Category: daylighting

Hidden Hydrology + Climate Solutions

Jason Kingart, climate, creeks, cultural, daylighting, equity, history, infrastructure, maps, research, streamsLeave a Comment on Hidden Hydrology + Climate Solutions

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 cities’ buried and lost rivers and climate change. I touched on climate here previously in this post “Lost 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.

I’ve 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 — 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 “hydrological retro-futures” 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. I’d 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 “How ancient waterways could be tapped to cool scorching cities”. The focus is on new scanning methods to reveal buried streams and ‘ancient waterways’ 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 “Casa dell’Acqua” Municipality of Volla (via Cool City)

There’s 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:

“Buried 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.”

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 it’s 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. It’s 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 ‘tapped’ 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.

DETROIT: BURIED BUT NOT DEAD

Connecting the dots of Hidden Hydrology and Climate Change, a recent article makes the link between buried streams and wetlands and flood risk while investigating the inequitable distribution of risk by overlaying redlining map data. A recent article focused on Detroit dives into this connection. (“Buried but not dead: The impact of stream and wetland loss on flood risk in redlined neighborhoods” by Jacob Napieralski, Atreyi Guin, and Catherine Sulich; City and Environment Interactions, January 2024.)

While tying flooding to historically buried waterways isn’t novel, this is a unique idea, using mapping to overlay the Home Owners’ 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.

Redlining Map of Detroit Metro Area (via Article)

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:

“Although 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.”

Figure from article: “An 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).”

The flood risk data came from First Street Foundation’s 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 vegetation—more on both of these in the article, along with all the analyses.

A figure from the article showing flood risks by type of area “associated with inland, coastal zone, ghost streams, and ghost wetlands within redlined neighborhoods.”

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:

“Flood 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.”

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 “…role 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 “hidden hydrology” may play in increasing flood risk.”

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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 “Many modern Americans do not like swamps, herons or no herons, and experience discomfort, irritation, bewilderment, and frustration when coaxed or forced into one…”

Illustration by Carson Ellis (via New Yorker)

Swamps were not always reviled or out of favor, as Proulx recounts, in particular the views of Henry David Thoreau, on the subject:

“Thoreau 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 “Walking”: “Yes, 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.”

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:

“Across 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.”

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.

“One 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 neighbors’ complaints about noisy frogs and fears of flooding.”

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: “Mangrove swamps have been called the earth’s most important ecosystem, because they form a bristling wall that stabilizes the land’s 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 survive—but not always.”

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.

“Although climate researchers see mangrove swamps as crucially important frontline defenses against rising seawater and as superior absorbers of CO2—they are five times more efficient than tropical forests—they are in big trouble, and mangrove removal is a constant threat.”

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:

“It 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 “not on my watch.” 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.”

Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 12/17/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.

Daylighting Tibbetts Brook

Jason Kingart, case study, city, climate, creeks, cultural, daylighting, design, ecology, equity, history, infrastructure, maps, new york, places, projects, research, streamsLeave a Comment on Daylighting Tibbetts Brook

The recent essay, “Daylighting a Brook in the Bronx” (Pioneer Works, 10.23.24), by Emily Raboteau, focuses on a high-profile stream daylighting project from a resident’s 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 Brook’s 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:

“Daylighting will abate combined sewage overflow, extend greenspace, absorb heat, and relieve chronic flooding in our area’s janky, archaic drainage system, in an act of climate mitigation and as a community effort to solve a mess caused by old crimes.”

I’m 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 ‘cleaning up’ 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:

“I had so many ethical questions without easy answers. It felt uncouth to ask them of a dream thirty years in the making…. 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 brook’s 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 “perfect” 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 “Rescuing Tibbets Brook” 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 “the sonic geography of the buried Tibbetts Brook.”

Van Cortlandt Park South Bridge (via Noel Hefele)

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:

“I appreciate how initiatives like these offer an expansive response to catastrophe, a way to gather, and even a sense of hope. It’s 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.”

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 “perfect” 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:

“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.”

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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 ‘drainer’ 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, “NYC: Watercourses to Undercity” (Hidden Hydrology, 12.28.17).

Tibbetts Brook, photo by Steve Duncan (via National Geographic)

Tibbetts Brook was the subject of the article “Why New York Is Unearthing a Brook It Buried a Century Ago” (NY Times, 12.6.21), which discusses the project goals and objectives in detail. “The city plans to unearth the brook — an engineering feat known as “daylighting” — at a cost of more than $130 million, because burying it in the sewer system has worsened the city’s flooding problems as a warming planet experiences more frequent and intense storms.”

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 ‘spongy’ green infrastructure, hardening critical infrastructure, and methods to “unclog drains and widen pipes.” I’ve written about Eric Sanderson’s work of historical ecology and mapping hidden waterways in his Mannahatta and the broader Welikia Projects. He writes a powerful post-Ida opinion piece, “Let Water Go Where It Wants to Go” (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.

