The ability to reveal the hidden layers of hydrology can take many forms. Public art is a great mechanism for telling stories in ways that engage and reveal that which is often missing from our day to day experiences. These artworks also highlight key contributions of communities that are often marginalized in the official histories we are taught. Artists Shu-Ju Wang and Lynn Yarne developed a vibrant example of this at the new Lincoln High School in Portland with a large exterior mural called Restoration Roadmaps which locates the hidden hydrology story within the context of the urban high school. The summary of the project, from the artist’s website for Restoration Roadmaps provides some of processes and the outcomes:
“The process enabled us to come to a final design that is a combination of several forms of maps to describe the neighborhood–from historical to a hoped for future, from topographical to ecological, from google map to the old fashioned foldout map. Student and community responses are recorded as part of the topographical contours and inset panels.”
The images are rich with detail, focusing on the high school site and the contemporary grid, juxtaposed with the Tanner Creek historical route with other water bodies that have been erased. The creek gulches were the locations of highly productive garden areas farmed by Chinese immigrants and also provided historical areas of Native American occupation. The mural includes smaller square panels with community work done by other artists and students, and the perimeter of the mural provides detailed assemblages of 40 species of flora and fauna Indigenous to the area.
It was fun to see the process evolve and the final product ‘in the wild’ below. Let me know if you’re local and have seen the mural, or if there are other murals in your community celebrating hidden hydrology. Would love to hear from you.
Beyond helping with some mapping for the mural, my other contribution was this short video, Tanner Creek Hidden Hydrology, walking through the history of the area in the context of the historical water. I’ve included the video below:
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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 02/28/25 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/20/25.
There are a number of stories that occasionally receive comments and inquiries on posts from back in the day. This past few weeks, readers reached out related to the 2017 post “San Francisco’s Hidden Water Tanks” (Hidden Hydrology, 12.15.17), inquiring about a really cool hidden feature of the urban realm.
The post drew on a great article published at the time by CityLab/Bloomberg, “The Sublime Cisterns of San Francisco” (05.01.17), which explains the presence of brick circles located at numerous intersections around the downtown core of the city, such as the image below.
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Brick circles denote the location of old cisterns (via Bloomberg)
These reference the locations of underground cisterns, dating back to the 1850s, which were state-of-the-art in fire protection in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These cisterns were distributed around the downtown area and filled with water, which supplemented fire brigades and enabled them to pump water for fire-fighting prior to implementing pressurized water systems and fire hydrants. As noted in the Bloomberg article related to the need for new modern fire protection in cities:
“One of the ways officials responded to these blazes was to build cisterns. These subterranean vitrines were designed as a last-resort source of agua for firefighting. San Francisco’s 19th-century cistern system was reinforced with more, larger cisterns after the Earthquake of 1906, whose subsequent firestorm killed roughly 3,000 and left much of the city’s land looking like a blasted moon. To date there are 170 to 200 of the tanks stashed around town.”
Many of the remaining cisterns are intact below ground, revealing subterranean spaces unknown to those walking and driving above. Many are empty, but some are still used as emergency water sources today.
John Oram, aka the prolific Bay Area blogger Burrito Justice, dug deep into the cisterns as far back as 2011. Around 2016, when the original Bloomberg article was published, he created an interactive map (unfortunately no longer available) of their subterranean locations. The map represented the intersections where the cisterns were located, scaled by the capacity of the cistern below.
Another resource for these cisterns, which Oram used in his mapping project, was a 2014 project by Scott Kildall. As part of an art project called “Water Works,” Kildall focused on “…a 3D data visualization and mapping of the water infrastructure of San Francisco.” He also created an interactive map (now also unavailable) of the cisterns, and the project generated some interesting maps and art around the locations of key infrastructure, including cisterns, as seen below.
San Francisco Cisterns by Scott Kildall (via Scott Kildall)
For those interested in a deeper dive from these past sources, I recommend “What’s Underneath Those Brick Circles?” (Burrito Justice, 03.08.13), and “Cistern Mapping Project Reportback.” (Scott Kildall, 01.07.16). Although a seemingly hot topic in the mid-2010s, I only found a few scant more recent references to these cisterns. A good one worth listening to is part of a self-guided tour of these cisterns as part of the Exploratorium installation Buried History – Water Underground along with a link to a downloadable, printable map here.
