrology, 12.28.17).
Tibbetts Brook was the subject of the article โWhy New York Is Unearthing a Brook It Buried a Century Agoโ (NY Times, 12.6.21), which discusses the project goals and objectives in detail. โThe city plans to unearth the brook โ an engineering feat known as โdaylightingโ โ at a cost of more than $130 million, because burying it in the sewer system has worsened the cityโs flooding problems as a warming planet experiences more frequent and intense storms.โ
The re-interest in the Tibbets project and connections to climate-related flooding came about as a reckoning of post-hurricane Ida solutions, which included more โspongyโ green infrastructure, hardening critical infrastructure, and methods to โunclog drains and widen pipes.โ Iโve written about Eric Sandersonโs work of historical ecology and mapping hidden waterways in his Mannahatta and the broader Welikia Projects. He writes a powerful post-Ida opinion piece, โLet Water Go Where It Wants to Goโ (NY Times, 9.28.21), where he connects the impacts of Hurricanes Sandy and Ida to areas where waterways were buried, shorelines filled, and wetlands paved over.
โWater demands a place to go. That means making room for streams and wetlands, beaches and salt marshes. It means solving human-caused problems with nature-based solutions. These include removing urban impediments to let streams flow once again, a process known as daylighting; restoring wetlands and planting trees. It also means using the collective power of our community โ expressed through tax dollars โ to help people move to safer places.โ
Overlay of flooding locations (28th Street subway station) in New York City and the location of former wetlands (The National Archives via NY Times)
In my reflection on this article by Sanderson, these connections between hidden hydrology and climate are of keen interest, so this led me to investigate in more detail one of the significant benefits espoused by those advocating daylighting Tibbetts Brook โ which was alluded to by Raboteau โ the ability to make cities more resilient to climate change by removing base flow water from buried pipes, or captured streams, through daylighting, and freeing up that water to handle extreme rainfall events and reduce flooding. As noted in the NY Times article:
โThough out of sight, the brook pumps about 2.2 billion gallons of freshwater a year into the same underground pipes that carry household sewage and rainwater runoff to wastewater treatment plants. It takes up precious capacity in the outdated sewer system and contributes to combined sewer overflows that are discharged into nearby waterways.โ
To learn more about this concept, I wrote on โCaptured Streamsโ (Hidden Hydrology, 12.11.21), taking a deeper dive into the broader idea and its applications globally, drawing on a paper by Adam Broadhead and others, which makes the case that the encasement of freshwater streams in urban sewers is a widespread issue, significantly increases wastewater treatment costs by needlessly treating clean water and the various economic, social, and environmental benefits of diversion. The team included case studies from Zurich, highlighting efforts by the Swiss city to pioneer the idea of urban daylighting to remove base flow.
A diagram of the process, similar to the process envisioned at Tibbetts Brook, from the paper is below.
Diagram of buried stream separation from sewers in Zurich (via Broadhead et al.)
The Tibbetts Brook project aims to be a model case study in this form of separation. While the result will fulfill the goals to reduce flooding, create more resilience, and provide additional positive environmental benefits, the more significant questions Raboteau asks in her essay are vital to allow us to envision the bigger picture and redefine what counts as success: Who is included at the table in planning and design and how are those voices given appropriate weight? Who ultimately benefits? Who has access when the project is complete?
Give the essay a read, and let me know your comments.
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 11/30/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.
I was combing through the writings on my original Hidden Hydrology blog, with the idea of bringing in some of the โbest ofโ content still relevant today. This 2018 post, โUnderground Energy For Londonโ was worth reconsidering, focusing on a report that identified a significant potential latent in hidden hydrological systems, to provide heat and cut carbon emissions through tapping into underground lost rivers. The specifics came from a group called 10:10 Climate Action, who focused on using Londonโs now-buried rivers as a source of power, asking the question:
โBut what if we could use them to power our city once again? Through the magic of heat pumps, Londonโs lost rivers could provide low cost, low carbon heating and cooling to the buildings above. They could help us solve the big challenge of decarbonising heat. Thereโs huge potential for Londonโs lost rivers to provide clean, efficient and reliable heating for the city โ tackling climate change and air pollution. And of course the same technology can be used in other underground waterways like sewers in towns and cities across the country.โ.
