Pratt Museum: Kachemak Bay's Museum of Arts, Sciences, & Humanities

Community Conversations

Water

A Position Paper by Dr. Deland S. Anderson Prepared for the Pratt Museum in conjunction with a Community Conversation on 21 May 2004.

Some thirty people assembled at the Pratt Museum to discuss water. The conversation ranged from poetic to political, from metaphysical to hydrological. But it was clear from the outset that a number of those persons present had a particular stretch of water on their minds, namely, Woodard Creek.

Woodard Creek, bearing the name of some of the first settlers to the Homer area, flows only about two miles in its entire length. It drops close to 1000 feet in elevation, and passes through the heart of Homer. The land it cuts through is fragile, consisting of clay and sandstone bluffs in its upper reaches and a boggy alluvial plain in its lower half. Its course begins atop the rolling and fractured bluff above the city of Homer. These headwaters are the site of much recent residential development. The area affords stunning views and is easily accessible both from East Hill and West Hill roads, major arteries leading to the outskirts of town. As the creek trickles toward the sea, its waters gather in the short but dramatic Woodard Canyon, a largely undeveloped ravine some 300 feet deep. In its lower course, Woodard Creek passes through a heavily developed residential area with homes and businesses built on, if not in, the creek bed. Next it passes underneath the Pratt Museum’s parking lot. It emerges from time to time below that, but is often routed underground through Homer’s commercial district. After passing under the Sterling Highway it flows through a trench for a few hundred yards, finally debouching onto the gravely beach. Woodard Creek is part creek, part ditch, part pipeline. As a creek, it’s not much. Its water is not very good for drinking. Its flow rate is low, except during heavy rains (when it is terrific.) Its banks are generally hidden beneath heavy undergrowth of alder, elderberry, and devil’s club. Its bed is silted and scattered with coal and burnt clays. It has no fish, no beaver, no muskrat, no ducks. But it does have plenty of trash. As a ditch, it has no purpose. And as a pipeline, it has frequent failures, sometimes catastrophic. So why not simply bury the whole thing, or certainly the lower half, and be done with it? Precisely because it is water, and water has an essential place in our lives. This seemed to be the underlying Heideggerian premise of Laura Ballock’s plans for the daylighting of Woodard Creek, which served as the focal point of this Community Conversation.

Laura Ballock is a candidate for a Masters degree in landscape architecture at the University of Washington. She has visited Homer several times during the past year to study the layout of the town. Initially her interest was with the Town Square Project, in conjunction with the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust, Pratt Museum, and the City of Homer. As her thesis project developed, she shifted her focus more to the Woodard Creek watershed, especially the segment running through the Pratt Museum’s grounds. Her leading concept became the “daylighting” of Woodard Creek. Much more than simply ripping up the asphalt and culverts that overlay and contain the creek as it passes beneath the museum’s parking lot, the concept involves interpreting the creek for visitors. It is in short to present the creek as a place of dwelling rather than merely as a drain. Her plans are available through the museum, and warrant considerable reflection. However, it was clear from the group assembled that evening at the museum, that her interpretation of the creek was somewhat controversial.

A gulf emerged immediately during the conversation. Some people clearly expressed that their rights as private landowners of the creek bed were under threat. The loosely defined “Woodard Creek Coalition” associated with Ms. Ballock’s designs may have exacerbated fears. In any case, individual landowners voiced concerns regarding the plan. Some questioned whether the design was technically feasible for the particular site. Others cried foul over being left out of the process. Some bristled at being strong-armed into developing or restoring their portions of the creek bed. On the other extreme were voices speaking up for the creek as a community resource, as an environmental concern, even as a sacred place. It is not a stretch to say that some presented the creek as plumbing on a large scale, while others eulogized its mystical qualities.

According to Laura Ballock’s study, 53% of Homer is water. That would explain a lot, like jiggling ground and roaming springs. If Homer is such a wet place, and if we prefer to live on dry land, there’s an obvious conflict. Either we have to change our preferences, or we have to dry this place out. The latter course seems to be the way of the past, and probably of the future, unless things change substantially. Indeed at present, if one surveys the site of Homer, water isn’t all that obvious. Aside from Beluga Lake, a man-made reservoir designed as a float plane airport, there isn’t much water to be seen. But, visit a vacant lot anywhere in the city, and you are almost certain to find a wet spot, if not a seep or creek. So, the definition of water here clearly includes ground water, not just lakes and streams. Add to this the sloughs and tide flats that lie within the city, throw in the Fishin’ Hole and the harbor, and you might see where the 53% figure is coming from.

But though some of us still might think Ms. Ballock’s study exaggerates how wet Homer is, Thales of Miletus would contend that she has seriously underestimated the figure. Thales, the founder of Western philosophy, said: All is water. Either Laura is wrong or Thales is. Or at least some qualifications must be made to reconcile the two claims. Let us consider the nature of water for a moment.

