We have so radically transformed our cities and towns that few visual clues remain to their natural landscapes and waterways. Creeks have been holstered into pipes.
Wetlands have been filled with dirt and paved. Yet signs of vanished waters tubbornly pop up in unexpected places, such as seasonal “ghost creeks” running through basements. Joel Pomerantz—a San Franciscan who has devoted three decades to rediscovering the city’s historic waterways—checks for traffic, then guides me to a manhole in the middle of residential Eddy Street near busy Divisadero.
Cocking our heads, we hear the sound of rushing water. When that sound is constant, Pomerantz says, as it is here, it’s a creek imprisoned in a sewer pipe—not somebody flushing.Today subverted water is reappearing in inconvenient ways because we have constrained the space it once had to ebb and flow, and climate change is amplifying storms and droughts. To cope, cities are increasingly funneling runoff into green infrastructure such as permeable pavement and bioswales (essentially shallow ditches dressed with water-loving plants).
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