Hidden Hydrology + Climate Solutions

Jason Kingart, climate, creeks, cultural, daylighting, equity, history, infrastructure, maps, research, streamsLeave a Comment

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.

30 November 2024 22 April 2025

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.

16 November 2024 22 April 2025

Lost Rivers for Underground Energy

Jason Kingaquifers, case study, city, climate, energy, infrastructure, london, maps, research, rivers, streams1 Comment

I was combing through the writings on my original Hidden Hydrology blog, with the idea of bringing in some of the ‘best of’ content still relevant today. This 2018 post, “Underground Energy For London” was worth reconsidering, focusing on a report that identified a significant potential latent in hidden hydrological systems, to provide heat and cut carbon emissions through tapping into underground lost rivers. The specifics came from a group called 10:10 Climate Action, who focused on using London’s now-buried rivers as a source of power, asking the question:

“But what if we could use them to power our city once again? Through the magic of heat pumps, London’s lost rivers could provide low cost, low carbon heating and cooling to the buildings above. They could help us solve the big challenge of decarbonising heat. There’s huge potential for London’s lost rivers to provide clean, efficient and reliable heating for the city – tackling climate change and air pollution. And of course the same technology can be used in other underground waterways like sewers in towns and cities across the country.”.

Unfortunately, the report, nor the group 10:10 Climate Action as far as I can tell, is no longer available online from the original source. I tracked down an online version, so you can download a copy here.

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The use of heat pumps is fairly common practice. Extracting heat from these now piped subterranean waterways, and using this heat for buildings and other uses is more novel, offering an potential alternative power option for London and other cities.

The idea was well-covered at the time: “Lost rivers could heat London to cut capital’s emissions” (The Guardian, 07.08.18) “ noted the potential for underground heat to “cut capital’s emissions”, and the articles “Underground river could heat Buckingham Palace” (The Times, 07.16.18) and “Could Buckingham Palace Be Heated By A Lost River?” (The Londonist, 07.11.18) echoed this, focusing on Buckingham Palace as a visible example of the potential for heating buildings. “London’s lost rivers could heat the city, reduce emissions.” (Earth.com, 07.10.18) took a slightly different slant, focusing on helping curb carbon emissions, similar to the article “A new way to tackle climate change? Heat from underground rivers in London could help cut the capital’s emissions, claim campaigners.” (Daily Mail, 07.09.18).

The concept had also already been implemented in some areas, including Borders College in Scotland, tapping into local wastewater, and the State Ministry Building in Stuttgart, Germany, which tapped into flow from the Nesenbach, a buried river adjacent to the site. A map extracted from the report (image below) shows a number of the potential sites in London, including The Effra, Stamford Brook, The Tyburn, and the Fleet, all of which have potential sites for the use of these technologies. Specific places include Buckingham Palace (mentioned in a few of the articles above), which would tap the Tyburn, Hammersmith Town Hall which flows above Stamford Brook, and other buildings like schools and site elements like heated swimming pools, which is currently being done in Paris.

The following video explains the idea in a specific location, showing an example of a London pub that sits atop an ancient subterranean water source, using this heat pump technology for its heating and cooling for beer and wine.

There are questions on the cost-benefit, and each of these systems would require some infrastructure to be viable, however, it’s pretty exciting to consider the potential of these systems to contribute to energy savings and reduction of carbon emissions. The potential for savings of energy is significant. The Times article noted: “A report from the Greater London Authority concluded that water-source heat pumps could meet 4.8 per cent of London’s heat demand, with sewer heat offering another 6.7 per cent.”

The idea of giving back some of their benefits to the city, even while still being buried underground, is also worth exploration. While the original report is over six years old, I think the idea is still one that seems worthy of revisiting around the globe, identifying projects that could utilize similar techniques, as we search for expanded tools to battle climate change and rising energy costs. I’d be interested to know if any readers know of other cities today using this for district or building scale systems, or projects that have explored this idea of tapping buried rivers in water and sewers for heating and cooling. Let me know if you have any that come to mind.

Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 11/16/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.

10 May 2024 22 April 2025

Colorado River Family Album

Jason Kingart, case study, cultural, design, history, landscape, maps, mexicali, places, research, riversLeave a Comment

The article “A cartography of loss in the Borderlands.” (High Country News, 02.21.24) outlines the work of artists Jessica Sevilla, Rosela del Bosque, and Mayté Miranda includes documenting the “Archivo Familiar del Rio Colorado.” This “Colorado River Family Album”, in their words “…brings together contemporary art, environmental education and historical research to document bodies of water that are disappearing or are already gone.”

Archival map overlay – Colorado River Delta (Archivo Familiar del Rio Colorado/HCN)

The work focuses on the area around Mexicali, tracing the memories of rivers and waterways that have been erased via burial or polluted by contamination. The town included diverse Mexican and Chinese workers, who helped develop the Imperial Valley in California’s irrigation canals and working farm fields. This has evolved into a border town with maquiladoras, which has led to an industrial urban pattern. For the artists, the connection to this place is important. “They named the project the Family Album to signal its focus on personal connections to the landscape… to show that our relationship with the Colorado River and the landscape of Mexicali is that of a relative.”

The work incorporates historical source data and art in creative ways to discover the lost elements of the Colorado River area. A video on their You Tube page visually explores the ideas the project is tackling, with English and Spanish subtitles.

The project’s website also outlines many specific projects, installations, and workshops created by the collective and through their curated works. This was a call for entries along with Planta Libre, as noted in the ‘Announcement.”

“We began by launching a call in collaboration with Planta Libre and through a resource provided by FONCA for the reactivation of scenic spaces, seeking to receive memories and memories about landscapes and bodies of water that no longer exist, as well as speculations about alternate futures, pasts or presents. for the rivers, lagoons, canals, lakes that used to run through the city of Mexicali. The categories of the call were photos, anecdotes and fictions about the bodies of water of the Colorado River. We receive fictitious maps, newspaper images, family archives accompanied by anecdotes, among other materials. The call remains open and the search for family archives and oral histories continues.”

Work of artist Fernando Mendez Corona – Scarcity and abundance (Archivo Familiar Del Rio Colorado)

Sevilla’s website includes more information on the project and some graphics. She also includes a summary statement:

“Located between geopolitical, epistemological and disciplinary borders, we investigate our relationships with water and territory; launching the Colorado River Family Archive as a technology to generate situated knowledge, collectively confabulating about the interwoven temporalities of our relationships with the more-than-human in the Colorado River Delta.”

The cross-border dynamic is an interesting element of the work, mediating the governmental and political boundaries imposed on the natural systems, and highlighting the power dynamics of water in the US and Mexico. These liminal spaces provide interesting opportunities for exploration, and in the context of the contested borderlands, inevitably weave politics with water and the ecosystems, communities, and people who occupy these spaces.

Map of Colorado Delta and Imperial Valley showing Laguna Salada (Archivo Familiar Rio Colorado Instagram)

Additional information and updates on the project are available via their Instagram and Facebook.

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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 05/10/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.

08 May 2024 09 June 2025

Ghost Streams and Redlining

Jason Kingcase study, city, cultural, detroit, equity, history, infrastructure, lidar, maps, redlining, research, wetlandsLeave a Comment

The idea of Detroit’s Ghost streams work bridges my two interests by connecting the dots of Hidden Hydrology and Climate Change, a topic that I will revisit often. The post discusses research in Detroit, Michigan, that connects buried streams and flood risks, using historical ecological information overlaid with redlining map data to show the potential negative impacts on historically marginalized communities.