Unfortunately, the report, nor the group 10:10 Climate Action as far as I can tell, is no longer available online from the original source. I tracked down an online version, so you can download a copy here.
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The use of heat pumps is fairly common practice. Extracting heat from these now piped subterranean waterways, and using this heat for buildings and other uses is more novel, offering an potential alternative power option for London and other cities.
The concept had also already been implemented in some areas, including Borders College in Scotland, tapping into local wastewater, and the State Ministry Building in Stuttgart, Germany, which tapped into flow from the Nesenbach, a buried river adjacent to the site. A map extracted from the report (image below) shows a number of the potential sites in London, including The Effra, Stamford Brook, The Tyburn, and the Fleet, all of which have potential sites for the use of these technologies. Specific places include Buckingham Palace (mentioned in a few of the articles above), which would tap the Tyburn, Hammersmith Town Hall which flows above Stamford Brook, and other buildings like schools and site elements like heated swimming pools, which is currently being done in Paris.
The following video explains the idea in a specific location, showing an example of a London pub that sits atop an ancient subterranean water source, using this heat pump technology for its heating and cooling for beer and wine.
There are questions on the cost-benefit, and each of these systems would require some infrastructure to be viable, however, itโs pretty exciting to consider the potential of these systems to contribute to energy savings and reduction of carbon emissions. The potential for savings of energy is significant. The Times article noted: โA report from the Greater London Authority concluded that water-source heat pumps could meet 4.8 per cent of Londonโs heat demand, with sewer heat offering another 6.7 per cent.โ
The idea of giving back some of their benefits to the city, even while still being buried underground, is also worth exploration. While the original report is over six years old, I think the idea is still one that seems worthy of revisiting around the globe, identifying projects that could utilize similar techniques, as we search for expanded tools to battle climate change and rising energy costs. Iโd be interested to know if any readers know of other cities today using this for district or building scale systems, or projects that have explored this idea of tapping buried rivers in water and sewers for heating and cooling. Let me know if you have any that come to mind.
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 11/16/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.
Anyone who has lived in the Pacific Northwest for some time is acutely aware that the intensity of rainfall events has dramatically shifted due to climate change. When I moved to Portland in the 1990s, the default was a constant, misty drizzle, which has now been replaced at regular intervals with a winter full of torrential downpours amongst a slew of other climatic shifts like hotter summers and significantly colder and snowier winters.
An occasional โPineapple Expressโ or โChinook Windsโ were outliers, with occasional wet periods caused by shifts bringing warm air and moisture from the Tropics to northern latitudes. These, we know now, are a form of an atmospheric river, a term from the 1990s that has re-emerged as a new addition to our new climate-change-focused lexicon. Atmospheric rivers are water vapor channels in the atmosphere, which can be up to 300 miles wide and over 1000 miles long, typically occurring in the mid-latitudes.
These storms are part of the water cycle, providing a range of positive benefits and negative impacts. Positively, they can help reduce drought and increase snowpack which can help reduce wildfire risk. The negatives result in too much water, too quickly, causing flooding, mudslides, and other damaging impacts. Researchers have been developing methods to predict atmospheric rivers to prevent some of these negative consequences. They have developed a scale ranking the intensity and danger from AR1, noting a weak system that is โprimarily beneficialโ up to AR5, which is noted as โprimarily hazardous.โ
The scale of intensity of atmospheric rivers is a product of the quantity of water vapor by the duration of the event – via USDA Climate Hubs – Atmospheric Rivers
The cycle and intensity of atmospheric rivers will continue to change along with our changing climate, and the water vapor stored in these systems will increase with the continual rising temperatures of the global air and ocean systems. This will mean longer seasons of rainfall, more intense storms, and the need to reconsider our approaches to stormwater management that worked a decade ago but may be falling short.
