cultural – Page 4 – Hidden Hydrology

23 December 2016 23 December 2016

Poetics of Lost Rivers

Jason Kingcultural, history, language, literature, london, places, streamsLeave a Comment

A diversion from the explorations of precedents of cities, we turn to Swimming To Heaven: London’s Lost Rivers by Iain Sinclair the “british writer, documentarist, film maker, poet, flaneur, metropolitan prophet and urban shaman, keeper of lost cultures and futurologist” I wasn’t sure what to expect, and was pleasantly surprised, as was one of those singular experiences that transcends disciplinary boundaries of urbanist, historical, literary, and hydrological worlds. While the topics is Lost Rivers and exploration of the urban, the meditations on water and experience inform a larger connection with place, history, and language akin to what I reference in the title as ‘Poetics’.

Sinclair starts to explain the motivation early:

“Walking over or alongside the buried rivers of London stitches a form of collective memory in our sides.” (3)

Mentioning a continuing fascination and obsession with the water, Sinclair points out early on where the book derived from. “My neurosis persists: the only ways worth negotiating with this world, while still hoping to connect with the rhythms of the cosmos, are by walking and swimming. Which brings me to the haunting complexity of London’s buried rivers. They’re not lost, not at all. Just because you can’t see a thing, as Ed Dorn points out, doesn’t mean that it’s not there. The rivers continue, hidden and culverted as they might be, to flow through our dreams, fixing the compass of our moods and movements. The Walbrook, the Fleet, the Tyburn, the Westbourne, the Effra, the Neckinger: visible or invisible, they haunt us.” (5)

A Map of London Before the Houses – via @culturaltales

A previous book by Sinclair (which I have not read) is a meditation on his home place, captured in detail in Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, which referenced again in Lost Rivers, when he mentions,“Hackney, before the coming of the canals and railways, was quite a desirable suburb” (14) and “…all these blessings derived from the existence of a founding river, the Hackney Brook. Now bricked over, made into a sewer, lost to us.” (15)

Sinclair connects this to the lost rivers, “It is not possible to understand the growth and development of Hackney, for example, without registering the presence of that subterranean river, the Hackney Brook” (5-6)

Hackney Brook as lost river thus becomes the inspiration, per Sinclair. “I think we should first of all take on the conceit of the ‘lost’ river as being applicable to the whole of London. How do we define a lost river? Are these simply rivers that have become degraded by exploitation, the excesses of mechanical industry? They are present, certainly, their names coded into the streets, but you’d hardly know that they’re there. Or are we talking about rivers that have disappeared — been culverted — and I think that’s more like it. I the mid-nineteenth century, there was a moment when many inconvenient tributaries were culverted, because we needed to introduce, by way of the civil engineer, Sir Joseph Bazalgette, a very effective sewerage system. A circuit of London’s waste to be washed away, purified, dumped into the Thames.” (15-16)

Workmen culverting Hackney Brook in Mare street (c.1900)

Sinclair laments the path that led to the burial of streams like Hackney Brook, or others throughout London. “The old rivers, with their intensely local benefits and pastoral memory traces, were also deemed anachronistic. Either rivers were of use, for transport or water power, or they were hidden, as carriers of disease and conduits of filth and waste.” Seen as progress, “…a sewage system was a proud Victorian boast of progress, contrived to lift the citizens of this powerful imperial metropolis away from the fetid stinks and oozes of the earlier, louder and stickier city of collisions.” (16) His rivers lost to this modernization, are the “…rivers of memory, of inspiration” (7) and thus derive from the idea that “certain areas of the city have their individual sense of time”. (13) While Hackney Brook is the local place for Sinclair, he posits that “…the most mythologized of London’s lost rivers is the Fleet.” (16)

This is seen throughout history, beginning with Wren’s concept for London post-fire in 1666 could have transformed the city differently, utilizing the River Fleet (now buried) as a Venetian canal.