A recent podcast “What We Can Learn from Ghost Streams.” (Next City, 05.01.24) talked about Bruce Willen’s work on Baltimore’s Ghost Streams, as well as the work in Detroit, featuring the research of Jacob Napieralski, a professor of Geology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Give the podcast a listen, and as a good companion, he also goes into more depth about this work in Detroit in this article “How ghost streams and redlining’s legacy lead to unfairness in flood risk, in Detroit and elsewhere.” (The Conversation, 03.19.24)

The basis of the research is what are known as ‘redlining’ maps. For a little background, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) was a government agency created to assess financial risk for mortgage lending for real estate. The tool was used to systematically institutionalize racist policies in cities around the United States by assessing areas inhabited by people of color, poor, and immigrants as much higher risk than those where rich, white residents lived. The process led to disproportionate investment in low-risk neighborhoods and marginalization in those deemed ‘hazardous’ or ‘high-risk’ zones, which ultimately created concentrated areas of poverty through a lack of economic opportunities. The redlining has become a shorthand for the inequity of communities, and mapping allows for looking at how these historical impacts persist in cities today.

Detroit Redlining Map (The Conversation)

The research overlays these maps with other data to extract how the legacy of racist home lending in the past has created more risk of impacts like flooding today. The goal of the study was “… to determine whether a history of waterway burial and/or redlining influenced the overall flood risk of communities today.” The data revealed that the burial of streams and wetlands did impact current risks in the historically marginalized communities. As Napieralski mentions in the podcast:

“Flood risk is very intricately linked to history, and by ignoring history we may be missing some clues that help us move forward.”

Rather than dwell on the negative, the authors mention the positive side of the analysis, noting that most communities have this data and that it can be useful in focusing on where best to employ solutions like green infrastructure or nature-based design solutions, saying: “If communities want to protect residents from flooding, it’s crucial for them to map and understand their “hidden hydrology.”

Buried But Not Dead

More in-depth exploration of the research is found in the journal article “Buried but not dead: The impact of stream and wetland loss on flood risk in redlined neighborhoods.” (City and Environment Interactions, January 2024). The study was authored by Napieralski along with Atreyi Guin, and Catherine Sulich, and their research outlines the mapping to overlay the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps showing redlining categories, using buried streams and redlining grades to estimate flood risk. The mapping processes were interesting, including the use of historical documents and Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) to infer buried water bodies and 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.”

Mapping Analyses of Buried Streams and Filled Wetlands and Flood Risk (City and Environment Interactions)

Using data from First Street Foundation’s Flood Factor, 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 that were integrated into risks associated with different types of impact, sorted by HOLC grade. 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.”

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

This does bring up why mapping these streams and wetlands is important. They provide a basis for analysis by using other data as cross-sectional overlays, unlocking connections between impacts that may, on the surface, be unseen. The connections of this work to climate change, of which flooding is a key impact, are clear, as changes in precipitation and storm intensity make flood risks more frequent and more damaging. The authors conclude the

“[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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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 05/08/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.

01 May 2024 22 April 2025

The Lost Suburbs of Los Angeles

Jason Kingarchaeology, case study, city, creeks, cultural, ecology, habitat, history, infrastructure, landscape, los angeles, maps, research, streams, watershedsLeave a Comment

Strong connections exist between hidden hydrology and the larger work of historical ecology, in terms of methodology and the work to piece together complete stories from fragments of disparate sources. Often the traces of historical waterways inform the larger ecological patterns of places to establish baseline conditions, and historic vegetation patterns, and begin to establish markers to document change. The overlay of indigenous occupation is an additional element, however, it is often hard to reconstruct due to a lack of physical documentation. Examples of projects successfully implementing this type of work are valuable case studies.

A recent article, “Tribal leaders and researchers have mapped the ancient ‘lost suburbs’ of Los Angeles” (Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2023) explores a successful process, highlighting work by groups using these techniques to study six village sites in the greater Los Angeles region. These “lost suburbs”, in this case, are the original settlements and villages within the LA Basin, where, as noted in the article, “…culture thrived here for thousands of years amid a landscape of oak and walnut woodlands riven with waterways teeming with steelhead trout and prowled by wolves and grizzly bears.”