I would appreciate any input from anyone in the Bay Area with up-to-date information or ongoing projects related to the cisterns.
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 01/31/25 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.
In Northwest Portland, Oregon, red-legged frogs living in Forest Park face a dangerous commute in the fall and winter, traversing from their upland homes down to the spawning grounds adjacent to the Willamette River. The species typically is found in conifer hardwood forests that have an aquatic-terrestrial connection to ponds and wetlands as part of their life cycles.
Northern Red-legged Frog
The degree of landscape changes inherent over time is seen in a series of maps spanning the previous century and a half of urbanization, centered near present-day Harborton, the location of a critical habitat connection for the frogs. From the original surveys in the 1850s, the area was lightly developed, and the areas noted as “Timber, Fir, Cedar, Maple, Hemlock, Yew, etc.” showing the zones that would become modern Forest Park and the uninterrupted upland to lowland connections along the Willamette River.
By the 1900s and the mapping from the USGS Topographic Survey, some development was happening along the water in the early town of Linnton, and the rail lines were built that started to sever these historical ecological connections.
1897 USGS Topographic Survey (via TopoView)
The current aerial image shows the clear line marking upland to lowland as separated by roadways and more impervious industrial development located along the Willamette River, reducing the amount of shoreline habitat.
2024 Aerial Image (via Google Earth)
The historical upland to lowland conditions has been radically disturbed along the entire margin of Forest Park. We could infer from the series of maps that historically, the frogs had significantly more habitat options along a much larger zone (and even more if you look at maps south of here showing additional lakes and wetlands), and that over time, a series of human-made linear barriers (railroad, roads) and urbanization cut off connections while reducing overall shoreline habitat. This ultimately resulted in a severe decline in several species populations, including the red-legged frogs.
As you see from a zoomed-in area, the major impediment for the frogs is a gauntlet, including a four-lane Highway 30, another smaller side road, and railroad tracks that prevent frogs from safely accessing the breeding area around the Willamette. Described by many as a real-life game of Frogger, the result is documented mass killings of frogs that attempt migration to these zones in rainy seasons.
As a response to the negative impacts of the species, an intrepid group of volunteers has implemented what they call the Frog Taxi. Starting in 2013, as documented on the site Linnton Frogs, the group has mobilized annually to collect frogs from Forest Park, transporting them across Highway 30 and other roads and railroad tracks to get to the breeding around along the Willamette, and then relocating them back across the roadway to the upland. You can see some stats of the group’s work from 2013-2021. The work has continued, and Oregon Field Guide recently did a story on this year’s Frog Taxi, which provides a great overview of the process the volunteers undertake to save this remnant population of red-legged frogs.
Taxi to Where?
Making it across the barrier alone or via taxi only solves one part of the equation. To fully connect the life cycle, viable habitat conditions need to be provided for suitable breeding conditions on the waterside. The landscape of the entire edge of the area used to include the multiple connected ecosystems lakes along a long riverfront edge, including Guild’s, Kitteridge’s, and Doane’s, which is notable as their surrounding wetland margins have been impacted.
Once the frogs can reach the site, the original habitat must be restored to provide suitable conditions. Currently owned by PGE, the taxi “drop-off’“ site is the locus of additional restoration efforts, as noted from the PGE site related to the Harborton Habitat Project:
“The site is one of the largest known breeding grounds for northern red-legged frogs, an amphibian species classified as “sensitive” by the state of Oregon and a “species of concern” under Federal listing status. Additionally, the property is situated where the Willamette River meets Multnomah Channel – a perfect spot for juvenile salmon to rest and find food on their way to the Pacific Ocean.”
The overall goal is to move from taxi service to more uninterrupted connections from the upland forest to the pools to eliminate the game of Frogger, as well as eliminate the need for volunteers to fill the role of taxi drivers. The next iteration involves increasing overall habitat mobility through an amphibian tunnel that will funnel the frogs along the edges and allow them to move under the roadways and rail lines, connecting Forest Park directly to Harborton. As noted, the Harborton Frog Crossing Project proposed this new connection:
“In an effort to save the dwindling frog population, local wildlife officials and the Oregon Wildlife Foundation have proposed to build a highway underpass to grant the amphibians safe passage. The project calls for a concrete culvert beneath Northwest St. Helens Road and Marina Way to help the frogs reach their preferred breeding grounds.”