From another post from Chris Haile expands with an explanation of the plan in more detail: “From the remaining part of Fleet Street which escaped the fire about St. Dunstan’s Church a straight and wide street crosses the valley passing by the south side of Ludgate, and thence in a direct line through the whole City terminating at Tower Hill, but before it descends into the Valley where the Great Sewer [the Fleet, a tributary of the Thames] runs… Passing forward we cross the valley, once sullied with an offensive sewer now beautified with a useful canal, with wharves on each side, passable by as many bridges as streets that cross it.” (from Haile 2/1/14)

The southern reaches of the Fleet, flowing from Holborn Bridge, beneath Fleet Bridge, and into the Thames next to Bridewell Palace (between 1553 and 1559)

Sinclair meditates on this plan – and the brief moment before the opportunity was lost. “There was that moment when Christopher Wren felt that he could initiate, with a revamp of the Fleet, a new Venice, right at the river’s mouth, close to St Paul’s Cathedral: a shining rational city of domes and bridges and splendid public works…. Wren didn’t have CGI futurism as a tool, ersatz utopianism, but he did have drawings that suggested Fleet-as-Venice would be a wonder of the age. Except that every soon, and inevitably, the river was a ditch, a sewage creek crusted with dead dogs.” (22-23) The dichotomy of river as urban canal versus the reality of river as sewer is perhaps the dominant theme of lost rivers, culminating in the Great Stink and the Victorian modernization of municipal sewers, which has Sinclair adds, had the result that finally, “the river was enclosed, sealed over, lost.” (23)

Sinclair also evokes a number of literary figures in the book, asking “What is this affinity of London visionaries, writers and mystics, with living water?”. (7) This includes William Blake, who “…lived close to the Thames, tracking the River Fleet to Hampstead, to visit the Linnells, Blake is making a return to the source. He is swimming uphill, absorbing the potency of a partly submerged stream; one of the arteries of his city. There is a very particular sense of London and its geography. And underlying all of this are torrential lines of verse in the great epic poems and wild waters of inspiration surging, stalling, tumbling over weirs and falls.” (6-7)

Another poet inspired by the Fleet is Aiden Andrew Dun author of the long poem Vale Royal “…registers the accretions of fable associated with what he calls the ‘River of Wells’. Dun tracks the fleet from the seven springs of Kenwood, through Camden Town to Kings Cross. He speaks of a river famous ‘for healing and medicinal waters’.” tapping the deep vein of “…meaning and mythology of the Fleet. In practical terms, he leads walks that he calls ‘river pilgrimages’ through the historic traces of the submerged stream.” (17)

Construction work in 1845 to deepen the sewer carrying the Fleet down Fleet Street

Dun “remind us that the Fleet ‘still runs under Kings Cross today’… ‘As late as the mid-nineteenth century’, he says, ‘it ran on the surface through a green and pleasant land. But south of the Euston Road at this period it was already bricked-over and buried’.” (33)

From Vale Royal:

Kings Cross, dense with angels and

histories / there are cities beneath your

pavements / cities behind your skies. Let

me see! (34)

1854 — The Corporation of London workmen repairing the Fleet sewer, south of Fleet street under the direction of Mr. W. Haywood. The sewers carried 87,000,000 gallon of water daily in 1854. — Image by © CORBIS

Building on the work of Dun and Blake, Sinclair continues to delve into literary ruminations on the lost rivers. He mentions that “Text, under the influence of buried rivers, becomes porous.” (30) which is true of London poets Bill Griffiths and Allen Fisher both of whom “…treat our lost rivers. Both of them track South London streams, in the thick of local particulars, towards and erased history, to emerge in the contemporary world of political opportunism, civic discord.” (37)

From Fisher’s poem Place:

if I take a river to its source / and in the

case of the Falcon Brook / this is 2 springs

/ & follow its course / from head to tail /

to the Thames / I may arrived from at least

three projections / the source in the springs

/ is not the actual source / but the first

visible source / so that if Pound said it /

it is original / this originality has come

because of previous accumulation (39)

Anecdotes abound as well, with diversions on the subterranean sewers in The Third Man, which was set in Vienna where we picture Orson Welles – “flapping overcoat running through picturesque sewers. Welles was not ever keen on going down into the tunnels, so they ended up recording sound effects under London: in the Fleet.” (23)

And a special one I’d love to look at closer, the Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead (Beneath the Surface of Victorian Sensationalism) by Thomas Boyle, which “The stream rushes on, now under the pavements, slaughterhouses, prisons, book stalls, down the valley of the Fleet, towards myths of albino hogs in the sludge of dripping subterranean spaces… Legends of animals, escaped from Smithfield, feeding on refuse, living in darkness… It has been said that… Hampstead sewers shelter a monstrous breed of black swine.” (35-36)

The literary and the sensational intersect in the sewers and buried rivers of cities, something that is unlike other books on Lost Rivers that take the approach of tour guide, ecological investigator, or historian. Sinclair: “However contradictory your approach to writing about the city, whether you’re a modernist using conceptual methods of research, combined with walking, bus trips, photography, painting, or whether you’re a traditional poet obedient to strict form, rivers infiltrate your projections as memory strips or teasing songlines.” (39-40)

The dialogue is critical without being overly environmental or sentimental. In his discussions, there are moments when the impact of buried rivers sometimes comes to the surface of the writing.