Connections to Hidden Hydrology
A recent op-ed piece โComment: Atmospheric rivers require new approach to water management.โ (Victoria Times Colonist, 09.31.24) by Alan Shapiro, an environmental consultant, and Tim Morris, director of B.C. Water Legacy, outlines how hidden hydrology can be instrumental in providing resilient green infrastructure for these atmospheric rivers, specifically by reversing the root causes of the problem and reducing resilience: originally removing steams from the urban landscape, paving surfaces, and draining wetlands. They note several ideas like โsponge parksโ and well-tested green infrastructure solutions including โGreen roofs, permeable pavement, and rain gardens mimic natural water processes by absorbing and filtering rainwater like a sponge before returning it to waterways.โ
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The on-the-ground application of this idea can be found in Vancouver, British Columbia. This is highlighted in the article โB.C. atmospheric river a successful first test of community-led rain management project.โย (CBC, 09.26.24) which describes the St. George Rainway and the performance of this green infrastructure system during recent extreme rainfall events. I wrote about this project earlier this year,ย โVancouver Rainwaysโ, (05.03.24) where I described the goals of the project and the context of hidden hydrology in Vancouver. The recent article highlights the hidden hydrological connection, showing how the rainway follows the route of โan ancient, buried creekโ that is a tributary of False Creek:
โThe road and homes along St. George Street are constructed above a creek that historically emptied into False Creek. The creek still runs underground, through a series of pipes and culverts โ where it hasn’t offered the community adequate drainage for at least a decade, often leading to street flooding and damage to the roadway.โ
Daylighting the creek was not feasible due to the impacts on the neighborhood homes and infrastructure. However, the metaphorical river solution of rain gardens utilizes biomimicry principles to provide a linear landscape that provides many of the same benefits of the original creek corridor. The recent atmospheric rivers presented an opportunity to see the project in action where it accommodated large amounts of runoff from adjacent streets.
The ability to trace routes of buried streams provides us with a watershed-based framework to implement green infrastructure solutions that mimic the original hydrology. As you see from the map of Vancouver, B.C. we could start with numerous corridors, using linear green infrastructure solutions like St. George Rainway as a model following closely the street networks. These could be supplemented by larger solutions on public and private property to recreate the functions of wetlands, ponds or other water bodies lost to development over the years. Finally, green roofs and rainwater capture from adjacent buildings and permeable pavements could reduce runoff โ finalizing the holistic, integrated strategy.
Hidden hydrology provides these strategies with a watershed-specific framework for green infrastructure that can provide community-wide resilience to extreme weather like Atmospheric Rivers. This is not meant to be full restoration and daylighting, often challenged by site constraints that make it overly expensive or impactful. Linear green infrastructure is a tool in the toolbox, mimicking the function of urban creeks and streams, providing the same benefits, including absorption of runoff, provision of habitat, urban cooling, and visual access to nature, all following the routes of our lost waterways.
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 11/11/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.
The article โReaching the Light of Dayโ (Orion, May 23, 2024) is compelling if youโre interested in hidden hydrology. Author Corinne Segal recounts some of the larger themes and projects around โghost streams,โ including work in New York, Baltimore, Auckland, Istanbul, and a handful of other locations. Beyond some of the projects they note, the article poses a larger question regarding our ancient โkinshipโ with water. This struck me as essential to the conversations around hidden hydrology, so took this as an opportunity to explore further. Various nuances and definitions of kinship span from biological to sociological. For a reference point, I grabbed this quick definition:
kinยทship /หkinหSHip/, noun. blood relationship; a sharing of characteristics or origins.
One could make a case for both parts of this definition. While weโre not technically related, there is a physical biochemical connection between our bodies and water, as our lives ultimately depend on water for our existence. Thus โblood relationshipโ takes a literal dimension: healthful when we talk of life-sustaining properties; harmful when we talk about, for instance, toxicity due to water pollution. The negatives are often of our own doing, caused by abuse or neglect of our โkinโ impacting our bodies in negative ways with disease. It is a kinship of reciprocity, reflecting a link between our treatment of our โkinโ and how it is tied physically to our survival.