Other studies are helping pinpoint more specifics related to the locations and magnitude of the problem. There is funding to assess the mortality of the frog populations is underway by Northwest Ecological Research Institute (NERI), and funded by the Oregon Conservation & Recreation Fund Projects and the Oregon Zoo. The specific goals hope to inform the amphibian tunnel, as they state:
“A wildlife undercrossing and/or creating improved wetland spaces that do not require road crossings are the primary proposed solutions. These are expensive, infrastructure-based solutions, and more data is required to find the most appropriate path forward. Specifically, increased data on the rate and location of frogs being killed at road crossings will inform timing and movement patterns to find the best solution.”
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Wildlife Ways
The Oregon Wildlife Corridor Action Plan (ODFW, January 2024) notes that there are naturally occurring barriers to wildlife movement, but the most critical are human-caused barriers that block movement. Within the context, they also discuss how barriers are relative to species, as quoted:
“The most readily apparent human-caused barriers to animal movement are the physical structures that impede or outright prevent connectivity, such as buildings, fences, roadways, solar developments, and dams. The response of wildlife to structures varies by structure type and by species. For example, a fox may be able to make its way around a large industrial complex, whereas for a frog the complex might represent an impassable barrier. While not all physical structures will completely block animal movement, these features are often associated with increased risk of mortality for wildlife due to collisions, entanglement, entrapment, and persecution. Two of the most prevalent physical impediments to wildlife connectivity are roadways and fencing.”
Wildlife crossings, in general, are gaining momentum with various overpass and underpass options that direct and funnel species from habitat areas and provide safe passage through dangerous areas. The focus is often on larger species, specifically deer and elk, here in Oregon, moving between fragmented parcels of land. There is also the potential to reduce vehicle-wildlife collisions, with specific action plans to provide more solutions. These are dynamic opportunities to connect large habitat patches but come at a steep price.
The types of crossings also need to be adapted to the species’ needs. My favorite is the Crab Bridge on Christmas Island in Australia, which provides an almost vertical climb and spans over a roadway to facilitate the migration of red crabs.
Another analog is the work being done for fish passage, including strategies for repairing culverts to provide better access for fish, installing tidal gates to better allow movement up and downstream in fluctuating water cycles and implementing fish screens to limit access to certain waterways while providing access to certain areas necessary for the species to thrive. These are less visible than the larger wildlife connections; however, they also come at a significantly smaller cost and can be localized to specific species migration corridors.
The amphibian connections are a microcosm of these types of projects. More modest in scale, but growing in popularity, there are numerous examples around the globe of different types of passages that work for different amphibian species. The hope is that these will continue to do some of the necessary repair work for the severed connections between critical hydrological habitats, hopefully helping the Harborton Red-Legged Frog populations survive and thrive and give the taxi drivers a break.
Amphibian Crossing example from Doñana National Park, Spain (via Research Gate)
If you are aware of other examples of strategies being used to allow amphibians or other species to facilitate movement in fragmented landscapes, particularly those that are disconnected from historical waterways via development, I would love to hear about them.
The recent essay, “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.”
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 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.
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 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.
There is a rich literary history around hidden hydrology, which I was reminded of by the recent publication of the novel “There Are Rivers in the Sky” by Elif Shafak. The book has gained attention for its interwoven stories around water, and, notably, specific references to ‘lost rivers’.
The novel includes three storylines from different eras, with the characters of Arthur from 1840s London, Narin from 2014 in Turkey, and Zaleekah in 2018 in London, each occupying a specific water-based narrative. As summarized in the Penguin Random House blurb:
“… There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”
I’ll try to avoid any spoilers, while I discuss how this relates to hidden hydrology. It’s an engaging tale, touching on the discovery of the Epic of Gilgamesh, a reference to A.H. Layard’s ‘Nineveh and Its Remains’, mudlarking and toshers, some cameos like John Snow and his ‘Ghost Map’ investigations of water-borne cholera near the Broad Street pump, some interesting ideas of water dowsing, and my new favorite cuneiform symbol for water.
The wildest idea is ‘aquatic memory’, which provides some narrative drive, alluded to in the description above, that a single drop of water connects multiple people through time. The ideas in the book were formulated by Zaleekah’s fictional mentor, who was ultimately disgraced by his pursuit of what others considered unreliable pseudo-science, as noted (187):
“…under certain circumstances, water — the universal solvent — retained evidence, or ‘memory,’ of the solute particles that had dissolved in it, no matter how many times it was diluted or purified. Even if years passed, or centuries, and not a single original molecule remained, each droplet of water maintained a unique structure, distinguishable from the next, marked forever by what it once contained. Water, in other words, remembered.”
