For the first official “How Could You Use it?” of 2022, I present this?fun little?New York Times?article
:
If you’re anything like me, you read that headline and ask yourself, “Well, yes, why IS New York unearthing a brook it buried a century ago?” and “Wait, why did they bury a brook in the first place?” and maybe, “How is it actually possible to bury a brook?!
Fear not, dear readers, for the article answers all and introduces the Swipefile-worthy concept of “daylighting.” Let’s dig in.
- The article starts off with a great example of the “Known-New Contract
,”?reminding us first that New York City is surrounded by water (the Known), but also that there is “an enormous trove of water hidden below its streets and high-rise buildings — hundreds of subterranean streams, creeks and springs that were buried long ago and all but forgotten as the city grew,” (the New).
- We’re then introduced to the?Important Water
?in question, Tibbetts Brook. The brook was buried (or the last stretch of it, anyway) in 1912 for, what else??Progress!?[Progress, in this case, being the development of the marshland around it.]
- In rerouting the brook, said developers directed the water into the sewers, which, with climate change is now creating a bit of a [okay, a BIG OL’] problem. The irony is that environmentalists have been trying to get the brook unearthed—a process known as “daylighting”—for?years.
- See,?with more frequent, and more intense, storms, the sewers can’t handle the volume of water that the normal runoff, plus the brook’s water, produces.?From the 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.”
- When you have much larger storms than expected (and than have traditionally occurred), the pipes simply don’t have enough space, and the water in?the brook still has to go somewhere.?Unfortunately, as with Hurricane Ida recently, that means massive flooding in the streets, as well as onto a highway, “the Major Deegan Expressway, where it trapped dozens of cars, buses and trucks in rising waters.”
- New York is not alone in the urgency behind daylighting projects. Many cities around the world are dealing with the “twin crises of outdated infrastructure and climate change.”
- Returning waterways to their original locations and flow patterns (or as close as possible), though, create “ a kind of ‘natural infrastructure’ in cities?… bringing benefits such as reducing sewer overflows, saving energy and money at wastewater plants that unnecessarily treat clean water, creating more green space and improving quality of life in neighborhoods.”
- The article then provides us with a bit more history, noting that Tibbetts Brook is far from the only waterway buried like this. New York City sent numerous other creeks and streams underground and into the sewers, often as a way of cleaning them up after they’d been turned into de facto dumping grounds or open-air sewers.
- The authors give us a bit more details on the project itself, and where the 1-mile stretch of daylighted brook will run. They also give us insight into the hurdles still in the way (in addition to the $130M price tag). Notably,?there’s the arguably typical battle between public good and private interests?(the railroad company CSX currently owns an important section of the land needed), and some other city- and state government wrangling.
- We’re then taken on a bit of a tour of Tibbetts Brook and its history, as well as the history of the effort to daylight it, which goes back to at least the 1990s.?Now that the project is part of a larger one (NYC’s green infrastructure initiatives), it’s getting renewed attention.
- It’s also getting attention because it “would reduce combined sewer overflows in the Harlem River by 25 percent, or by 220 million gallons annually.”?So the cost-to-payoff ratio is definitely on the good side,?not to mention the expansion of green and other public spaces in neighborhoods that want and need them. One of those spaces is Van Cortland park, the site of a plantation that enslaved people, for whom “the brook would serve as an important reminder of [their] legacy.”
- The article closes out with a summary of the 30-year effort: what began as an attempt to “increase access to parkland in a borough where much of it has been fragmented by roads and development,” may “finally be realized” thanks [?] to climate change.
I see all sorts of good stuff you could use in this article, as well as good ways to use it. For me, I would use either this specific story, or “daylighting” in general, to illustrate things like:
- Unintended negative consequences (when solving one problem creates another)
- “Nature finds a way”
- The dangers of old technology in the face of new problems
- How powerful it can be to align a long-desired?Change
?to a new and urgent?Goal
But what do you see in this article? Where or how could you use it your work or content??Email me
?and let me know!