“When rivers lose their status, spiritually and materially, the land is drained of value.” (52-53)

The loss of value becomes transactional, “Hidden rivers are part of an attempt to found a celestial city above the degraded particulars of the nexus of business and banking.” (25) The cost below for another type of city seen above, the “subterranean streams brooding beneath speculative developments in the new suburbs of the west.” (62-63)

This is where we enter the poetics of Lost Rivers, the book a lovely and dichotomous metaphor of the above and below ground city – the old and the new, that looks at loss yielding “…this vision of hybrid London, rus in urbe, snaking away to source, beyond the reservoirs, parks, spring pools…” (49) while also connecting to “London’s plural nature: city within city, upside-down topography, rivers flowing under the ground, heaven inside the ball of earth.” (37)

Unless noted, all quotes from:
Sinclair, Iain. Swimming to Heaven: The Lost Rivers of London. London: The Swedenborg Society, 2013.

22 November 2016 12 December 2016

Hidden Rivers of Washington DC

Jason Kingcity, creeks, cultural, history, maps, precedents, streams, washington dc2 Comments

The work of David Ramos and his work on the site Imaginary Terrain that includes mapping, tours, and investigations of the hidden rivers of Washington DC. He comes at the task from the lens of designer, developer, and design educator and mentions: “I’m interested in how long-buried natural systems and historic land use patterns poke their way to the surface, shaping our cities today. I produce maps and lead tours that examine landscape history and planning issues, particularly in the D.C. area.” This is the point of departure for his work mapping the historic and modern of DC.

Some earlier maps show the evolution from the mapping of the creeks on the historical map and the modern street network.

Map data is available in a GitHub repository here, and an interactive version of the map is also available to explore in more detail.

As mentioned, the bulk of historical mapping data is derived from the Topographical map of the District of Columbia / surveyed in the years 1856 ’57 ’58 & ’59 by Albert Boschke which was published in 1861. It shows the plan for Washington DC as well as extensive outlying areas.

This followed the 1857 publication by of the Map of Washington City, District of Columbia, seat of the federal government: respectfully dedicated to the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of North America which was a more zoomed in version showing structures of the formal city.

These maps are both available via the Library of Congress, which also offers an interesting origin story:

“With the outbreak of hostilities in April 1861, it became necessary to begin preparing the defenses of Washington, DC. In 1857, Albert Boschke, a German born civil engineer, published his Map of Washington City, District of Columbia, seat of the federal government: respectfully dedicated to the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of North America which showed, for the first time, the location of every structure in the city as of the publication date. Following the publication of the 1857 map, Boschke and his surveyors continued surveying the entire District of Columbia, sometimes referred to as the ‘ten mile square’, which resulted in his landmark Topographical map of the District of Columbia / surveyed in the years 1856 ’57 ’58 & ’59. Published in 1861, near the outbreak of the war, this very detailed map showing the locations of all the structures in the city was a potential threat to the security of the entire city, the seat of the federal government. According to an 1894 article by Marcus Baker in the National Geographic Magazine, Boschke sold his interest in the map to the publisher, David McClelland. Shortly after publication, representatives from the War Department seized the original manuscript and copper plates from which the map was published to prevent dissemination of the map.”

I’m also intrigued by one of Ramos’ references, a circular from the late 1970s by the US Geological Survey (USGS) by Garnett P. Williams entitled Washington, D.C.’s Vanishing Springs and Waterways / Geological Survey Circular 752.

“This paper traces the disappearance or reduction of the many prominent springs and waterways that existed in Washington, D.C. , 200 years ago. The best known springs were the Smith Springs (now under the McMillan Reservoir), the Franklin Park Springs (13th and I Streets, NW.), Gibson ‘s Spring (15th and E Streets, NE.), Caffrey ‘s Spring (Ninth and F Streets, NW.), and the City Spring (C Street between Four and One-Half and Sixth Streets, NW.). Tiber Creek, flowing south to the Capitol and thence westward along Consititution Avenue, joined the Potomac River at 17th Street and Constitution Avenue. In the 1800’s, the Constitution Avenue reach was made into a canal which was used by scows and steamboats up to about 1850. The canal was changed into a covered sewer in the 1870’s, and the only remaining visible surface remnant is the lock-keeper ‘s little stone house at 17th and Constitution Avenue, NW. Because of sedimentation problems and reclamation projects, Rock Creek, the Potomac River , and the Anacostia River are considerably narrower and shallower today than they were in colonial times. For example, the mouth of Rock Creek at one time was a wide, busy ship harbor , which Georgetown used for an extensive foreign trade, and the Potomac River shore originally extended to 17th and Constitution Avenue, NW. (Woodard-USGS)”