Water is the most common element on Earth. It is essential to all life. Our bodies are mostly water. The globe is largely water. Water is found on the surface of the Earth, beneath the Earth, and in the heavens above. It may well be unique to Earth. Water is also the universal solvent. It wears away mountains. Even diamonds wash away over time. Water cannot be produced, only collected. Though it can be contained, it can never be captured. And, in a sense, it cannot be wasted, as it does not disappear. It just gets transformed or relocated. Unlike other elements, water is commonly found in all three of its physical states: solid, liquid, gas. Many of us have experienced a coincidence of these states, as when we shake off our snowy clothes by the wood stove. Icy crystals hit the hot surface, turn instantly to water, then to steam before our very eyes. It’s merely a physical change in the compound, but since it happens so quickly and with no apparent boundaries between solid, liquid, gas, it gives rise to questions: What is water? What is matter? Such queries concerning the nature of the physical universe lead seamlessly to reflection on what is beyond the physical, namely, the spiritual or metaphysical. When swimming we experience weightlessness. But something more than Archimedes’ Principle of buoyancy is involved here. By immersing ourselves in the water, we overcome not just gravity, but the very spirit of gravity and all that is associated with it. Swimming under water is like being able to fly. There is some magic in it. Consider as well the effects of diving, where the lines separating the physical and the spiritual dissolve. Atmospheric pressure beneath the surface produces a narcotic effect, inducing paranoia in some and euphoria others. Many peoples have long used water to bathe, while others reserve it for ceremonial ablutions. Kids play in it. Old folks soak in it. Fishers live and die by it. We boil it to cook our food. Or we freeze it to keep our food fresh. We peer into its depths and dream, wide-awake. Note also that the surface of water is reflective—nature’s mirror as it were—providing us with a stimulus to imitate and reflect. Could it be the primordial prompt for artistic creation? So, though water is the most common element on Earth, it is arguably the most precious. Some predict that soon it will become the most contested. Certainly it is the most volatile natural element on earth.

Property owners seem sometimes to be in denial about this fact. Realtors might occasionally suppress it. Most of us simply overlook it. In any case people are frequently naïve regarding the risks of building in flood plains or on the beach. And generally we are overly optimistic about the success of engineering techniques used to control water. With increased development in the Homer area, more and more attempts are being made to control water. Wetlands are filled, riverbanks and shorelines are riprapped, and streams are diverted into culverts, ditches, or storm drains. But these attempts are frequently unsuccessful. One participant went so far as to quote the old saw, “All engineering projects are designed to fail.” The group confirmed this truism with reference to the growing number of engineered problems in the region. They range from flawed attempts to curb severe coastal erosion in the area from Bishops Beach to the Homer Spit as well as recent damage to numerous properties built in the path of flooding creeks and rivers.

One of the important corollaries brought out during the conversation was that most techniques commonly employed to control run-off increase flood damage rather than decrease it. Culverts, for example, frequently plug with debris or silt, instantly transforming roadways into earthen dams. And as these accidental dams have no spillways, they wash out, causing catastrophic destruction downstream. Even when culverts don’t plug up, they often increase flow rates so much that the outlet becomes an out-sized fire hose, scouring creek beds. This can lead to the sloughing of stream banks, which in turn increases the silt load in the water, and hence the erosive force of the creek. When salmon streams are involved, the consequences can be devastating, as culverts can contribute to spawning runs being wiped out. More effective technologies were discussed by the group, such as bridges or fords, but the fact remains that culverts are cheap and popular, and even a symbol of progress in a frontier community. On the lower course of Woodard creek alone, there are at least eleven crossings that employ culverts. The uppermost crossing is at Fairview Avenue, and is a new installation since the floods of 2002. The rebuilding of the crossing cost taxpayers well over $100,000 dollars. Perhaps ironically, the road was closed during this Community Conversation because a void had apparently opened up around the culvert, causing the roadbed to fall into a sinkhole.

Some participants pointed out another important corollary, namely, the more development there is, the harder it is for water to find its way into the ground. But, water being what it is, must go somewhere, and so it runs off roofs, onto driveways, down the middle of streets, sweeps across parking lots. When that water finally reaches the beach, it is laden with silt and laced with petroleum products and other forms of pollution. The deleterious effects to the landscape are obvious. Where once there was a seep or a soak, now there is a parking lot with filthy puddles. Where brooks once babbled, streets with fissures, cracks and gouged out ditches prevail. The effects upon the ecosystem as a whole, and particularly upon aquatic life are less obvious, but no less real. Furthermore, the negative effects of “hard surface development” are amplified when building takes place on steep slopes, as is the case with much recent growth in the Homer area. If hard surface development causes water to run off, steep slope development causes it to run off faster and with more force. Those who live downhill from such development have expressed genuine concern over what is being allowed to happen above them. Floods and mudslides are not just a threat for those people, they are realities of the recent past and eventualities of the near future. If such destruction is to be curtailed, people simply must stop ripping up the ground.

A paradigmatic example of what should never be done is all too visible where Woodard Creek comes out of the canyon. A private landowner has carved a precarious driveway up the canyon to gain the vantage of the bluff. But the signature road cut continues to slide away and fill the creek with huge loads of silt and debris. The plastic mesh landscaping fabric the contractor installed to control silt run-off has long since been swept away in mudslides and become a durable feature of the bed of Woodard Creek.

In closing we might consider this maxim: since we can’t live without water, we should consider more carefully how to live with it.