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INTERVENTION: Licton Springs Expansion & Restoration: Central Retention INTERVENTION: AMC Oak Tree 6 Property --> Redeveloped Mixed-Use Building: Central Retention
Enclosed depression
Flood prone
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Park space
Degraded habitat
Peat deposits: prone to settlement
Redevelopment Potential higher elevation pathways regraded wetland area for expanded capacity
Planned Neighborhood Greenway
Redevelopment Potential
Parks Gap
Licton Springs Park shows significant potential to function as a floodable space.
-One of last remaining sacred sites of the Duwamish tribe + other Coast Salish tribes
-Degraded since urbanization: still a wetland, but edges choked by invasive species
-Water quality problems: the creek and spring waters receive toxic stormwater runoff from upstream: wetland no longer considered valuable habitat by Dept. of Fish & Wildlife
-Undersized and aging infrastructure: Licton Springs’ waters were formerly part of an interconnected system of groundwater-fed wetlands and creeks, but the piped system that replaced it is insufficient.
-Chronic, occasionally severe flooding has plagued the park and the surrounding area.
The park exhibits many of the characteristics relevant to floodable space suitability and prioritization: it is situated in an enclosed depression, has significant flooding problems and is a City-owned park space. Licton Springs Park and adjacent residential properties are underlain by peat, and prone to peat settlement. These properties also suffer from flooding issues and some have had to install private drainage lines to mitigate it. Several of those properties are considered to have redevelopment potential as well.
The park and the adjacent residential lots represent an opportunity to achieve multiple benefits with a single intervention: as a site for central retention that could be done in collaboration with Seattle Parks and the Duwamish Tribe, who are actively seeking landmark status for the park. Amplifying the functionality of this pre-existing natural drainage infrastructure would yield benefits for both humans and wildlife while also making the neighborhood more resilient to the impacts of climate change, improving quality of life, and connecting urban dwellers more directly with water
AMC Oak Tree 6 Property:
-Large commercial lot in the Aurora-Licton urban village
-Considered to have redevelopment potential low density of existing land use
-Adjacent to drainage system
-Located in a park gap
-Adjacent to planned bike routes
This proposal calls for the planned neighborhood greenway on Stone Ave N to become a retention street, which has the potential to be connected to other flexible urban surface water solutions. If the site is purchased for redevelopment, SPU could incentivize the new property owner to manage stormwater beyond code requirements to manage right-of-way runoff in addition to the property’s own runoff in times of high flow. Such a policy is currently under consideration by SPU as part of a GSI expansion effort. This arrangement could manifest in the form of a floodable park space in a central courtyard for year-round use by residents, retail shoppers, or even the general public, creating opportunities for exposure to the fluctuations of the area’s hydrology throughout the year with adjacent walkable, bikable connections to other park areas such as Licton Springs.
TYPICAL CONDITIONS
Aggregating Environmental Reparations: Remediating Maury Island
Maury Island, WA
Speculative Design Studio
Autumn 2018, Year 3
Professor: Sara Jacobs
Duration: 5 weeks
A Collaboration with Matthew Grosser
A design exploration motivated by the notion of ‘ecological reparations’, the proposed interventions are intended to address the industrial legacy of Maury Island through environmental remediation and augmentation of natural processes and existing landforms. Maury Island has been dramatically impacted by two extractive industries – gravel mining that carved into its seaside cliffs, and metal processing to the south that showered the island in heavy metals for nearly 100 years, leaving it with hazarous levels of Arsenic in its topsoil. While many areas of Maury Island have been remediated, the former mining sites that are now utilized as open space still have dangerous levels of pollutants, necessitating further intervention.
Arsenic and Aggregate
VashonIsland
MauryIsland
Arsenic Levels over 100 ppm
Arsenic Levels 40 100 ppm
Arsenic Levels 20 40 ppm
(20 ppm: considered contaminated)
Marine Protected Shoreline
Littoral Drift Cell Direction
Concept and Phasing
Inspired by the rich but imperiled ecology of Puget Sound, this intervention leverages the scar of Maury’s industrial legacy - a former gravel pit on the shoreline - to create a series of terraced spaces in which to collect polluted stormwater and remediate it, utilizing the unique capacity of the local aggregating anenome to metabolize arsenic. Over time, cultivation and proliferation of aggregating anenomes at this site would allow for their deployment to other impacted areas in a remedial network that also supports habitat regeneration along shorelines across the Lower Puget Sound.
Situated offshore are sediment building reef structures, which seek to replicate the sedimentary actions of the feeder bluffs that were destroyed by the gravel mine. This sediment is vital to the establishment of eelgrass habitat that shelters salmonids and feeder fish.
Floodable Space
SITE DESIGN: Terracing in the upland portion of the site allows for stormwater to be channeled through traditional phytoremediation plantings and into a central basin. Water is released from a multipurpose floodable space into remedial tidepools, where runoff mixed with salt water creates aggregating anenome habitat. The anenomes metabolize the arsenic, rendering it inert while also serving as a cornerstone species in this novel ecosystem. The anenomes are clonal and can be harvested and deployed to other sites impacted by arsenic pollution from the smelter plume.