The fact that this document was produced by the USGS I am curious what the motivation was, beyond mere historical interest. There is some reference to sedimentation in current creeks, due to development, and the cost of dredging to maintain navigability. Perhaps worthy of a follow-up post. Finally, I did find this interesting MLA Thesis from Virginia Tech student Curtis A. Millay, worth checking out: Restoring the Lost Rivers of Washington: Can a city’s hydrologic past inform its future?

The main question is interesting, and offers potential for how study of historic hydrology can inform future development.

“Can a historically-driven investigation of these buried channels lend credence to the resurrection in some form of a network of surface stormwater channels, separate from the municipal sewage system, to solve the city’s sewage overflow crisis? The following study is an initial exploration of the re-establishment of waterways through Washington with the purpose of improving the current storm sewer overflow dilemma and exploring the potential urban amenities that they could provide as part of a stormwater management plan for the year 2110.”

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19 November 2016 12 December 2016

Vancouver’s Secret Waterways

Jason Kingcity, creeks, cultural, history, landscape, maps, places, streams, vancouver8 Comments

I stumbled on this map a few years ago, while searching for precedents in the Pacific Northwest for disappeared streams similar to Portland. The image below is a fold out map insert from a book by Sharon Proctor ‘Vancouver’s Old Streams’ (1978), which incorporates streams from 1880-1920.

The hand-drawn quality of the map is a nice touch, with the original shoreline, rivers/streams, and what is called in some cases, ‘Educated guess of waterways’. The description of the map alludes to the varying nature of information and hydrology.

“This map shows the natural drainage of Vancouver, as it was before the City was built. Based on old maps, Archival records and interviews with pioneers, it continually changes as additional sources of information emerge or as people dig new holes in the ground.”

I’m still trying to track down a copy of the book that has the original map, as many I’ve found are missing the map, or only found in libraries. A search yields a link for the Featured Digitization Project at from UBC’s Koerner Library, Vancouver’s Secret Waterways, where Proctor’s map was updated by Paul Lesack in 2011 and available in a new PDF format, as well as GIS shapefiles and Google Map KMZ. A quick summary of the project:

“Vancouver’s vanished streams and waterways can now be seen again in Google Earth, PDF form and other digital formats. UBC Library digitized the content of the Aquarium’s old paper maps, allowing both scholars and the public to see the paths of old streams and the original shoreline of Vancouver. The digitized maps encompass only the area of the City of Vancouver, and show the large area of land reclaimed since the 1880′s.”

The map was subsequently published by the Vancouver Aquarium and although a bit less DIY than Proctor’s original, perhaps easier to read and based on the more recent city grid.

A variation on this comes from the False Creek Watershed Society, created by Bruce Macdonald with drawings and design by Celia Brauer, provides a bit more habitat and cultural context to the story, along similar lines to the Waterlines Project in Seattle, with indigenous villages, flora and fauna, and historical place names. These are available to purchase from FCWS.

The earliest map I’ve found for Vancouver was towards the end of the centry, this one from the Vancouver Archive showing a plan of a relatively developed city “Drawn in 1893 by Allen K. Stuart, pioneer, May 1886, in the City Engineer’s Office, City Hall, Powell Street, where he was Assistant City Engineer” which coincides with the founding on Vancover a few years earlier in 1886 (many decades later than Portland and Seattle, which were formally established closer to the 1850s). Some of the creeks remain, but many are no longer evident, maybe to show the relatively developability of the gridded plan, or due to the fact that they had already been piped.

Also available to tell some of the story are some of the aerial lithographs popularized in most cities in the late 1800s. A black and white version of the Panoramic view of the City of Vancouver, British Columbia, from 1898, shows a view looking south over Burrard Inlet, across the modern downtown towards False Creek and areas south.

The colored version is also available in reasonably detailed high resolution also, which reveals that many of the streams documented on the 1850s map were lost to development within the 40 plus year time-frame when this was published.

