After the Flood: Retrofi tting Austin’s Urban Core to Accommodate Growth - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 67

The conditions of Austin's creeks today are strikingly different from
those that attracted early residents. Shoal Creek and Waller Creek were
once described as “teeming with fi sh” and having “reaches of deep
water . . . [affording] choice bathing and swimming places for the popu-
lation.” 5 After the mid-nineteenth century, the creeks were subjected to
the same utilitarian uses as other urban waterways in the United States.
Rather than serving as the central organizing framework for the city, the
waterways have been used primarily as conduits for wastewater and as
repositories for urban detritus, notably transients and trash. In this sense,
the creeks of Austin have become the natural counterpart to the city's alley-
ways, home to many of the undesirable elements of the city.
An engineer described Shoal Creek and Waller Creek in the early twen-
tieth century as open sewers for both sanitary and stormwater fl ows. 6
With the introduction of comprehensive pipe networks to manage sani-
tary wastes in the 1910s and 1920s, the creek beds became the obvious
location for sanitary sewer lines because they were at the lowest relative
elevation (fi gure 4.1). 7 Furthermore, the stormwater networks were de-
signed to discharge into the creeks. 8 Urban runoff from the increasingly
impervious landscape was fi rst collected in the drainage network and then
deposited in the creeks and eventually the Colorado River. An Austin
Figure 4.1
An uncovered sanitary sewer in the bed of Boggy Creek in East Austin.