The idea seemingly makes for compelling storytelling, however, it seemed a bit underdeveloped in the novel itself in my opinion. It does provide a loose framework for the same water molecule’s memories (loosely based on the real-life ideas of Jacques Benveniste), but fails to explain what this idea means beyond the 3 main characters and their narratives. There’s a ‘summary’ table of the water path through the story at the end, but, to me, it didn’t really mean much and the result is a lot of missed potential.
LOST RIVERS
The lost river content was also somewhat underdeveloped, reading as minimal and tangential anecdotes that seem forced into the story versus being fundamental to any of the plotlines. Zaleekah, the character supposedly studying this phenomenon honestly didn’t do a lot, although she had the most potential to expand the ideas of how lost rivers connect with aquatic memory and even the larger storyline. Her role in the story becomes muddled with a failed marriage, and dysfunctional family dynamics that connect to the greater story in the end but don’t contribute much more.
She makes the bold claim early on, “I’m part of a project — we’re collaborating with scientists worldwide to help restore lost rivers.” (151) but never really discusses what they do in a meaningful way, or how it relates to the story. It leads to a forced conversation touching on the River Bièvre in Paris and giving a cursory ‘these are everywhere’ sort of list, and how we buried them.
She later discusses London’s lost rivers, which reads like a guidebook entry (or a marginally more interesting recounting of Barton’s Lost Rivers of London), rather than something enlivening the story. For instance, this passage (183-184):
“Then there is the River Effra in South London, concealed and culverted, nowadays a conduit for drainage and waste matter, silently coursing under not only houses and offices but also cemeteries, whence it sometimes unearths and carries off buried coffins. There is also the Tyburn, a source of delicious fresh salmon in the distant past, though barely remembered these days, as it flows unseen and unheard underneath celebrated urban landmarks. The Walbrook, once a sapphire-blue river running through the Roman fort of Londonium into the Thames, shimmering like the wing of a dragonfly, provided residents with clean water; now it only feeds into a malodorous sewer.”
Later on, she discovers a note on her desk in her office when searching for something, with the following jotted down: (186)
“HOW TO BURY A RIVER
Build concrete troughs along both sides of the riverbed.
Add a roof to the troughs.
Encase the river completely on three sides, turning it into one long, winding coffin.
Cover the roof with earth, making sure no trace is visible.
Build your city over it.
Forget that it was there.”
It’s all sort of random and snippets like this are a throw-away with little context and less relationship to the overall narrative. There’s nothing to follow up on why we should care and how lost rivers tie into the bigger story. I will admit that having a specific agenda about how lost rivers and hidden hydrology fit into fictional narrative structures is a little pedantic. So my defense is that, on the whole, I liked the story, while I was also disappointed in how these subjects of water and lost rivers were incorporated.
My disappointment comes from a desire to see more opportunities in embedding the ideas of lost rivers into creative writing, to inform and engage a larger audience about the concepts. I am always excited and a little worried when I hear about examples that promise such. Much of the writing around lost rivers only appeals to a very interested subset of people, so connecting these ideas to mainstream culture, popular media, and entertainment could help spread the word to folks who would not be interested otherwise.
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THE EXPANDED LITERARY FIELD
On that note, the first time I connected with the idea of hidden hydrology in literature was a few years back when I wrote an essay related to a novel by Ben Winters from 2016 “Underground Airlines.” The story features Pogue’s Run, a hidden urban stream in Indianapolis, which plays a vital role in the narrative of the novel. Since then, I’ve been collecting previous explorations of literature around hidden hydrology, where subsurface waterways play a significant role in the plot and action of the story.
From a purely hidden hydrology, there’s a short list of titles, some of which I’ve read and others I’ve found or have been clued into by research or other readers. This resulted in a short loose working bibliography.