Proctor’s map of Vancouver is an interesting example of the disappeared streams concept being investigated back in the 1970s, and makes me think that in many cities, there were probably efforts even earlier by others. Carrying on that tradition and modernizing the maps were a good attempt to reconnect people with place and ecological history. Also, the early plans, surveys and aerial lithographs allow us to connect landscape change over time. They offer a bit more margin of error, since they don’t have the same fidelity of aerial photography was not in continuous practice until well into the 20th Century.

17 November 2016 12 December 2016

Seattle: The Waterlines Project

Jason Kingcity, creeks, cultural, ecology, history, landscape, language, maps, places, precedents, seattle1 Comment

Many precedents and projects from the around the globe, being slowly populated in the Resources section. These will all get some more in-depth attention, and starting it off locally, I wanted to highlight The Waterlines Project. The ability to ‘Discover and Explore Seattle’s Past Landscapes’ is hosted by the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, and offers a densely researched and vibrant picture of the historic cultural and ecology of Seattle prior to the significant engineering that has subsequently taken place.

“Founded on Indian ground by American settlers in 1851, Seattle is one of the most dramatically engineered cities in the United States. Its shorelines have been extended, lagoons filled, hills flattened and rivers re-routed. Built on an active geological fault near a large volcano, Seattle has also been jolted by huge earthquakes, washed by tsunamis, covered by volcanic mud and ash, fluted by glaciers and edged by rising seas.”

The project is historical in nature, using the shorelines as a datum for use and reconfiguration over time, which the creators offer as”an appropriate and compelling framework for viewing the city’s history–one that will engage public audiences and raise themes that are important in American history.” Synthesis of documentary info (maps, photos) alongside oral histories and other archaeological and geological study weaves a mosaic visual that is more accessible to the public.

The main product of the project is the large Waterlines Project Map, which available in a number of places around Seattle, as well as graphic and PDF download on the site. The front illustrates the mid-19th Century landscape, before settlement by non-native peoples, including keyed places that reference Coast Salish terms, many of which are evocative and descriptive of function, such as The Growing Place and Water Falling Over an Edge. The ecology is also evident, with a range of forest, prairie, wetland, rivers and creeks.

There’s also a very faint outline of the modern shoreline, which doesn’t dominate but gives a feel for the adjustment of these Waterlines the significant filling, straightening, and flattening that occurred. This is highly evident in the mouth of the Duwamish River seen below, with the creation of Harbor Island and industrial lands south of downtown, as well as the channelization of the previously bendy river.

The back side of the map shows more information in the form of tours of significant historical stories, such as the lakes, glaciation, and rivers, as well as the original settlement location in current Pioneer Square, which was also an indigenous village named The Crossing Over Place. There’s also a timeline of the most recent 20,000 years of geology and development for a bit of long context.

The background for the map is immense, drawing from the previous work of the the Puget Sound River History Project, and involves multiple disciplines. yet it’s simple and effective, somewhat similar to the Mannahatta 2D visuals. The site offers additional source materials, such as maps, photographs and links to resources. Some interesting juxtaposition occurs when paired with recent aerial photos at similar scale – both as a way to emphasis erasure and addition, but also to show traces of what still remains.

The iterations of time between the two time intervals above are indicative of the Seattle penchant for ‘making land’ (matched in intensity with ‘taking land’ perhaps). The story of the filling of the Duwamish and colonization of tideflats and water from 1875 through 2008 in the series below and reinforces the significant alteration that both radically shifted the ecology of Seattles only river, but also provided land to grow the city and industrial base.

The core team includes Peter Lape, Amir Sheikh, and Donald Fels, and a host of collaborators listed here. While referential, the focus is not on the buried streams and creeks, so my work is complementary and draws much in terms of inspiration and information from this project as well as possible collaborations and resources in Seattle.

For a bit more context surrounding the Little Crossing Over Place, this video made by the team shows the transformation of the Pioneer Square area of Seattle “a bird’s eye glimpse at some of the social, economic, and landscape histories of the neighborhood through time.”

# all images via Waterlines

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15 November 2016 14 November 2016

Lost Rivers

Jason Kingcreeks, cultural, ecology, film, maps, places, reviews, streamsLeave a Comment

p9784174_p_v8_aa I finally had a chance to view the Lost Rivers documentary thanks to a co-worker picking up a copy of the DVD. The log line sums it up: “Once upon a time, in almost every city, many rivers flowed. Why did they disappear? How? And could we see them again? This documentary tries to find answers by meeting visionary urban thinkers, activists and artists from around the world.”