“Water 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 — expressed through tax dollars — to help people move to safer places.”

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 — which was alluded to by Raboteau — 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:

“Though 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.”

To learn more about this concept, I wrote on “Captured Streams” (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.

Vancouver Rainways

Jason Kingart, city, climate, creeks, cultural, daylighting, design, ecology, habitat, history, infrastructure, landscape, maps, parks, places, precipitation, streams, vancouver, watersheds1 Comment on Vancouver Rainways

The Pacific Northwest has long been one of the innovation hubs for green infrastructure solutions. Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver have been leaders for over two decades in developing innovative options to manage stormwater in urban environments, creating decentralized solutions such as green streets, rain gardens, green roofs, and permeable pavings that have now become standard solutions and spread widely to regions.

In places with high rainfall, the initial drivers for these solutions were managing stormwater and reducing combined sewer overflows (CSOs) where rain and sewage mix in pipes, which, in extreme events, overflows into waterways creating pollution issues. The importance of green infrastructure has grown to include multifaceted outcomes, helping mitigate climate impacts by reducing flooding and providing shade to reduce urban heat, and providing ‘green’ solutions over ‘grey’, increasing habitat and helping minimize biodiversity loss.

Thinking strategically about where these solutions are built is key to success. Looking beyond site-specific and one-off strategies, the goal is to provide larger overarching frameworks for how these strategies are planned to work together to achieve holistic results, and ways to plan for these interventions. “How Rainways Could Restore ‘Raincouver’” (The Tyee, August 24, 2023) highlights some of the recent work in Vancouver. What they refer to as ‘Rainways’ are the green infrastructure interventions that have been proposed by City and community groups going back to 2012 built around water in the city and ways to discover and celebrate it.

St. George Rainway illustration (City of Vancouver, The Tyee)

The St. George Rainway is another precursor to some of the work. It was studied and determined that true creek daylighting would be a challenge, due to infrastructure and costs, however, there were other ways to functionally and metaphorically restore the essence of buried creeks through green infrastructure and art. Neighbors have implemented several interventions, including street murals that follow the meandering route of the old creek.

St George Rainway Street Mural (St George Rainway Project)

To further visualize the potential benefits, the team here are some good before and after visuals on the site, transforming asphalt into rain gardens with pathways and plantings.

Visualization of Rainway along 12th Avenue to Broadway (St. George Rainway)

Rain City Strategy

For a deep dive, the Rain City Strategy is a comprehensive document published in 2019 to celebrate water and address environmental and social challenges. The basis is green infrastructure in the city, using streets and public spaces, buildings and sites, and parks and beaches. The overall goals are water quality, resilience, and livability. This includes the management of stormwater to protect and increase water quality, facilitate infiltration, and become more adaptable to climate impacts by mitigating flooding. Beyond function, creating spaces that provide equitable access to nature and benefits to the community are inherent in solutions, assuring they aren’t just solving one problem but many.

Rain City Vancouver (City of Vancouver)

The report includes references to the original buried and disappeared streams that existed before urbanization. These maps build on the work going back almost 50 years to research done by Sharon Proctor in her book ‘Vancouver’s Old Streams’, published in 1978 with a sweet hand-drawn version of the map below (read more about this in my 2016 post “Vancouver’s Secret Waterways”).

The execution of more formal St George Rainway design concepts is available from 2022, showing how the concepts are applied to the segments of St. George Street, with plans and sketches illuminating the proposed condition.

Concept Design – St. George Rainway (City of Vancouver)

The holistic proposal of looking at the macro-level buried rivers as the genesis for these community interventions. The benefits of the designs are manifold, as noted in the project summary:

  • Reduce street flooding
  • Treat rainwater pollutants from roadways
  • Reduce combined sewer overflows into local waterways
  • Enhance climate resiliency
  • Increase biodiversity
  • Cool the neighbourhood during summer heat

CODA

It’s great to see this connection between hidden hydrology and innovative stormwater solutions take shape in such an intentional way. In the past, cities have looked at these buried stream routes in locating facilities and creating smaller sub-watersheds. For some background, in a presentation back in 2006 at the National ASLA conference, I did a presentation entitled “Neighborsheds for Green Infrastructure”, where I made a case for using the routing of buried streams as a framework to implement green infrastructure solutions in Portland, Oregon. I’ll dig up some of these ideas and repost them, as they may be worth revisiting, in the meantime, I mention it in part of my introductory “Ecological Inspirations” post at HH (see image below). Stay tuned for more on this.

Neighborshed Diagram from 2006 in Portland (Jason King)

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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 05/03/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.

Exploring Canada’s Buried Rivers

Jason Kingcreeks, daylighting, history, maps, montreal, places, streams, toronto, vancouverLeave a Comment on Exploring Canada’s Buried Rivers

A recent CBC News interactive “Buried rivers flow under Canadian cities, hidden in a labyrinth of tunnels and sewer pipes. Will we revive them or let the waterways fade from memory?” (April 3, 2024) provides a deep dive and great graphics and maps for hidden hydrology in three cities, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Jaela Benstien and Emily Chung do a great job of highlighting both the timeline of urban stream disappearance and some of the ways the streams are coming back to life.