Ancient routes and key village locations (LA Times)

Three tribes, the Chumash, Tataviam, and Kizh-Gabrieleño collaborated with diverse interdisciplinary academic researchers to piece together a tapestry of inhabitation, as noted in the LA Times article by one of the project leads, UCLA’s Travis Longcore: “We had to dig deep for evidence of the great society buried under our modern empire of terraced and graded slopes, rivers sheathed in concrete, industrial development, freeways and sprawl.”

These provide a trail of evidence to follow for appropriate ecological restoration and responses to climate change. Hidden hydrology is one essential key to the understanding of these ancient places. From the LA Times: “One map reveals the locations of streams, wetlands, vernal pools, and tidal flats that were buried or drastically altered to accommodate urban development.”

Comparison of development impacts on waterways (LA Times)

This is a part of the full historical ecology of the region discussed in the following section. Understanding the pre-colonization waterways allows for restoring places informed by an authentic indigenous history. As noted by Matt Vestuto, one of the collaborators from the Barbareno/Ventureno Band of Mission Indians:

“…the mapping project offers hope for a long overdue reappraisal of Native American history… Almost overnight, we were disenfranchised from the landscape — but our people are still here… now, the challenge is to restore the environment, and rebuild our nations.”

The project is part of a larger Los Angeles Landscape History project, with a report published in 2023 outlining the details of this analysis of the Indigenous Landscape of the city. A key component of the analysis is mentioned in the Executive Summary:

“Descriptions of the historical landscape patterns and function have led to a conclusion that this landscape and region cannot be understood without listening to the stories of Indigenous people who managed this land and thrived for thousands of years before the arrival of European settlers.”

A key part of the work is cartographic regressions, which include reconstruction of the topographic history and hydrological patterns using old maps, aerial photography, and other archival sources, like texts, drawings, place names, historical accounts, and archaeological work. The analyses look closely at trade networks, historical flora and fauna distributions, and their impact on habitat, and provide the blueprint for future restoration. As noted in the Executive Summary:

“This project is unique because a commonly shared, detailed map of the historical ecology—the flora, fauna, hydrology, and landforms, that evolved within Southern California’s Mediterranean climate over millennia and supported human populations for 9,000 years, has never been developed. Individually and cumulatively, the results of this research are vital resources to all regional and local planning efforts involving sustainability, habitat restoration, and preparing for climate change.”

Story Maps

An interactive Story Map is also worth checking out, providing a visual executive summary of the report. Focusing on the section related to Historical Water Features, the team traces stream routes in intervals, including 1896-1903 and 1924-1941, with the ability to compare, via slider, the two time periods as shown below, and highlights the radical change of regional hydrological patterns as the city developed.

Historical Water Features 1896-1903 (LALAH Story Map)

Historical Water Features 1924-1941 (LALAH Story Map)

The citywide mapping of vegetation types is directly related to these original historical waterways, and an interactive map, based on the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS), using a 1km grid, to provide map data in cells of potential natural vegetation (PNV). This is described in the Story Map as the “…vegetation that would develop in a particular ecological zone or environment, assuming the conditions of flora and fauna to be natural, if the action of man on the vegetation mantle stopped and in the absence of substantial alteration in present climatic conditions.”

Map of Hypothesized Potential Natural Vegetation of the Los Angeles Region (LALAH Story Map)

The connections between hidden hydrology, historical ecology, and indigenous occupation are more than just understanding the past. As the researchers point out, the ability to employ this data for solutions to loss of biodiversity, climate change impacts, and other challenges, while celebrating the cultural legacy of place, is key. There’s a wealth of information worth studying this model in more depth, to better understand the Los Angeles Basin ecology and hydrology and to refine and adapt this approach to other regions, specifically centering Indigenous stories as a key component in historical ecology work.

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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 05/01/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.

11 December 2021 11 December 2021

Captured Streams

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

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).