There are Rivers in the Sky (Shafak), 2024
Rivers of London (Aaronovitch), 2016-2024
Underground Airlines (Winters), 2016
The City of Ember (DuPrau), 2013
Dodger (Pratchett), 2012
Montmorency (Updale), 2003
Neverwhere (Gaiman), 1996
The Doom of the Great City (Delisle Hay), 1880
Journey to the Center of the Earth (Verne), 1864
Les Miserables (Hugo), 1862
This investigation intersects with much broader and fascinating areas of inquiry like the Underworld, and a literary subgenre known as Subterranean Fiction. Beware of rabbit holes, as these yield wild threads like Hollow Earth theory (which makes for great fiction). Works span centuries and many genres like sci-fi and fantasy, delving into the literal underworld below the surface. However they do not always specifically touch on waterways, so not all are relevant.
HELP EXPAND THE LIST
The list above is modest, so I hope to expand this initial catalog and explore the full spectrum of possible literary hidden hydrology references. Let me know if you have other examples or favorites you’ve encountered where the concept and context of buried creeks, sewers, and lost rivers play a part in novels, stories, or other fictional works. I would love to expand my overall library of options, hear your thoughts, and explore more deeply.
Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 10/15/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/22/25.
I spotted this great project this week on LinkedIn and thought it worth sharing. The transformation of urban highways to waterways is an interesting subset of hidden hydrology worth exploring, with some great global examples we will discuss more in the future. This project traces the history of the Catharijnesingel, a canal removed to create an urban highway in Utrecht in the Netherlands, and more recently transformed from hardscape back to its original form as a canal. This provides a great case study on the benefits of public spaces around water, and the ability to restore lost public and ecological benefits through the restoration of waterways.
An overview can be found on the European Prize for Urban Public Space competition site, (Public Space) which recognizes “…all kinds of works to create, recover and improve public spaces in European cities.” The Catharijnesingel project was the winner of the competition in 2022.
For some background, the original Catharijnesingel was a canal that flowed around the defensive walls of the historic city. A park was originally built in the canal zone in the 19th century but was drained and paved over in the late 1960s to 1970s to create space for a major arterial roadway.
Work on the Catharijnesingel before burial (Public Space)
The before picture shows the Catharijnebaan, the roadway built atop the original canal. In 2002, citizens began to discuss the removal of the roadway and restoration of the canal to its original form.
The transformation shows the restoration of the canal and revegetation of the banks. The description provides the context of reconnecting with public spaces in urban environments, and the ability to create new, safe, places to access nature and socialize. As noted in the project assessment, on the Public Space website:
“The Catharijnesingel adapts to this new situation by providing pedestrian paths and boat routes and enough space for outdoor recreation. The emphasis on the different microbiotopes of the green areas also makes a positive educational contribution to outdoor activities, where the changing face of nature can be contemplated while walking (or sailing) on the Catharijnesingel.”
The transformation provides access to the waterway for boating, paddleboarding, shady spots, and water access points along the banks, providing much-needed recreation spaces. The project was built in two phases, over 2015 and 2020 with a total restoration area spanning 1.1 kilometers of length.
There’s also a great video on the Public Space website with some additional historical background and imagery. The project designer, Utrecht-based OKRA Landschapsarchitecten refers to the higher goal of the project as a “…climate-adaptive backbone for the centre of Utrecht,“ and elaborates on the project goals and results:
“In the 20th century Catharijnesingel became Catharijnebaan: an unattractive urban highway dominated by asphalt and concrete. When offered the chance to revert that development, we took the opportunity to push the idea further to its full potential. As the water returned to the historic Canal area, it brought along a new natural park route right into one of the busiest areas in the Netherlands. The result was an urban landscape that was fully connected to the past, the present and the future.”
These transformations provide a great example of the power to right some of the previous wrongs in urban areas, creating adaptable, climate-friendly spaces. While the canal was never a natural waterway, the project shows that restoring artificial waterways can provide myriad benefits similar to creeks and urban rivers, providing important hydrologic, climate, and public space goals.
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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 05/29/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.
Stories of loss around hidden hydrology are not confined to the environmental impacts and the erasure of natural waterways. They can also include the loss of community and larger societal impacts resulting from impacts like flooding that can result from building communities that are out of balance with the larger hydrological systems they inhabit. This month is an appropriate time to remember Vanport, the community built along the Columbia River in North Portland in the early 1940s by Henry J. Keiser to house World War II shipbuilding workers, and the devastating flood on Memorial Day in May 1948 which destroyed the town.