The narrative of disappearance mirrors many other cities, including pollution and diseases like cholera and typhoid turning waterways from amenities to dangers. Encasement in pipes became a way to remove the sources from contact and also opened up future land for development.

Images of sewer construction in Montreal’s Saint-Pierre River in the 1930s (Archives de la Ville de Montréal – via CBC)

The article explores particular creeks in Toronto including Mud Creek, where Helen Mills, founder of Lost Rivers, gives a tour of the remnants and traces of the urban waterway. It also discusses Taddle Creek which provides one of those dramatic before-and-after visuals we all dream of when envisioning the hidden hydrology in the modern context.

Taddle Creek near Toronto University, in 1861 (uc.utoronto.ca/public domain/CBC)
The same view in 2023 (Emily Chung/CBC)

The methods we used to show lost rivers are worth more exploration here, and the news interactive does a great job of using a scrolling format and some oblique aerial maps of the three cities, such as Toronto below.

Image of Toronto’s Lost Rivers (CBC)

The interactive aspect allows for more context for places, such as the route of Mud Creek through the Evergreen Brick Works, using a revealing overlay w/ aerial imagery with powerful effect.

Overlay of Mud Creek in the Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto (CBC)

The story similarly looks at both Montreal and Vancouver in-depth, so check out the full exploration. For some added context, I previously covered some of the Canadian cities in some depth with Vancouver’s Secret Waterways (November 2016) and Toronto’s Lost Rivers (July 2017), and also a more in-depth discussion of the great documentary Lost Rivers (November 2016).

There’s a focus on daylighting, and they include Luna Khirfan, a professor of planning at the University of Waterloo who has done extensive research on stream daylighting projects around the globe. She mentions other cities around the world that are doing work on daylighting and restoration of urban creeks, such as Zurich, Switzerland, Seoul, South Korea, Berkeley, California, and Yonkers, New York, which we will cover in more depth in the future posts.

The imagery emphasizes the constrained conditions of some of the waterways that were not buried and still exist in daylight, but have been channelized at the margins of. This image of Still Creek in Vancouver highlights the conditions of many creeks.

Still Creek in Vancouver, BC (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Even in a constrained condition, there are benefits to the visible creeks, in terms of cooling, habitat, and biophilic connections to water and nature. The story also makes the key connection between these lost rivers and contemporary climate change issues like flooding and urban heat islands. As noted:

“Climate change and urbanization are heating and flooding our cities. Restoring buried waterways — and their riverbanks — could be one answer to many problems: cooling heat islands, absorbing carbon dioxide, cleaning the air, reducing flooding and providing a habitat for wildlife and native plants.”

The story is engaging and informative, and more cities deserve that deep dive into the history and potential for exploration of hidden hydrology and potential daylighting and restoration. I also do appreciate the link to my Hidden Hydrology site for more info!

As a companion piece to the news interactive, the CBC podcast What on Earth with Laura Lynch from April 14, 2024 “Buried under cities, rivers are a climate wonder in waiting” a 30-minute exploration by Jaela Bernstien (who co-authored the previous story), and Lynch of some of these same topics in audio format, in Montreal’s Saint-Pierre, Toronto’s Mud Creek and Vancouver’s Still Creek. Through discussions with Kregg Hetherington, Amir Taleghani, and Helen Mills, it captures the beauty of hidden hydrology exploration and discovery and highlights the goals of ecosystem restoration and climate change solutions embedded in restoring lost rivers. Luna Khirfan is also part of the dialogue, discussing her work at the University of Waterloo around stream daylighting, the challenges of daylighting, and other world global cities like Zurich that have championed the idea.

Give both the article a read and the podcast a listen and let me know what you think.

Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 04/20/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/20/25.

Restoring Swede Hollow

Jason Kingcase study, city, creeks, cultural, daylighting, design, history, infrastructure, places, projects, watersheds1 Comment on Restoring Swede Hollow

An interesting project in St. Paul, Minnesota emerged in this Star Tribune article “Work could begin soon to bring St. Paul’s Phalen Creek back to the surface,” which highlights the mix of ecological and cultural benefits of urban stream daylighting. Through a focus on both the benefits to wildlife habitat and ecosystem function and the connection of cultural heritage for native people and early immigrants to the area, it shows a rich story that is told through multiple lenses to provide solid rationale for daylighting projects.

One major idea of daylighting is visibility. As mentioned in the Star Tribune article, this is a typical case of burial of creeks for development, but like many other areas, the perceptions have shifted and the value of historical waterways are being restored. A big part of that is pointed out by Ramsey-Washington Metro district watershed project manager Paige Ahlborg, watershed project: “Another benefit is just restoring a community’s connection to the water,” Ahlborg said. “Seeing it makes it harder to do things that harm it. We still have a number of people who think that ‘if I put something down the [storm]sewer drain, it will be treated.'”