The second definition here is most compelling, diving into our deeper emotional relationship with water. The โsharing of characteristics or originsโ resonates powerfully with our relationship with water. This summer I read the 2023 posthumously published dialogue with Barry Lopez and writer Julia Martin titled Syntax of the River: The Pattern Which Connects. Much of the discussion focused on how Lopez engaged that kinship early in life through language, as a way to know, only later in life, expanding the relationship through a deeper dive into โsyntaxโ to develop understanding and attain wisdom.
An excerpt from his elaborates on this idea:
โI think when youโre young you want to learn the names of everything. This is a beaver, this is spring Chinook, this is a rainbow trout, this is osprey, elk over there. But itโs the syntax that you really are after. Anybody can develop the vocabulary. Itโs the relationships that are important. And itโs the discerning of this three-dimensional set of relationships that awakens you to how complex this is at any one moment.โ
The only way to develop these three-dimensional relationships is through consistent contact, which requires occupation of and awareness of place. As he visits and revisits his local McKenzie River, he partakes in constant unfolding. He notes some of these observations: โThe water has a slightly different color during the four seasons, depending on how much snow and glacial melt is in it. And the parts of the river that are not visible in the summer are visible in the winter, because of the loss of leaves of deciduous trees.โ
This connection with water, as Lopez describes it, requires spending time physically interacting with these environments, and conducting actual visits with our โkinโ to deepen ties. The wrinkle here is how we adapt this approach for the โlostโ or โforgottenโ, those hidden streams and buried waterways that no longer have a discernable physical presence. The relationship is no longer about observation in the present but about memory. This perhaps is similar to thinking about our lost kin, to think of lost streams in terms of death. In this way. This could be a way to reframe the relationship as grief and loss, allowing us to draw from the deep well of resources to rethink how we remember and celebrate those lost relationships.
Iโm reminded of one of the origin stories of Hidden Hydrology, with author David James Duncan recounting a tale in his fabulous book โMy Story As Told By Waterโ, of the death of one of his favorite fishing spots in his stomping grounds east of Portland:
โAt six-thirty or so on a rainy April morning, I crept up to a favorite hole, threaded a worm on a hook, prepared to cast โ then noticed something impossible: there was no water in the creek. โฆI began hiking, stunned, downstream. The aquatic insects were gone, barbershop crawdads gone, catfish, carp, perch, crappie, bass, countless sacrificial cutthroats, not just dying, but completely vanished. Feeling sick, I headed the opposite way, hiked the emptied creekbed all the way to the source, and there found the eminently rational cause of the countless killings. Development needs roads and drainfields. Roads and drainfields need gravel. Up in the gravel pits at the Glisan Street headwaters, the creekโs entire flow had been diverted for months in order to fill two gigantic new settling ponds. My favorite teacher was dead.โ
It is sometimes challenging to think of hidden hydrology through the lens of grief, but you can feel Duncanโs pain at the loss of this urban creek. Itโs one cut in the death of a thousand cuts that makes up the global tragedy โ the devastation wrought throughout the world on waterbodies in the name of progress. However, the impact is muted for several reasons. First, we, unlike Duncan, are often not around when most of these creeks and streams existed in the first place, so we donโt comprehend what we lost. Second, there are remnants and surviving resources that we can still connect within our cities, so the erasure is not complete enough to equal extinction. Finally, these places fade from memory, and, out of sight, out of mind, we forget as we trod over their buried pipes and filled depression blissfully unaware.
When we lack a strong presence of these historical remnants, we tend to feel greater disconnection, the subtle traces not sufficient for us to feel a connection. This drives our need to reveal and reconnect using a variety of methods: artistic, metaphorical, and ecological. This is hidden hydrology as a practice: the reason for us to study old maps, trace the lines of old creeks, and attempt to restore kinship.