04 December 2021 07 December 2021

Clip: Let Water Go Where It Wants to Go

Jason Kingcity, climate, creeks, daylighting, history, infrastructure, landscape, maps, new york, research1 Comment

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

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

03 December 2021 07 December 2021

Evolution of Hidden Hydrology

Jason Kingarchaeology, city, climate, creeks, design, history, infrastructure, maps, oregon, places, portland, projects, research3 Comments

After bit of a break I’m hoping to write more frequently on all things Hidden Hydrology. For some context, in this time away I have been researching more deeply Portland’s Hidden Hydrology, delving into archives for stories of my local disappeared streams, buried creeks, and filled wetlands around the metropolitan area. I’ve also compiled a composite map of Portland spanning the 1850s through the 1900s to piece together the most complete version of the hidden hydrological layers that existed pre-settlement. I’ve kept up doing research more informally in the broader and mostly sharing on Twitter and Instagram, which are both simpler media for messaging, but also seem lacking in depth that more expansive writing can capture. While it may be true that blogging is no longer a viable medium, I feel a need to write more deeply, and more often, and more personally about my home, my history, and my places. This will hopefully lead to writing more broadly as well in journals, and culminate in my ultimate goal — to write a book (or more than one) on hidden hydrology.

A few recent thoughts, ideas that I take with me into the next journey.

WATER STORIES, HUMAN STORIES

The origins of my interest are documented on the site here, including a strange and wonderful Portland map by Metro, the inspiring academic work of one of my landscape architecture idols, fiction and place-based non-fiction from a local legend, and Mannahatta’s deep eco-hydrological historic mapping. These inspirations and the subsequent research into the overall concept of hidden hydrology documented here on this site has left numerous imprints on how I think about hidden hydrology as a concept and a methodology for integrating into planning and design. Upon reflection, I have typically always approached the project through the lenses of hydrology, history, ecology and place, with the human element occupying a supporting side-narrative to these other elements.

Every story has a uniquely human interface and the phenomena of hidden hydrology is no different, with a variety of actors involved in the discovery, use, manipulation, destruction, protection, and restoration that are all story arcs of urban streams, wetlands and other water bodies. I have always seen the people involved in more broad strokes, as populations and groups acting against nature and natural processes, or conversely communities and coalitions being often negatively acted upon and attempting to preserve and protect systems. Rarely did I connect people to places in a meaningful way beyond faceless groups, only rarely placing individuals and their stories and essential ingredients to unlocking the true history of place.

Sketch of Indians Fishing by Willamette Falls – 1841 by Joseph Drayton (Oregon History Project)

As origin stories, the native Chinookan people have occupied and shaped the waters of Portland for centuries. There are specific narratives of leaders, like Concomly as part of the larger Chinook territory in the late 1700s and early 1800s and Kiesno (aka Cassino) who was located near Portland on Wapato Island, who was also an important figure through the early to mid 1800s , The native stories and start to take shape via early explorers, whereby they drift into settler narratives told about those indigenous people and never told by them. Thus we remember ‘discovery’ and the snapshots of what written narratives and maps were documented, but know less about the life and the interaction with many of the places in the region beyond a few major areas of significance that were spiritual centers and places of food gathering and trade. I challenged myself to weave these stories into the narratives, and although I feel more informed, I’ve barely scratched the surface, so the next steps are to engage and learn from descendants and hear stories of places that were of significance to Chinook people in the past, and those that are still resonant today.

In Seattle, I walked and wrote about Licton Springs, which explored the deep indigenous connections to place in a remnant urban stream – weaving together the long and contentious history, which was recently given protection as a landmark of cultural significance to Coast Salish people. Many of these stories need to be told, and the opportunity to connect our diverse history to water places – the water stories and human stories, continues to intrigue me.

Broadening the cultural lens, I’ve written about Tanner Creek and the Chinese farmers who cultivated lands adjacent to the creek using the amazing resource by Marie Rose-Wong on early Chinese residents of Portland, documenting the erasure of the creek and the Chinese farms in tandem, both slowly disappearing from Portland in the wake of ‘progress’ that wanted neither the Chinese people, nor the messiness of flooding, steep gulches that stood in the way of a modern metropolis.