The history of places is expressed in place names. From the Capitol Region Watershed District site, some history on the current name: “Swede Hollow on the City of Saint Paul’s East Side is a historic immigrant neighborhood dating back to the 19th century. This lowland valley includes a portion of a stream from Phalen Creek to the Mississippi River. After housing was removed following the turn of the century, the city created Swede Hollow Park and placed some of the stream flow in a storm sewer pipe to complete its path to the river.”

Image of Phalen Creek burial in the 1920s. – via Minnesota Historical Society

As is the case with most places, the story and names is often told in European terms (i.e. Swede Hollow). The creek name as well comes from Edward Phalen, one of Saint Paul’s original colonists, who settled on the banks of the creek in 1838. Prior to this arrival, the history of place stretched far earlier as referenced in the Lower Phalen Creek Project, a native-led project:

“This creek served as a corridor for the Dakota people who lived here, as they made their way up the chain of lakes by canoe to White Bear Lake – one of many areas where they gathered wild rice.”

The daylighting has both ecological and cultural benefits. In the Star Tribune, Lower Phalen Creek Project Executive Direction Maggie Lorenz, who is both Dakota and Ojibwe, mentions: “[Phalen Creek] is an essential part of the community — it will bring more natural habitat and it means more opportunities for recreation and stormwater management. And, from a cultural perspective, we are really interested in restoring the land and taking care of the land according to our traditional teachings.”

While the goal is to extend daylighting all the way to the Mississippi River, one the first legs connects from Lake Phalen and Maryland Avenue as shown in this enlarged plan, highlighting the ecological benefits, including fish passage and enhanced in-stream habitat, establishment not just of the creek but adjacent floodplain wetlands to provide resilience and habitat for amphibians, and upland prairies that provide native riparian habitat supporting birds and pollinators.

“Consultants at Inter-Fluve, Inc. produced this visual to represent the proposed location, general design elements, and predicted habitat benefits of a restored stream channel of Phalen Creek at the Lake Phalen / Maryland Avenue project site.” via Lower Phalen Creek Project

A ton of additional information is at the LPCP site, including graphic summary of the project is found in a brochure that connects the dots between the cultural and ecological.

Brochure for Daylighting Phalen Creek – via Lower Phalen Creek Project – click here for full size PDF

Header Image: “Rendering of a daylighted creek provided by Capitol Region Watershed District.” via Lower Phalen Creek Project

Landscape and Memory

Jason Kingarchaeology, art, city, creeks, daylighting, design, history, maps, new york, projects, streams1 Comment on Landscape and Memory

A project from artist Cristina Iglesias (see a post of some of her previous work here) again dives into the idea of hidden hydrology, this time in New York City. Entitled Landscape and Memory (referencing the title of one of my favorite books by Simon Schama), the work unearths a buried stream in Madison Square Park.

From The Architect’s Newspaper: “Manhattan is crisscrossed by streams and rivers that have since been buried but continue to flow, flooding their banks and the basements above when it rains. For Landscape and Memory, Iglesias will exhume an impression of Cedar Creek, which once flowed beneath where the park now stands today.”

From the Madison Square Park Conservancy, some more info: “Nodding to historian Simon Schama’s major 1995 volume of the same name, which surveyed the history of landscape across time and terrain, Landscape and Memory is informed by Iglesias’ research into the history of the site. For the project, Iglesias located and studied antique maps that documented the water flow beneath Madison Square Park, where the Cedar Creek and Minetta Brook once coursed for two miles before flowing into the Hudson River. With nineteenth-century industrialization, streams like the Cedar and Minetta were buried underground to create additional land for building sites, underground drains, or sewers. Through Landscape and Memory, Iglesias renders this buried history visible again, inviting viewers to contemplate centuries of transformation of urban sites that were once natural.”

Excited to hear more about this and see more images, as the sketch is a bit… sketchy. You can check out the full press release here for more info. Based on some of her previous work it will be wonderful in execution. The work will be installed from May 23, 2022, through December 4, 2022 so those in New York City go check it out and report back.

Captured Streams

Jason Kingcity, daylighting, history, infrastructure, literature, london, portland, research, rivers, zurichLeave a Comment on Captured Streams

In response to the NY Times article related to the Tibbetts Brook daylighting to boost capacity for sewers and some discussion on Twitter, Adam Broadhead (@losturbanrivers) sent a great 2013 journal article in Water Research, “Captured streams and springs in combined sewers: A review of the evidence, consequences and opportunities” by Broadhead, Horn, Lerner, which addresses the issue with some research. The article is paywalled, but let me know if you’d like a copy and I can email it to you.