The films highlight a bit of the multifarious of the hidden hydrology paradigm, that of the explorers, or ‘drainers’ that crawl through pipes in search of photos, and adventure, cities daylighting streams for economic development, urban archeologists with a penchant for maps and popping manhole covers, and designers proposing integrated strategies for flood control and stormwater management. The common thread of these stories, including Montreal and Toronto in Toronto, European examples in London, Brescia, Italy, and some daylighting projects in both Seoul, South Korea and Yonkers, New York.

“We built our cities on the shores of rivers. Over time we pushed rivers away, out of sight and out of reach. But they’re still there. Hidden, everywhere. And around the world city dwellers are on a quest to reconnect to this lost nature.”

We first meet the explorers, or “drainers”, as they are referenced by Danielle Plamondon, one of these explorers that regularly appears throughout the documentary. All around the world folks don hip waders and backpacks of gear, then crawl, rappel, and slog through sewers. The reasons are varied, some with a bent for history, others for the joy of revealing that which is hidden. The illegality of it is also a draw, moving into these as she mentions in the beginning, of people who know what she does, “They don’t realize how forbidden it is.”

I had the distinct feeling that the adventure/illegal paradigm might be the only draw, and wondered, beyond the thrill, what the point of these explorations would be. Having traced a few creeks, it’s been many years since the desire to crawl through pipes passed my mind, although I have to admit this piqued my curiosity for sure. One creative output was photography of the tunnels – which is excellent and perhaps the only view most people will have of these places. Lost Rivers includes the work of Andrew Emond, exploring Montreal’s Saint Pierre River, which starts as a trickle near a golf course and leads to a subterranean labyrinth. His photographs are pretty amazing, and the documentary features some bonus tracks with more of his art installations.

Beyond the purely adventuresome, the film does delve into the history to a degree, and what better city to do this than London, birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. The rapid development of the city meant that London was one of the first. As described by Tom Bolton, author of London’s Lost Rivers, there are 15-20 buried rivers that used to flow on the surface into the Thames, with around two-thirds of the original tributaries either partially or completely buried.

The rivers grew cities, providing hydropower for mills, inputs for tanneries and manufacturing, clean drinking water for residents, all were the engine of industrial development. The same processes which grew cities also led to the downfall of these waterways, with population growth these creeks and rivers became polluted and often deadly. The ‘Great Stink‘ in London in 1858 caused the city to virtually shut down due to smells, and rampant cholera, which quickly led to the modernization and sanitation of these creeks underground in sewers.

This happened in virtually every city in various forms and expresses itself in many ways today, including basement flooding or sewer backups, or even sinking houses, such as those in Toronto that are located atop the former route of Garrison Creek.

Cities that used creeks to drive industrialization were also quick to close them up for progress. Yonkers, New York took the working Saw Mill River, which is a tributary of the Hudson River, and installed a flume, which was buried under a parking lot. As seen in the photos below, the river was channelized, and then eventually capped and filled, a fate that tens of thousands of urban creeks fell to in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Driven by a need for economic development to revitalize downtown, the daylighting of the Saw Mill River was seen not just as an ecological plus, but as an economic driver. Ninety years after it was capped, and at considerable cost, the restoration of the river has restored vitality to a depressed downtown core.

The efforts have also been coupled with habitat plans, and followed by environmental education of school kids, who are helping study the ecological impacts of the restoration, particularly on creating new habitat for the American Eel.

London also has taken an active approach to using the routes of lost rivers to aid in resilience to flood control, which has been estimated to potentially cost billions. The River Quaggy, which had been culverted for over 100 years, and because a testing ground for a green approach to flood protection. By removing concrete, daylighting creeks, and using open space, ecologists were able to restore wetland vegetation in Sudcliff Park, creating an urban natural reserve that provides protection from flood waters now and into the future. An additional 15 kilometers of river restoration is planned in the future.

The film also points to some of the misses, such as the strategies brought forth by designers in Toronto, even back in the mid 1990s, to utilize open space of the former Garrison Creek basin for a similar type of flood control. Unfortunately, what could have been a new nature-based paradigm was not implemented, the city choosing to use more technological engineering approaches such as storage tunnels.

I really appreciated learning about the Brescia Underground, a group of Italian urban drainers that were given the official status as a historical society, where they lead tours of underground rivers and continue to explore the unique history of their place, including Roman-era marble bridges built almost 1000 years ago.

The public nature of their tours is impressive, not just walking along the surface but leading the public down into the guts of the city. As one of the explorers mentions, “in every city we dream of doing this.”

