Politics of Urban Runoff: Building Relations through Active Citizenship - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 175

transportation development in the 1960s and 1970s). Today, the creek is
a tortuous route for migrating salmon, with seven complete fi sh barriers
and three partial fi sh barriers. 79
Flooding incidents are common in the low-lying areas of the watershed
during large storm events due to impervious surface coverage and the close
proximity of residential and commercial properties to the creek channel.
In the late 1980s, the Delridge Community Association began a formal
process with the City of Seattle to prepare an action plan to identify
and prioritize development issues in the community, and drainage issues
emerged as the highest priority. The City of Seattle partnered with King
County and the State of Washington to purchase and preserve thirty acres
of property adjacent to the creek to reduce fl ooding problems. 80 In many
cases, this process involved buying houses and demolishing them to make
room for the creek—an expensive and intrusive redevelopment practice.
In 2000, Delridge neighborhood activists devised a plan to create a trail
along the creek that would simultaneously restore habitat and encourage
resident interaction with the waterway. The trail was intended to fulfi ll
the fi rst strategy of the Delridge Neighborhood Plan to “integrate the
community with nature.” 81 The residents received grant funding from
the City of Seattle to build the Longfellow Creek Legacy Trail, a 4.2-mile
trail along the creek that would serve as a “ribbon of connection” for the
community. 82 The trail was completed in 2005, with related volunteer
and municipal government activities resulting in the restoration of nearly
40 percent of the open creek channel. 83 The interrelated goals of these
activities have been to improve water quality and drainage conditions,
prevent erosion and fl ooding, restore habitat, and expand community
open space and trails.
The Longfellow Creek Legacy Trail begins at a ten-thousand-year-old
restored peat bog and follows the creek until it goes into an underground
pipe to traverse the aforementioned shopping center. The trail continues
on the surface following a virtual creek marked by signage and a water
feature in the shopping center that reminds shoppers of the waterway
fl owing some twenty feet below the surface. Downstream from the shop-
ping center, the creek surfaces again and the trail follows along, sometimes
adjacent to the waterway and other times diverted along residential streets
where access to the creek is impossible. In extreme cases, the trail jogs two
blocks from the open channel and runs parallel down city sidewalks before
meeting up with the creek downstream. Local writer Kathryn True writes,
“The Legacy Trail is an exercise in contrasts. From lush, shady areas that
quietly conjure a mountain stream, to sections that border convenience