It’s more of a deep dive into some of the research, but the general thrust is that water intrusion in systems has reduced capacity, and that the intentional encasement of streams and springs in pipes reduces the capacity of infrastructure which has a significant economic, environmental and social implications for the infrastructure, as it reduced the baseflow reduces the overall effectiveness of gray infrastructure.

The typical mechanism for intrusion into pipes is related to cracks, which is assumed to be residual groundwater entering pipes in ‘dry weather’ times, where there should be no flow into the system. Groundwater intrusion should not be discounted, but there are other sources of intrusion that are typically not considered, specifically “capture of streams and springs” that impact combined systems capacity.

The figure below shows the change in baseflow and runoff response due to the intrusion of the additional water from streams and springs.

The paper continues to identify the issue, also highlighting the lack of research on this topic, and answers some fundamental questions about how this capture occurs, how to identify it, what is the magnitude and impacts, and ways to manage it. Always interested in language, one item of interest explores key terminology – culverting, extraneous water, groundwater infiltration, sewer inflows and the key element, stream and spring capture. The wordplay is compelling, with some uniquely evocative terms emerging such as parasite flow, misconnected surface waters, sewer leakage and illicit connections all telling a story of water that is in a sense, ‘out of place’.

The how and why is interesting. The most basic version is to take a free flowing stream and incorporate it into a pipe (Type A in graphic above). “Urban streams were frequently culverted and buried, especially during the period of rapid urban expansion in the 19th century.” It’s not a stretch to show that the literature confirms that “old sewers were frequently the covered channels of brooks”, as early development merely hid the streams, but didn’t generate as much additonal flow to overwhelm the piped streams. This happened with additional development and expansion of cities and impervious zones. Often the buried streams become the names for the sewers themselves, such as those specifically mentioned in the article like Garrison Creek Sewer in Toronto and Minetta Brook Sewer in New York.

The baseflow in the streams, unlike sewage, is clean, so the incorporation into pipes and transportation to wastewater treatment plants means additional strain on purification infrastructure with water that doesn’t need treatment. This relates to the original conceptual idea of the Tibbetts Brook example today, with a clear path to remove ‘clean’ water that is reducing combined capacity and overall resilience to deal with larger storms.

Additional capture happens by interception (Type B in graphic above). The most visible example is the massive interceptor sewers in London developed by Bazalgette in response to the ‘Big Stink’ in the the 1850s, acting as a divertor to sewage entering the Thames. This model was copied around the globe, with numerous examples of streams disconnected from their outfalls and no longer making it to their original destinations in the name of water quality. Portland has a large, expensive example of this called the Big Pipe. Many other cities have similar interceptor systems.

Another mode of is by directly capturing and draining spring and seeps in combined sewers, in this case through leaky pipes with cracks and joint openings. Beyond being shoddy construction, this was intentional, designed as deliberately leaky to provide drainage in areas of perched or high groundwater. The 3 types are summarized graphically above, showing variations of combined sewers and stream capture typologies.

The connection here to lost rivers is outlined in the article: “Not all streams and springs are fully captured by these modes of entry. London’s lost rivers diverted into the High, Mid and Low Level Interceptors to the WwTW, (wastewater treatment works) such as the Walbrook, Fleet, Tyburn and Westbourne, do still discharge to the River Thames during heavy storm events, where the original courses of the rivers serve as CSOs.” This is also a pattern in the United States (New York) and Asia (Tokyo) where many of the piped streams never make it to their original drainage water bodies.

The 19th Century was a historic time for burial of waterways, as the rate of urbanization outpaced the ability of natural streams to remove wastes. Thus: “Urban streams that had become open sewers were frequently culverted and buried to provide more sanitary conditions, and this concept is a popular narrative predominantly explaining the conversion of many smaller watercourses to combined sewers (type A).” Beyond the main drivers of pollution reduction and removal of the streams to create land for development, the introduction of seeps and springs provided some necessary baseflow to ‘flush’ sewers as a method of ‘self-cleansing’, and thus was in common practice in sewer design.

It is obviously difficult to identify these captured streams, as they exist under the surface and the original hydrology has been erased. This is where hidden hydrology methodology, using mapping and other primary sources to show where routes of surface flows used to run. Often these were parts of combined sewers, but in some cases the streams were just dumped into pipes. While still important, it is less impactful to combined systems and wastewater treatment facilities as they are often just draining into the same waterbodies that the original creek flowed in to.

Urban exploration is another method of finding routes of streams mentioned (which I’ve covered in depth here in many cities). Mapping of sewers and streams supplement this work, with many cities having robust sets of maps dating centuries in the past to fill in gaps of knowledge of what was there and what was replaced. More sophistical modeling can be helpful, but simple cues like place and street names and other subtle clues can also be extra data to be used to pinpoint old routes of waterways. As mentioned:

“Relevant information on lost urban watercourses helps to establish the pre-development hydrology, but the usefulness of historic maps depends strongly on spatial and temporal coverage, with many older towns and cities having altered the hydrological landscape before the first available maps. The smallest streams and springs may also not be marked on maps at certain scales, particularly intermittent and ephemeral channels.”