The final project discussed is one known to many, the amazing and controversial Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul, South Korea. In addition to finally learning how to pronounce the name, it was interesting to learn more about the additional history of this project, which removed an urban elevated highway and restored six kilometers of river to the urban center.

The newly restored river has had over 123 million visitors, and is focused both as an ecological and cultural system. This is not however, without some costs to both. In the process of removing the highway and restoring the river, a large number of merchants were displaced, taking a social and economic toll, as they were relocated from their lucrative high-traffic locations to a new spot where they now struggle to make ends meet. In addition, the ecology of the site is artificial, due to the nature of the hydrology, the water needs to be continually recirculated through the system, with over 100 million cubic meters of water per day pumped from the Han River, which expends enormous amounts of electricity. As mentioned in the film, “authenticity and illusion may be blurred, but people are drawn to it.”

The artificiality of the system and displacement aside, there were some appreciable benefits beyond the human. The diversity of wildlife has been documented, and over 800 new species have been welcomed back into this urban ecosystem, which is impressive. The remnants of the highway structures were a nice touch as well, sort of a post-apocalyptic homage to the new, novel ecosystem created from the detritus of the past.

The conundrum of pure natural systems versus pumping and manipulation of hydrological systems is evident in all of these projects, as we will talk often in hidden hydrology, there is a continuum that spans from the abstract and artistic to weaving through the designed and engineered to the opposite poles of the true ecological and hydrological restoration. There’s no perfect answer, between painting a blue line on the surface to painstakingly mimicking the natural reference ecology – all are valid approaches.

This sort of topic lends itself to multiple types of media, and a documentary offers a unique way to delve into the experiential qualities of lost rivers, especially urban explorations and the sights and sounds of nature buried and also that restored. The structure of the film jumped back and forth between multiple narratives, which inevitably . And while there was an ecological narrative and implications of resilience and climate change, these themes were not always evident, which had the good side of not seeming preachy, but also made the film seem to lack some substance and impact about the potential. It didn’t try to gloss over some of the critical elements, like the failure of plans in Toronto, and some of the artificiality and social impact in Seoul,

Because the film was released a few years ago so screenings are a bit scarce, but you can purchase the DVD here. It is also available for academic use so set up a screening at your school… its worth a look.

Now, where’s a big pipe I can crawl into around here… ?

# All images are screen grabs from the documentary, copyright to the makers, unless otherwise noted.

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13 October 2016 12 December 2016

Origin Stories: David James Duncan

Jason Kingcity, creeks, cultural, language, literature, places, portland, streamsLeave a Comment

duncan_mystory-cover Another inspiration for Hidden Hydrology is the writing of David James Duncan (author of a couple of my favorite books, The River Why and The Brothers K amongst the best). In his book of essays from 2002 entitled ‘My Story as Told by Water‘ Duncan tells some stories with a Portland area spin about his youthful explorations in the area.

The idea of oral histories providing an additional layer to mapping and other on-the-ground study is intriguing, as the narrative is both informative and evocative of what these lost urban waterways meant, and what was lost along with them. Early in his childhood, he mentions growing up on Mount Tabor (the volcanic outgrowth in East Portland – not the biblical version, seen below between downtown and Mt. Hood in the image), and his quote worth discussing hints at the disconnect between the modern city and the natural processes which shape and feed these places:

MtTaborPortlandHood — image via Wikipedia

“My birth-cone’s slopes were drained by tiny seasonal streams, which, like most of the creeks in that industrialized quadrant of Portland, were buried in underground pipes long before I arrived on the scene. … I was born, then, without a watershed. On a planet held together by gravity and fed by rain, a planet whose every creature depends on water and whose every slope works full-time, for eternity, to create creeks and rivers. I was born with neither. The creeks of my birth-cone were invisible, the river from somewhere else entirely.” (p.4)

The water system from early in Portland’s history, was stored at high points like Mount Tabor and piped to surrounding neighborhoods. This shot from 1912 shows one of the reservoirs that are still in operation today (for how long, is a good question).

reservoir-one-south-1912 — image via Vintage Portland

The artificiality of the watershed is evident in Duncan’s discussions, as he makes do with building creeks using the hose and the power of gravity (much to his mothers chagrin) – using with water delivered to reservoirs and coming to his tap, as is common in many cities, from distant locales while burying the remnant hydrology that exists. A map of the water system shows the existing Bull Run watershed in relation to Portland.