Aerial View of Vanport, looking (OHS Research Libary, Oregon Encylopedia)
The Oregon Experience documentary from 2016, “Vanport” is available to watch online for free and gives an in-depth history of the evolution of the community and its tragic demise. I wrote about the documentary back in 2019 in my post “Vanport, A Story of Loss” if you want a summary of the evolution and fate of the community.
The rapid development of the community quickly made Vanport the largest wartime housing development, with over 40,000 residents, making it also the second largest city in Oregon at the time in the early 1940s. The community was built around water, nestled near the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette, with channels of the Columbia slough and smaller lakes providing amenities for residents.
I love the two images from the documentary showing the engagement with water, including an informal beach area adjacent to either Force Lake or Bayou Lake, and a group of kids near one of the sloughs.
There is some debate about whether the rail embankment to the west between Smith Lake and the Vanport community was meant to be a dike or protection from flooding or merely the berm for the railroad lines. For Vanport the question was irrelevant, as the waters rose quickly and breached the raised earthwork, which allowed the floodwaters to quickly inundate the entire town with a “wall of water”.
The devastation was compounded by the location within the historical Columbia River floodplain and the ephemeral nature of the construction which was rapid and not meant to be long-lived. Other breaches occurred and the entire area inland became a lake. The images, such as below, of houses floating amid the floodwaters, hint at the lack of solid foundations.
The devastation was immense and swift, leaving behind the wreckage of the community. Over time the debris was cleared and new uses emerged to erase the remnants of the Vanport community, as it is now part of the Portland Expo Center, Heron Lakes Golf Club, Portland International Raceway, and adjacent industrial development.
Vanport was never meant as a permanent community, and the occupation of the site continued well after shipbuilding activities had wound down following the war, providing a refuge for residents who found barriers to housing elsewhere. The suddenness of the destructive forces, the lack of warning and accountability to residents about the dangers of the flooding, and the displacement of numerous residents who became refugees overnight due to the disaster. These compounding forces give this site and its history special meaning for Portanders and the need to discuss, remember, and confront our histories, with lessons to be shared with other communities. The fact that the Vanport has been physically erased from the map also led to its erasure from our memory. It is the same as the burial and erasure of streams, and wetlands, and deserves the same attention to the ecological, hydrological, and cultural forces at work.
The legacy continued with displacement, as a product of racial housing discrimination led to difficulty for groups to find other housing. As mentioned by Abbott in the Oregon Encyclopedia entry:
“Refugees crowded into Portland, a city still recovering from the war. Part of the problem was race, for more than a thousand of the flooded families were African Americans who could find housing only in the growing ghetto in North Portland. The flood also sparked unfounded but persistent rumors in the African American community that the Housing Authority had deliberately withheld warnings about the flood and the city had concealed a much higher death toll.”
It also is important to consider the vulnerability that still exists today. While the installation of Columbia River dams provides some moderation of flood levels that didn’t exist in the 1940s, and the bolstering of true levees and dikes meant to protect from future floods, risks persist along the water’s edge. This protection is aided today through efforts such as Levee Ready Columbia, working to protect from flood risk in the context of development and climate change in the slough.
Vanport Mosaic
As a reminder of our history and place, additional resources provide the background of life at Vanport and the people who called it home for a brief time. This video “Vanport: Legacy of a Forgotten City”, below, is worth checking out for more context about the community and the work being done to keep the memory alive. The video is part of a great resource, Vanport Mosiac, which calls itself “…a memory-activism platform. We amplify, honor, and preserve the silenced histories that surround us in order to understand our present, and create a future where we all belong.”
Their annual Vanport Mosaic Festival is upcoming this year from May 18 to June 1, 2024, which features speakers, tours, and events on-site and at nearby community venues (program here). I’d recommend taking the bus tour (if they still offer it) to see parts of the site not accessible outside of festival hours around the original Vanport community. I wrote an extensive post about the festival and tour in June 2019 “Vanport Mosaic” and they were kind enough to provide a link to it on their site for others to access.
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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 05/15/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.
Milan once boasted a robust system of canals, similar to the well-known waterscapes of Venice. Lacking a large river in the urban area, the canals in Milan were developed in the 12th to the 17th centuries to provide water access and connections that were not part of the original city. The area in the southwest quarter of the city is known as the Navigli district, and today “…remains one of the last true connections the Milanese have with water. The Grand Canal (Naviglio Grande) itself dates back to 1177, making it one of the oldest navigable canals in Europe. Today, it’s packed with bars, cafes, restaurants, art galleries and boutiques; in non-lockdown times, it’s a lively meeting spot or a place for a gentle passeggiata stroll by the water.”