View of Chinese Farms in Tanner Creek Gulch – circa 1892 (Portland Archives)

The narratives feature places like Guild’s Lake, a contested area with a variety of actors working to destroy, displace and erase historic waterways to pave the way for development and industrialization, with little thought to the impacts ecologically and socially to these actions. As you map out the timeline of erasure for many waterways, it’s never one person or one big move, but a variety of consistent, incremental actions, driven by the need for progress and growth, that privileged the needs of few over the impacts to many. The missing piece of this is again the human dimension, the root of all of these stories were the people who occupied these places, and how they, and their actions, gave life to the unique water places in the community. And as other forces removed the waterways, how they were impacted by the places are lost. The places are not coming back, but but hopefully through the stories some idea of that experience can re-emerge and remain.

Chinese man fishing in Guild’s Lake – circa 1890 (Oregon Historical Society – OHS-bb016278)

Another significant narrative in Portland’s water history is the intersection with the African American story, told through the emergence and eventual destruction of Vanport City. There are many narratives as to the cause of the flooding and destruction of in the1940s worth exploring, and the eventual displacement and segregation that happened after the city was destroyed continues to shape the city today.

Aerial View of Vanport Flooding, 1948 (Portland Archives)

As my post documenting the amazing OPB documentary “Vanport” shows, these, too are human stories, with interviews and first person accounts of the development and occupation of this novel community, and the lead up to the destruction and displacement of larger populations of people that had lasting impacts and left an indelible mark on the racial history and social structure of Portland.

CLIMATE CONNECTIONS

While Vanport was not a result of climate change per se, this larger narrative of catastrophic flood events also provides a hint at more extreme future scenarios that intersect with my research on hidden hydrology: the connections between the lost and buried streams, wetlands, ponds and water bodies, along with made-land through filling and manipulating shorelines, and how these ultimately give clues to and exacerbate our present impacts related to climate change.

Stories in the mainstream media are reinforcing these connections, and through recent research, and continues to gain prominence and momentum as a dimensions of climate change evolve and the impacts are played out in communities more frequently and in more extreme forms.

1894 Flood in the North Park Blocks of Portland – (Portland City Auditor)

There are a number of drivers for the ‘creative destruction’ of water systems in cities. Making land for development by piping creeks, filling gulches, ponds, wetlands and shorelines to make developable land offers the chance to grow and continue to build. Much of this was also an element of the modern safety movement that was concerned with life and property damage from flooding creeks, and the related sanitary movement was driven by public health concerns, often by removing access to polluted waterways. In short term and in earlier times, these efforts may have seemed good approaches but come with some unfortunate baggage in loss of ecosystem function, and lack of resilience.

Flooding is obviously not a new thing, and is not always the result of removal of waterways not of climate change. However it is not difficult to make general connections that flooding often follows the historical shape of water in cities, and that removal, filling, and piping of creeks, streams, wetlands and ponds has lasting impacts to the hydrology and that the impacts will be more evident as climate change raises sea levels, increases extreme precipitation and storms, and increases urban heat.

A recent NY Times editorial by Eric Sanderson makes this case, unpacking impacts of recent extreme weather and hurricanes and tracing that to lost streams that wove through New York City. The simple statement of “Water will go where water has always gone.” sums up the phenomenon, while giving us an interesting new (old?) methodology for predicting impacts by using historical hydrological systems in new ways. Beyond that in the past year, my Twitter feed is filled with stories of flooding in Europe, UK, and around the US, a global climate change induced impact all traced back to the link between historical waterways and current, human-caused climate change. Lots more on this topic to come.

EVOLUTION

As I researched more from the archives of local newspapers and uncovered more unique, human stories, the narratives became less about places and the lost waterways, but how these created a tableau of life. Rarely were stories these idyllic and utopian, but painted a picture of daily life and the struggle to build a city carved out of the forest at the confluence of two rivers. Often they were narratives of greed, racism, and exploitation, focusing on power and money which were allowed to run rampant in a time of very little environmental policy and awareness of impacts.