The ability to quantify these captured streams is equally challenging – there is adequate knowledge of the phenomenon but lacking in specific data on volumes, routes and baseflow contributions to the systems. While even knowing the levels would be helpful, measuring current flows will yield radically different results today versus pre-development conditions. When quantities can be estimated, the economic benefits can be modeled to see impacts, but this is not common. How the water is distributed is also variable and depends on unique qualities of each stream.

The major consequences are two-fold. First, the introduction of clean stream water increases the amount of water handled by treatment plants, which has larger infrastructure costs in terms of facility construction and operations. Second, loss of surface streams has impacts to habitat, less ecological connectivity, and overall less ecosystem services, including amenity value. It can even have secondary impacts on urban heat by reduction of linear corridors of riparian vegetation. While the anecdotal benefits of ‘flushing’ using the streams was developed early-on, it’s not understood if there’s actual value of these approaches.

A summary of the impacts on the industry are included:

  • More land and costs needed for wastewater treatment infrastructure
  • Additional operational costs and use of chemicals
  • External impacts, such as public health impacts of CSOs, impacts due to loss of ecosystem services due to diversion of local streams, and economic losses.

There’s a more detailed cast study from Zurich, Switzerland that’s worth exploring more. In summary, the authors mention the city as a pioneer through “innovative management of capture streams and springs in combined sewers,” typically through separation using daylighting. This was driven by understanding the “lost social ad environmental values of watercourses that had become culverted and had historically been used as wastewater sewers.”

The benefits to the public include amenity spaces, and also more efficient infrastructure through additional capacity. This dual benefit is key to the Stream Concept, and became codified into planning policy and laws. The dramatic reducing in streams due to urbanization is similar to other cities, with development displacing larger areas of open space and burial of streams, many of which were converted into combined sewers between 1850 and 1980 as seen in the figure below.

The transformation of streams from this point in 1980 shows the changes in approach used by Zurich in the Stream Concept. This is outline in the existing condition (1) which includes stream capture in a traditional combined sewer system, a severing of the hydrological system and piping; the first transformation (2) consisting of separation of the combined systems to removed capture streams, and eventually the final phase of the Stream Concept (3) “separating captured streams and springs into daylighted urban watercourses.”

An important aspect which reflects my approach allows for hybrids of ‘daylighting’ without and zero-sum outcome of daylight or nothing, but allow for a continuum of potential options – as I’ve discussed, between art and science (abstraction vs. pure restoration) or more specifically, interventions that can be located in a triad of artistic, design, or engineering. The street streams, per the articles:

“Naturalistic stream channels and riparian corridors are used where possible, but where space is limited, engineered “street streams” are installed. The latter may have a lower ecological potential, but nevertheless offer architectural value in urban areas.”

The two different typologies seen above show a ‘naturalistic’ approach in a more suburban location (Albrisrieder Dorfbach), versus the more urban ‘street stream’ in Zurich (Nebelbach). The street streams may mimic green infrastructure solutions like green streets as linear corridors, with the conceptual difference of being able to be hydrologically connected from source to outfall to re-connect the old stream corridor, versus merely being site specific insertions.

The article concludes that there is value in disconnecting streams and springs from combined systems (or if we could spin time back, not connecting them in the first place), with economic, environmental and social benefits. The diversion of clean, constantly flowing water out of combined systems provides capacity, and by daylighting (vs. piping) these streams, we have the additional ecosystem benefits. The need for more research is mentioned: “By using daylighted urban streams to convey the clean water baseflow, highly promising social and environmental benefits
have been suggested; an independent peer-reviewed appraisal of this approach would be strongly recommended.” Since this is a 2013 article, I’m curious what additional scholarship has emerged in the last decade.

I also am intrigued by two of the US examples identified in the article were in Portland and Seattle, both of which mention combined sewers with springs running in them. Worthy of more exploration, but both of these do related to a location where a stream was buried and integrated into the pipe infrastructure of the city, which was common in many streams in both cities (for instance Ravenna Creek in Seattle, or Tanner Creek in Portland). Perhaps with the continual increasing impacts of climate change on these systems would drive another look at some daylighting to increase the resilience of the pipes to handle more capacity, while also providing habitat, amenity, recreation, and a range of other essential urban ecosystem services?

Full Citation: A.T. Broadhead, R. Horn, D.N. Lerner, Captured streams and springs in combined sewers: A review of the evidence, consequences and opportunities, Water Research, Volume 47, Issue 13, 2013, Pages 4752-4766, ISSN 0043-1354, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2013.05.020

Header Image: Figure from the article: Historic loss of Zurich’s streams (water in blue) with increasing urbanisation (grey).