Much of the canal system was buried as part of the modernization of the city, but the system still exists, a few areas see daylight, but most are now underground in pipes. A recent paper by Carlien Donkor, Agenee Bavuso Marone, and Allegra Aprea, “Unveiling Milan’s Navigli and Underground Water Heritage through Integrated Urban (Water) Design.” (Blue Papers, 2024, Vol. 3, No. 1) discusses the Navigli through the lenses of climate adaptation, and water resource management, with a goal to “reclaim Milan’s identity as a “city of water” through a deliberate design methodology informed by the city’s history.”
“Snowfall in the Navigli, Milan” January 1852 (Image source: Angelo Inganni / Blue Papers)
The authors provide additional context for the historical canal and lock system, urban water power dynamics, and how these features had served functional purposes in the original historic city, like draining the marshy landscape mitigating flooding. They also discuss how these can restore the ‘water heritage’, and ways these systems can aid in addressing the contemporary urban issues facing Milan. The system map of Milan provides a hint at some of the main components. Some background, from the authors:
“The Navigli were dug as early as 1179 for defensive purposes, as private irrigation channels, and later as lines of trade and business, and became a part of everyday Milanese life (Aprea et al. 2018). In the past, these artificial rivers were the only source of running water for domestic use; for instance there were many old washing houses along the Navigli like the one in Vicolo dei Lavandai (Ministry of Tourism n.d.). They were even used to transport materials to the Duomo (Milan’s main cathedral) during construction (Tyson 2021; Global Site Plans n.d.). The Navigli system reached its peak during the Renaissance, when Leonardo da Vinci worked on the improvement and expansion of the canals (Tramonti 2014).”
The water system of Milan (Stanqiweb/Blue Papers)Historical image of canals in Milan (Civico Archivio Fotografico/BBC)
The canals were filled early in the 20th century, many turned into roadways as cars and trains replaced boats for transportation. Like many other cities, the authors note: “…the canals were perceived as sources of disease and odor, and as health and hygiene needs of the growing city became alarming the initiative to conceal them were desirable.”
Incoronata Lock is a remnant of the canal system still visible (Joey Tyson/BBC)
The current system that is the result of this transformation has disconnected residents from the water, changing the nature of the city and diminishing the historical role the Navigli. There have been proposals for reopening the canals and daylighting some of the buried waterways, which are ongoing, however, the authors expand the notion to include a broader spectrum of opportunities to tap the historical legacy of the “city of water” as part of a modern water system. As noted: “By looking into the past and present water infrastructure, surface and underground, technological solutions for collecting, absorbing, filtering and purifying rainwater, formed part of this landscape project.”
This system diagram in the article takes some unpacking, but shows a master plan diagram “showing the hydraulic continuity of the project to the Fossa Interna as well as the three Navigli.” This included incorporating green infrastructure solutions (or in the parlance of some European areas “sustainable drainage systems” or SUDS), which have multiple benefits like restoration of biodiversity, reduced urban temperatures, and amenities.
Waterland master plan (Carlien Donkor, Agnese Bavuso Marone and Allegra Aprea, 2018/Blue Papers).
The ability to use “historical analysis” as a way to create frameworks for modern water systems is highly aligned with the goals of this hidden hydrology project and the authors expand the notion beyond the technical to include the importance of culture in the water solutions.
“For older Milanese, water in Milan evokes a deep nostalgia for the disappeared aquatic city symbolized by the countless depictions in art of the Navigli. The Navigli brought water to the people and people to the water. In the same way, Waterland would do the same. While the call to reopen the canals is good, it should be noted that their water management function is for a different scale of city; this should be translated in a contemporary intervention.”
There is more in the article and references, so would appreciate hearing other’s reactions to the paper’s findings, and perhaps if applicable to other regions. Also mentioned earlier, some of the work is underway to daylight canals in Milan. Notably, a project called Riaprire I Navigli (Reopen the Canals) has a wealth of information on specific worth being done. It is worth a follow-up post for more info (and a good chance to work on my Italian), so stay tuned.
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Note: This post was originally posted on Substack on 05/13/24 and added to the Hidden Hydrology website on 04/23/25.
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.”
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.
