Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Gaynor can be understood as a citizen expert: one who leverages her
professional skills as a landscape architect as well as her interest in commu-
nity empowerment to broker a solution among the competing parties.
114
She was able to navigate the complexities of commercial redevelopment as
well the desires of the citizens to have a natural amenity in their neighbor-
hood. Although some stakeholders felt that Gaynor advocated too strongly
for the neighborhood activists' insistence on daylighting as opposed to
other drainage options, most agree that her hybrid design was the primary
reason for the successful compromise. As such, Gaynor used the design
process to open up environmental management to multiple competing
voices by championing the opinions of local experts, those residents with
intimate knowledge of the problems and potential for the creek that are
sometimes overlooked by technomanagerial actors. At the same time, she
understood the economic and technical aspects of integrating water fl ows
in the built environment and could interpret this knowledge for all parties.
Despite the success in fi nding a compromise solution, many question
the wisdom of spending SPU ratepayer money for a project that has mar-
ginal water quality benefi ts. Another option would have been to pay for
the project with money from the city's general fund, but this would have
been much more diffi cult, given the other demands for that funding source.
Since 2002, SPU has adopted an approach called Asset Management on
all of its water quality projects to account for the social, economic, and
environmental benefi ts and costs of its projects that is commonly referred
to as the Triple Bottom Line in sustainable business circles.
115
With respect
to the original cost-benefi t analysis for the Northgate Channel, an SPU
staff member says, “It was close to being a wash. It wasn't just so obvious
that we should do this project, unlike others where the benefi ts are so clear.
So it came out ahead but just by a hair, and that was at $10 million. When
we go back to do the analysis again, it may be that this time the numbers
show it to be a no-go, but we're already committed.”
116
The cost of the Northgate Channel was initially estimated at $7.2 mil-
lion, the SPU cost assessment was $10 million, and the fi nal cost estimate
completed in October 2009 was $14.7 million—more than double the
original estimate.
117
Another SPU staff member has a more jaded perspec-
tive on the compromised solution:
The whole project isn't about stormwater, it was a political solution to get a de-
velopment to happen. What's unfortunate is that for the cost of this project, $13
million, you know what you could have bought? That little stretch of channel is
not going to help salmon get into that creek. They [neighborhood activists] got
so focused on daylighting the creek and getting the money out of the city to do
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