A Brook in the City

Jason Kingart, creeks, cultural, daylighting, history, language, streams2 Comments on A Brook in the City

The recent article in the New York times on the daylighting project at Tibbetts Creek reminded me, based on some of the comments, of the poem by Robert Frost called “A Brook in the City”. I knew of the poem, but hadn’t really made the connection to hidden hydrology, but the tones of industrialization that . Some analysis of the poem explains the context, as the poem “was written somewhat in early 1920 when history was witnessing Industrial Revolution and urbanization. It was at that time man became an evil and the outcome was the devastation and extinction of nature.”

West Running Brook No. 3 – J.J. Lankes (via Book Porn Club) – one of the woodcuts of another Frost collection of poems ‘West Running Brook’.

The brook becomes the symbol for that devastation, and the domination of nature the culprit: “…because of man’s modernization the brook which was a symbol of force is now nothing more then a weak and meek sewer. At night it still flows. A time would come when people would forget that there was a brook which existed. It would only exist on maps. The poet wonders if man could ever ever understand his mistake.”

An interesting piece of poetry that hits at the root of loss, memory, and the essence of hidden hydrology. Sad and beautiful, be still resonant a century after it was written, and somewhat poignant to consider as we daylight and restore the brooks… reversal of some of that old wounds made right. Enjoy.

A Brook in the City – Robert Frost

The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed.
The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.
Is water wood to serve a brook the same?
How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run—
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water. But I wonder
If from its being kept forever under,
The thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep.

Header image – excerpt of woodcut from J.J. Lankes from another Frost collection of poem, “West Running Brook” – via Book Porn Club

Clip: Let Water Go Where It Wants to Go

Jason Kingcity, climate, creeks, daylighting, history, infrastructure, landscape, maps, new york, research1 Comment on Clip: Let Water Go Where It Wants to Go

A September 2021 NY Times opinion piece “Let Water Go Where It Wants to Go” by one of my inspirations, Eric Sanderson points out the connections between historical ecology and the future city with a simple statement:

“Water will go where water has always gone”

– Eric Sanderson

I feel like I’ve been overcomplicating my explanations of the connections of climate change and hidden hydrology and Sanderson just nailed the concept in a few words. While the explanation is simple, the complex interactions between that hidden (buried) strata beneath the surface that have been erased from our urban areas and how these areas are poised to re-emerge in the urban sphere in dangerous ways as zones of flooding during extreme weather events is a topic worthy of more examination.

We have plenty of extreme events and flooding here in the Pacific Northwest to see this phenomenon play out in similar ways, causing water levels to rise in creeks or streams, or with high-precipitation rainfall that accumulates faster than it can drain in cities. Hurricanes, however, seem to be a special case in exacerbating issues just by the sheer scale and concentration of impacts in a short duration. These continual, cyclical events along the Eastern Seaboard ad Gulf Coast highlight the danger or urban flooding and as Sanderson points out, offers clear connections with the current flood events in locations of historical, now buried, waterways.

Hurricane Sandy opened many eyes to the risks. At the time there were a number of articles that caught my eye, particularly the idea that inundation and flooding at the margins were related to the idea of land filling and shoreline creation and the margins, replacing natural shorelines with hardened urban edges and bringing development out into these areas. In this June 2013 article in the Daily Mail, “How Hurricane Sandy flooded New York back to its 17th century shape as it inundated 400 years of reclaimed land.” the .

Expanded Shoreline of Manhattan from 1650-1980 – via Daily Mail

Looking at the extent of flooding in Hurricane Sandy (map below) and a number of studies on flood risk, it’s possible to do a quick mental overlay ad show the vulnerability related to the ‘made land’.

Map of flooding during Hurricane Sandy – (Village Preservation)

This is obviously not unique to New York City, and I’m interested in researching other places where flooding and made land has a similar correlation. In these cases, the conceptual connection started to take shape in the impacts of flooding at the edges, and how filled land can become a marker for shoreline flooding, which will inevitably be impacted more by sea-level rise in cities that have claimed1 this land from their adjacent water bodies.

The most recent events, during Hurricane Ida, Sanderson points out, go even more fine grain to individual inland areas where historic creeks or wetlands intersect with, such as Central Park (where wetlands were removed in construction of the park) and various other areas, including fatal incidents of basement flooding, in areas of where creeks, streams, wetlands and tideflats existed even up the the early 1900s.

A specific example of flash flooding in the subway in Manhattan at 28th Street and 7th Avenue (see video on Twitter post which is bonkers for both the intensity of the flooding and the utter lack of reaction from New Yorkers watching on the platform). As the article mentions the location of the flooding: “Right in the middle of a wetland clearly shown on 18th-century maps, the headwaters for The Old Wreck, a stream that fed Sunfish Pond, on the south side of Murray Hill, before reaching the sea at Kip’s Bay.”

18th Century Map showing location of wetland in area of 28th Street Station – via NY Times

The takeaway of cause and effect is summed up by Sanderson:

“The city even has a map where the extreme flooding happens, compiled from 311 reports and official observations. It is, for all intents and purposes, a map of the old streams.”