Hidden hydrological features, unlike humans, can physically be restored and brought back to life in a sense. Beyond just memory, we have the potential for rebirth, through our creative endeavors: historical ecology mapping, painting the routes of streams on roadways, ecological restoration, and daylighting. โBack from the deadโ seems a morbid way to think of the processes of restoration, but it gives us the ability to reconnect and restore.
Several other themes can intersect and expand this idea. I recently re-read a portion of Braiding Sweetgrass, where Robin Wall Kimmerer talks of the Grammar of Animacy. I am struck by the similar themes of kinship, as she discusses how we relate to and reference these ecological systems. An excerpt from an Orion article from 2017, โRobin Wall Kimmerer on the Language of Animacyโ hints at this idea:
If itโs just stuff, we can treat it any way that that we want. But if itโs family, if itโs beings, if theyโre other persons we have ecological compassion for themโฆ Speaking with the grammar of animacy brings us all into this circle of moral consideration. Whereas when we say โit,โ we set those beings, those โthings,โ as they say, outside of our circle of moral responsibility.โ
We connect our morality to things we understand. Another theme that this also evokes is the writings of Robert Macfarlane, particularly when he speaks of language and how words connect us to the natural world, another form of โkinshipโ. I wrote eons ago about this lost language of nature, including Macfarlane and Anne Whiston Spirn, both of who also have written about lost rivers. Along with Lopez and Kimmerer, these authors prod us to rethink our ability to connect with our kin, hidden or visible, degraded or pristine.
Iโm curious to hear your thoughts on how we can develop and expand these relationships, our โkinshipโ, specifically with places no longer visible and viable. Are there good examples you know of where lost relationships have been reestablished? Do you feel a kinship or even see this as a goal, with other species or with the wider landscape?
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 11/06/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.
There is a rich literary history around hidden hydrology, which I was reminded of by the recent publication of the novel โThere Are Rivers in the Skyโ by Elif Shafak. The book has gained attention for its interwoven stories around water, and, notably, specific references to โlost riversโ.
The novel includes three storylines from different eras, with the characters of Arthur from 1840s London, Narin from 2014 in Turkey, and Zaleekah in 2018 in London, each occupying a specific water-based narrative. As summarized in the Penguin Random House blurb:
“โฆย There Are Rivers in the Skyย entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, riversโthe Tigris and the Thamesโtranscend history, transcend fate: โWater remembers. It is humans who forget.โ
Iโll try to avoid any spoilers, while I discuss how this relates to hidden hydrology. Itโs an engaging tale, touching on the discovery of the Epic of Gilgamesh, a reference to A.H. Layardโs โNineveh and Its Remainsโ, mudlarking and toshers, some cameos like John Snow and his โGhost Mapโ investigations of water-borne cholera near the Broad Street pump, some interesting ideas of water dowsing, and my new favorite cuneiform symbol for water.
The wildest idea is โaquatic memoryโ, which provides some narrative drive, alluded to in the description above, that a single drop of water connects multiple people through time. The ideas in the book were formulated by Zaleekahโs fictional mentor, who was ultimately disgraced by his pursuit of what others considered unreliable pseudo-science, as noted (187):
“โฆunder certain circumstances, water — the universal solvent — retained evidence, or ‘memory,’ of the solute particles that had dissolved in it, no matter how many times it was diluted or purified. Even if years passed, or centuries, and not a single original molecule remained, each droplet of water maintained a unique structure, distinguishable from the next, marked forever by what it once contained. Water, in other words, remembered.”
The idea seemingly makes for compelling storytelling, however, it seemed a bit underdeveloped in the novel itself in my opinion. It does provide a loose framework for the same water moleculeโs memories (loosely based on the real-life ideas of Jacques Benveniste), but fails to explain what this idea means beyond the 3 main characters and their narratives. Thereโs a โsummaryโ table of the water path through the story at the end, but, to me, it didnโt really mean much and the result is a lot of missed potential.
