Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
it. They just wanted to win and they did. But so did the mayor. The loser was the
ratepayers. They're paying for a project with marginal value that will benefi t the
new development.
118
Despite the environmental aims of the neighborhood activists, it is not
clear that the Northgate Channel (or any of the urban creek restoration
activities, for that matter) will have an appreciable effect on the salmon
populations in Seattle. Salmon are frequently the measuring stick for suc-
cess in these projects, but one SPU staff member predicts that the city's
urban runoff projects will be lost in the “statistical noise of water quality
and hydrology.”
119
However, as stated earlier, the intent of the Urban
Creeks Legacy Program and creek restoration more generally is not eco-
logical restoration but public education and awareness. The biological and
ecological goals of the Northgate Channel are secondary to larger, more
elusive aims of creating new types of integrated social and environmental
fl ows that cannot be measured with traditional economic or biological
metrics. The emphasis on education and awareness does not negate the
importance of these activities, nor does it suggest that the salmon is a
false indicator of environmental health. Rather, this goal incorporates the
ideology of salmon as a means to promote urban environmental activi-
ties and, in effect, to raise consciousness of residents about their hybrid
surroundings.
A local consulting engineer notes, “Daylighting Northgate is totally
ridiculous from a fi sh point of view or a water quality point of view. But if
it creates an access that makes the network more visible to people because
they see that creek and affects how they view the rest of the system, then
it is going to be worth a lot of money.”
120
As such, the Northgate Channel
is not so much about environmental restoration and salmon protection
as it is about fostering an ecological imagination and an environmental
ethic among Seattleites. A city hall insider puts the project into perspective
with respect to other urban creek projects: “This is a once in a lifetime
opportunity. Once that piece of property is redeveloped, it's never going to
happen again unless there is an earthquake and everything falls down and
the creek decides for itself to come back. For some of these other projects,
that doesn't exist right now. You can do them in fi ve or ten years, they're
good projects but they're not going away. This one was going away and
you have a huge economic impact of redevelopment up there.”
121
The
Northgate Channel serves an educational purpose by exposing water fl ows
to urban residents. But in order to accomplish this goal, the Northgate
Channel has been turned into a highly engineered structure—something
very different from the original waterway that fl owed through the area
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