The action here is simple – avoid damage and loss of life from these events, because they are not going to stop any time soon. Increase resilience (both social and eco/hydrological) helps, and as the OpEd mentions, there are many other socio-economic factors involved that increase risk. But Sanderson looks for solutions (the old ways of knowledge) and points out “The losses are mainly the result of our inability to read the landscape where we live and conceive fully what it means to live there. We need to see the landscape in new, by which I mean old, terms.”

Where we location development must respect the hydrological history, as we’ve seen time and time again our inability to overpower nature, and ultimately the failure of forgetting what we buried. Worth a read for the article is a great explication of a terribly absent land consciousness and ethic, but at a practical level, there are some hints that allow us to connect historical ecology to solutions such as making room for water and using Nature based solutions such as wetland restoration and tree planting, many of which are continuing to take a rightful place in climate and resilience plans.

Perhaps the ending, again, for all of our complex machinations, allows us to think more simply about the solution and find opportunities for this simple action:

“Let’s let the streams run free.”

Endnotes

  1. Maybe my own rant, but there’s a whole series of posts and discuss related to the concept of ‘reclaiming’ land from the sea, which is the common parlance in this case. I do prefer ‘claiming’ and the idea of ‘made land’, as it’s really impossible to reclaim something you never possessed in the first place.

Header image – NY Times – photo by Anthony Behar/Sipa – Associated Press

Belfast’s Hidden Rivers

Jason Kingart, belfast, city, creeks, cultural, daylighting, history, places, rivers, streams13 Comments on Belfast’s Hidden Rivers

A recent article on Belfast’s River Farset jogged my memory that I’ve got a ton of great info the hidden rivers in many cities around the world, so figured I’d start writing about them. For this post, I’ll focus on Belfast, and return shortly to discuss Dublin to round out Ireland, then move on to other locales. As mentioned in the most recent article, “For 170 years, the river that gave Belfast its name has been buried underground in a hidden tunnel.” It goes on to discuss how, similar to many stories of cities worldwide, the river was slowly changed from vital aquatic resource that fueled manufacturing such as linen mills, to it’s transformation as dumping ground, leading to the eventual encasement: “One million bricks and 40 years later, the last section of the Farset that flowed through the city centre was buried underground in 1848, and it has remained hidden from sight ever since.“

In the 1800s, the Farset helped to power Belfast’s textile mills, factories and distilleries PHOTO: De Luan/Alamy (via Daily Trust)

From the article:

“Belfast, or Béal Feirste (‘the sandy ford at the mouth of the Farset’, in Irish) not only owes its existence to this river, but also its growth and early prosperity. Yet, for the last 170 years, this ancient waterway has been sealed off from the outside world by a series of tunnels, and is largely forgotten by those walking just above it.”

The desire to open up the Farset is a common theme, with plans “…to redevelop land around an exposed part of the river and also produce a full heritage package – including an exhibition, Farset app, public information signs, and tours with trained guides – that will highlight the heritage to local people and also attract tourism.”

Another article echoing this sentiment in the Belfast Telegraph traces “The lost river that gave Belfast its name” and offers an exploration as well: “Old drawings show a bustling river which powered Belfast’s industrial development and ferried traders into what is now High Street. But most locals would be hard-pressed to pinpoint exactly where the Farset flows before it reaches the city centre – because almost the entire route is now hidden beneath our feet in the form of culverts. The Greater Shankill Partnership recently revealed it wants to transform one of the few open stretches of the Farset into a public amenity as part of its long-term Shankill Greenway plan.”

Tracing the source of the Farset river in Belfast from the hills over looking Belfast to its end at the Lagan Weir Shankill cemetery where the river behind – image via Belfast Telegraph
Tracing the source of the River Farset in Belfast: river ends at the Big Fish at Customs House Square –

This similar theme is expressed in stories from 2015 from the BBC, “Hidden History of Belfast’s lesser-know rivers brought to the surface”, which includes the Farset, as well as the Blackstaff rivers, both of which “determined the shape of the city that grew up around the narrowest bridging point of the Farset, where High Street is today.”

A computer image showing the original course of the rivers Farset and Lagan in Belfast – via BBC

Additionally, the Connswater, which was featured in Van Morrison’s song “Brown-Eyed Girl“, but also has a larger history as a locus of whiskey production, ” In Victorian times, two-thirds of whiskey exported from Ireland came from Belfast, and around half of that came from two distilleries – the Connswater distillery and the Avoneil distillery. “ Today, remnants run under the 400-year old bridge in east Belfast. Portions of the river runs through Orangefield park and supports wildlife, “The river used to run along fences at the back of the houses, which were susceptible to flooding. Instead of building floodwalls, here the river has been ‘moved’ to become a central feature of the park.”

The 400-year-old Connswater Bridge in east Belfast – via BBC

HEADER: Partially hidden view of River Farset in Belfast – via Belfast Telegraph