LOST RIVERS
The lost river content was also somewhat underdeveloped, reading as minimal and tangential anecdotes that seem forced into the story versus being fundamental to any of the plotlines. Zaleekah, the character supposedly studying this phenomenon honestly didnโt do a lot, although she had the most potential to expand the ideas of how lost rivers connect with aquatic memory and even the larger storyline. Her role in the story becomes muddled with a failed marriage, and dysfunctional family dynamics that connect to the greater story in the end but donโt contribute much more.
She makes the bold claim early on, โIโm part of a project โ weโre collaborating with scientists worldwide to help restore lost rivers.โ (151) but never really discusses what they do in a meaningful way, or how it relates to the story. It leads to a forced conversation touching on the River Biรจvre in Paris and giving a cursory โthese are everywhereโ sort of list, and how we buried them.
She later discusses Londonโs lost rivers, which reads like a guidebook entry (or a marginally more interesting recounting of Bartonโs Lost Rivers of London), rather than something enlivening the story. For instance, this passage (183-184):
โThen there is the River Effra in South London, concealed and culverted, nowadays a conduit for drainage and waste matter, silently coursing under not only houses and offices but also cemeteries, whence it sometimes unearths and carries off buried coffins. There is also the Tyburn, a source of delicious fresh salmon in the distant past, though barely remembered these days, as it flows unseen and unheard underneath celebrated urban landmarks. The Walbrook, once a sapphire-blue river running through the Roman fort of Londonium into the Thames, shimmering like the wing of a dragonfly, provided residents with clean water; now it only feeds into a malodorous sewer.โ
Later on, she discovers a note on her desk in her office when searching for something, with the following jotted down: (186)
โHOW TO BURY A RIVER
Build concrete troughs along both sides of the riverbed.
Add a roof to the troughs.
Encase the river completely on three sides, turning it into one long, winding coffin.
Cover the roof with earth, making sure no trace is visible.
Build your city over it.
Forget that it was there.โ
Itโs all sort of random and snippets like this are a throw-away with little context and less relationship to the overall narrative. Thereโs nothing to follow up on why we should care and how lost rivers tie into the bigger story. I will admit that having a specific agenda about how lost rivers and hidden hydrology fit into fictional narrative structures is a little pedantic. So my defense is that, on the whole, I liked the story, while I was also disappointed in how these subjects of water and lost rivers were incorporated.
My disappointment comes from a desire to see more opportunities in embedding the ideas of lost rivers into creative writing, to inform and engage a larger audience about the concepts. I am always excited and a little worried when I hear about examples that promise such. Much of the writing around lost rivers only appeals to a very interested subset of people, so connecting these ideas to mainstream culture, popular media, and entertainment could help spread the word to folks who would not be interested otherwise.
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THE EXPANDED LITERARY FIELD
On that note, the first time I connected with the idea of hidden hydrology in literature was a few years back when I wrote an essay related to a novel by Ben Winters from 2016 โUnderground Airlines.โ The story features Pogueโs Run, a hidden urban stream in Indianapolis, which plays a vital role in the narrative of the novel. Since then, Iโve been collecting previous explorations of literature around hidden hydrology, where subsurface waterways play a significant role in the plot and action of the story.
From a purely hidden hydrology, thereโs a short list of titles, some of which Iโve read and others Iโve found or have been clued into by research or other readers. This resulted in a short loose working bibliography.
There are Rivers in the Sky (Shafak), 2024
Rivers of London (Aaronovitch), 2016-2024
Underground Airlines (Winters), 2016
The City of Ember (DuPrau), 2013
Dodger (Pratchett), 2012
Montmorency (Updale), 2003
Neverwhere (Gaiman), 1996
The Doom of the Great City (Delisle Hay), 1880
Journey to the Center of the Earth (Verne), 1864
Les Miserables (Hugo), 1862
This investigation intersects with much broader and fascinating areas of inquiry like the Underworld, and a literary subgenre known as Subterranean Fiction. Beware of rabbit holes, as these yield wild threads like Hollow Earth theory (which makes for great fiction). Works span centuries and many genres like sci-fi and fantasy, delving into the literal underworld below the surface. However they do not always specifically touch on waterways, so not all are relevant.