The water stories become stories of native people who developed thriving communities that were in a short span of time decimated by disease, violence and displacement from their lands and waters. The stories of Chinese farmers who lived on the margins of gulches and ponds in Portland, who contributed to the building of the community and were rewarded with racism and erasure from their places of productivity and community. The devastation of a flooded African American community of Vanport left ship workers and their families, engaged in supporting the war effort while building a life in Portland left many without a place live and led to a continuing and marginalization that continues today.

These historical water stories connect people to place and add a human dimension to an ecological history. When woven together with more contemporary climate stories, it also provide a solid foundation for why this work matters in design and planning for the future. It is far from a nostalgic looking back of what’s lost, but rather an opportunity to think about lessons learned related to how we can live and thrive together while growing a diverse community. It is also a blueprint for action on climate resilience, a future-focused approach to planning for urban heat, flooding, and other key resilience measures to make our communities more livable. Call the preliminary phases of this project a good information gathering, understanding what hidden hydrology is. The evolution becomes how to use this information to shape our communities in positive ways. Look forward to exploring and continuing to evolve.

28 February 2019 28 February 2019

The Polluted Willamette

Jason Kingcity, film, history, infrastructure, oregon, portland, research, rivers2 Comments

It was great to attend a talk by historian James V. Hillegas-Elting at Powells earlier in the week, where he gave the highlights of his recently released book “Speaking for the River: Confronting Pollution on the Willamette, 1920s-1970s“. You can read more about his work here at his blog, and I will definitely have some follow up as I dive into the book as it paints a history closely in alignment with hidden hydrology in Portland. The arc of degradation and restoration of the key waterway through Portland and the Willamette Valley is woven together with urbanization, industrialization, and our relationship to the river, as well as the evolution of an environmental ethos that shapes the way we continue to confront existing pollution today (and yes, there’s still lots of it).

In the interim, one highlight worth sharing is this silent film from the 1940s, which is available via streaming from OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center. A brief synopsis to go with the film:

” The Willamette River Pollution Film depicts various point sources of pollution in the Willamette River and its tributaries. The film begins near Springfield and progresses downstream to Portland and includes footage of various forms of industrial, agricultural, and municipal effluent being dumped into the Willamette River and its tributaries, including the Pudding and South Santiam Rivers. The footage includes tests of the length of time that small fish can survive in water from the Willamette River and chemical tests of the river water. The film includes footage of the river or its tributaries at Springfield, Eugene, Corvallis, Crabtree, Lebanon, Salem, Woodburn, and Portland.”

The production quality is rough at times but you get the gist, with visible pollution from multiple sources, floating dead fish, rats, and all the visual evidence to make the case of an unhealthy river, devoid of dissolved O2 and lifeless. From the OSU Special Collections listing, “The film was probably made by William Joy Smith, of Portland Oregon. Smith was State Manager of the National Life Insurance Company and President of the Oregon Wildlife Federation. It was made before establishment of the state Sanitary Authority and fostered much of the original interest in water quality in Oregon. The film may also have been known at the time of its creation by the title “The Polluted Willamette”. “

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HEADER: Still image from video showing men fishing adjacent to an active outfall. (32:11)

Hidden Hydrology

research

Category: research

Hidden Hydrology + Climate Solutions

ANCIENT WATERWAYS FOR COOLING CITIES

DETROIT: BURIED BUT NOT DEAD

SAVING SWAMPS TO SAVE OURSELVES

Daylighting Tibbetts Brook

“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.”

Lost Rivers for Underground Energy

Colorado River Family Album

Ghost Streams and Redlining

The Lost Suburbs of Los Angeles

Captured Streams

Clip: Let Water Go Where It Wants to Go

Evolution of Hidden Hydrology

WATER STORIES, HUMAN STORIES

CLIMATE CONNECTIONS

EVOLUTION

The Polluted Willamette