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Urban Rivers 101
"Nature bats last if she doesn't come first," said Ann Riley, S.F. Regional Board, emphasizing the lesson policymakers must learn from the repeated failures of conventional engineering practices on the nation's beleaguered urban waterways. "Recent natural disasters and environmentally devastated rivers illustrate the failures," explained Riley in her keynote address at the "City Rivers-The Urban Bankside Restored" symposium held at the Golden Gate University School of Law in November 2005. "We now have successful examples of ecologically functioning streams restored from concrete and channels that serve as models for returning healthy waterways to densely developed cities," said Riley. The key, she said, is that the public needs to get involved and insist on having a living river-one that supports even the most endangered species-over parking lots and warehouses.
Throughout the day, speakers echoed the theme that a new and long-overdue era of understanding has finally arrived in which ecologically sensitive principles are being developed and applied to resuscitate urban rivers. Yet the mindset of the Army Corps has been a major obstacle, said American Rivers' Melissa Samet. "The very symbol of the pork barrel, the Corps has a bias toward huge, over-designed projects with enormous price tags that have been selected for political reasons and don't take the environment into account." Successful restoration projects require that the community harness and manage the Corps, she said, and outlined a strategy for doing so. Communities must bring projects to the Corps rather than letting the Corps start projects, and they must keep state and federal agencies actively involved, as they can deny projects. Experts should be enlisted to examine the Corps' excessively long feasibility studies and, as a last resort, the community should complain to Congress and get the press involved.
Whatever the funding source, investing in urban rivers is critical for myriad reasons, said James Lyons, Casey Trees Endowment Fund, who noted that the Clinton administration understood this, while the current one doesn't seem to. "Nearly 90% of Americans reside in metropolitan areas," he said, "so restored rivers and riparian habitats in cities can bring communities in touch with nature, expanding the public's awareness of the value of natural resources and building the base of support needed to sustain natural resource programs and budgets for wildland as well as urban areas." He emphasized that investments in rivers can save taxpayers money by reducing stormwater runoff, for example, which improves water quality and eliminates some water treatment costs.
Ellison Folk, an attorney with Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, discussed how setback ordinances, which limit development within a certain distance of a resource, are one of the most commonly used tools to protect riparian habitats and waterways. "While these ordinances are controversial because people don't like being told what they can and can't do with their land, they serve many important purposes," she noted. The ordinances tend to pass if the purpose is clearly understood and where they do not substantially reduce property values.
The symposium's focus then shifted to case studies of rivers at various stages in the rebirth process. "The Anacostia Waterfront Initiative," explained Uwe Steven Brandes, Anacostia Waterfront Corporation, "is a federal-local partnership, and a planning process that has produced a development plan for the ecological, economic, social, and cultural rebirth of the Anacostia River." Unprecedented in the history of urban planning in Washington, D.C., due to its inclusion of neighborhoods on both sides of the river, the plan envisions a greensward that will link parks, maritime activities, and communities, as well as restoring water quality and stimulating economic development.
Things are looking up even for the Los Angeles River. "The river is now the subject of intense re-examination," said Robert Gottlieb, Occidental College. "The strategy for bringing the river to life has been to bring people down to the river to envision the possibilities." Friends of the L.A. River has organized poetry readings by the river, art shows, and annual bicycle rides, he said, and now a rail yard adjacent to the Metro stop at Chinatown has been transformed into a temporary art project, an actual cornfield, which was just harvested. Like other urban rivers, the L.A. River may take years to restore. Yet the take away message, says conference organizer Paul Kibel, was positive. "There are ecologically sound flood control approaches that are more compatible with emerging bankside uses than traditional armoring. Federal, state, and local agencies are coming to realize this, but only after much prodding by communities who want living streams rather than concrete gulleys."
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