HELP EXPAND THE LIST
The list above is modest, so I hope to expand this initial catalog and explore the full spectrum of possible literary hidden hydrology references. Let me know if you have other examples or favorites youโve encountered where the concept and context of buried creeks, sewers, and lost rivers play a part in novels, stories, or other fictional works. I would love to expand my overall library of options, hear your thoughts, and explore more deeply.
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 10/15/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.
There are multiple ways of activating urban waterways, including those focusing on ecological, economic, and social aspects. Urban surfing is a unique way to use waterways in the city for recreation and people-watching, expanding on the use of swimming and boating by modifying the flows of existing rivers or creating artificial waves in waterways. Recently, a few examples of these projects came across my screens, and I was blown away.
Eisbachwelle | Munich, Germany
The most well-known of these urban surf spots is the Eisbachwelle, a standing wave created in the Eisbach River in Munich. According to the article โEisbach: the mother of all river waves.โ (Surfer Today), the site has been surfed since the 1970s, and over time the flow has been modified using planks and ropes to make the swell more consistent. The site hosts surfing competitions and as seen below, all season surfing in the urban core.
The article delves more into the process of how the park was developed, and what was done to integrate the recirculating system into an existing canal. The project aims to be a destination, with different experiences for beginners to learn, versus areas for seasoned surfers. The club also includes a restaurant and bar, rentals, and several other amenities beyond the surf.
The proposed system, set to open soon after a 12-year process to get it built, produces waves every seven seconds through a complicated mechanical system of pumps, designed by consultants at SurfLoch. According to the article, Rif010:
โโฆuses pneumatic technology to mirror the way waves form in the ocean. At RIF010, this technology is powered by eight engines that are powered by wind energy sourced from the North Sea. The engines do what the wind does in real life, namely โpush and pullโ the water to create a succession of waves known as a swell.โ
In the United States, a little bit of searching on on the topic yields the story of Big Surf in the 1960s. As noted in the article, โBig Surf: the story of America’s first modern wave pool.โ (Surfer Today) discusses the design and development of Big Surf, a totally artificial wave park in Tempe Arizona, simulating real wave action miles from the ocean.
Our focus here is less on the water park model and more on activating urban rivers and waterways. The article โRiver Surfing: The 7 Best Destinations in the USA.โ (American Surf Magazine, 04.03.24) showcases several other examples worth a look, a few of which are more urban and river-based versions.
River Run Park | Sheridan, Colorado
Located near Denver, along the South Platte River, River Run Park was constructed with three surfing waves, called Chichlets (seen below), Benihanas, and Nikki Sixx, each providing more difficulty.
A plan shows the constriction of the river which were originally drop structures in a channelized stream. As noted in the ASLA Colorado award submittal from DHM Design: โThe project reconstructed two large, existing drop structures and replaced them with six lower drop structures that include recreational features from wave shapers for surfing and kayaks to water shoots for kids play.โ
Closer to (my) home, the Bend Whitewater Park provides multiple experiences through modification of the hydrology of the Deschutes River. There are 3 distinct channels, one focused on habitat, another for slow floating, and a third, a whitewater channel with multiple waves for surfing, kayaking, and paddleboarding.
The three channels of the Bend Whitewater Park (Jeffrey Conklin/Bend Magazine)
The list above is not exhaustive (please send me others you know about), but gives a snapshot of some European and US places that provide unique opportunities to carve some waves without a trip to the beach. While not focused on the ecological benefits these provide special locations for use of urban waterways for surfers and spectators.
For some bonus reading, the article โA brief history of artificial wave pools.โ (Surfer Today) outlines the historical evolution of introducing waves into water bodies through artificial means, dating back to the mid-19th century! It’s probably worth a follow-up on this interesting tangent to the potential of waterway transformation.
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 06/11/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.