Continuing this discussion on Johnson Creek on a youthful visit, showing the degradation of some of the existing waterways that has been occurring for many years. “It was just one of Portland’s dying creeks. Really, one with a much-needed but long-lost Indian name. Johnson Creek was now its anemic title. But it was twenty-six miles long, hence a little too big to bury.” (p.10)

It’s heartening to see the restoration of the creek, which is one of the few to remain on the east side in some natural form, through the work of a number of local groups such as the Johnson Creek Watershed Council, and recently there were reports of dead coho salmon found 15 miles upstream – which is significant as it is the furthest upstream anyone has noticed these species in many years, and a testament to the work on restoration and improvement. Something Duncan would appreciate, no doubt.

While water and rivers was of importance to Duncan, the main driving force for him was fishing – which drove the explorations to the wilds of the city. After leaving Mount Tabor, the family moved further east towards Gresham, and lived for a time on Osborne Road, the future route of I-205. Duncan mentions the lure of possible fishing holes, but the inaccessibility: “A spring a quarter-mile from our new house flowed into a series of backyard trout ponds for neighbors, but these ponds were picture-windowed, guard-dogged, private. The closest fish-inhabited waters to my house, so far as I knew, were the Columbia, three miles due north.” (p.17)

The story continues around the small town of Fairview, under Halsey Street, where Duncan spotted a kid and discovered a hidden world amidst the underbrush: “…the shocking thing, the magical thing, was that he was standing knee-deep in clear, lively creek water. A creek surrounded on all sides by briars so dense I’d never noticed it before.” (p.17) Later in the same spot, he saw a guy catching a trout there “a secret trout stream” and found his new exploration spot, as mentioned “Fairview Creek, it turned out, was five miles long, two-thirds wild, and amazingly full of life.” (p.18) See the location on the far right edge as it interfaces with the Columbia Slough watershed.

Following the course, he found gravel pits headwater at Mud Lake that were stocked rainbow trout, near the Kennel Club, a pond with bullheads, and always adventure in the streams. “In the plunge-pool below the Banfield Freeway culvert, I caught a thirteen-inch Giant Pacific Salamader that stared straight into my eyes, flaring and hissing like something out of Dante Volume one, till I apologized, cut my line and released it.”

The approximate area is interesting to see and compare – although the historical imagery from Google Earth (which is awesome btw) only goes back to 1990, there’s a telling transformation in a twenty year time-span (although still a fair amount of stream left intact with development. I remember this area, as my mother used to live just North of the Salish Ponds Park (south of Halsey) and we took the trails through behind the Target and over into Fairview, which is a real gem and one of those places that, like Duncan, you may walk by many times without realizing it’s there. I’ve highlighted Fairview Creek in Blue.

The same area in 1990 where you can see the residential development along Fairview Creek

The denouement to this story of youthful exploration comes after a few years of fishing these urban creeks and streams:

“At 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 – then noticed something impossible: there was no water in the creek. …I 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 opposte 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 creek’s entire flow had been diverted for months in order to fill two gigantic new settling ponds. My favorite teacher was dead.” (p.22)

A case of disappeared streams, captured in a moment of time from someone that was there. The sadness in this loss is palpable, as it isn’t just a line on a map, but a leaving & breathing part of someone – both their history and their essence. This sort of study of writings offers many opportunities for exploration through history, and can reveal much about a place in the past. Combined with oral histories from residents and other qualitative study, it offers a dimension that maps just can’t on their own. Thus looking beyond the map to the history is vital and inspirational going forward.

(all page references are to: Duncan, David James. My Story as Told by Water. Sierra Club Books, 2002.)

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23 September 2016 23 September 2016

Hawaii’s Hidden Streams

Jason Kingcultural, places, streams3 Comments

Uncovering the Potential of Honolulu’s Hidden Streams – via Next City

The stream was an auwai (‘auwai in Hawaiian), an irrigation ditch dug by Native Hawaiians to divert water from Oahu’s many streams to lo’i, wetland taro patches. Once upon a time, the entirety of Hawaii’s coastal plains was covered in terraced plots of taro, a staple of the Hawaiian diet and a sacred plant throughout Polynesian culture. Auwai crisscrossed the landscape. Water flowed from one patch to the next before returning, filtered, to the fish and salt ponds below.

Today, there is little evidence of this complex irrigation network, especially in Honolulu, where, like in other American cities, even natural streams have been buried, channelized or diverted into manmade canals. The auwai that Howard Hughes discovered was likely buried in the 1920s, encapsulated in concrete and forgotten.