Governing the Unseen-Waters II - Interviews

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Richard Berg

Scott Bishop

Geologist | Great lakes geological coalition | Illinois Geological Survey

Registered landscape architect | Bishop Land Design | Northeastern University faculty

How important is it to understand the glacial deposits?

Why do you think is it important to understand the ground beneath to develop a resilient city? Where do you build your foundation? How does zoning be placed? Where you get your food from? Where does your water manage and drain into? How can you develop a water management strategy or flood resiliency if you have an unknown factor in the plan?

Understanding glacial history is vital to the future of our cities. Illinois has been through three glacial periods. Thus it has a diverse landscape rich in sand and gravel making it a lucrative state for quarrying. On Route 82 in Illinois, there is an old quarry now functioning as a stormwater lake. Chicago’s funneling of stormwater into the old quarry could potentially put nearby aquifers at risk of contamination. We are ignorant about the realities of quarrying and that sites actually dig down into aquifers where many get their drinking water thereby producing the signature lakes seen in pits. These new water bodies are often polluted, and as part of regional groundwater system, become a major risk for drinking water in surrounding communities. How important it is to look into urban soils and their current conditions? Are aquifer systems addressed while discussing city development? No, aquifers are overlooked as issues of national security. A single aquifer reaches many people, and with development we often open up windows to our drinking water by exposing aquifers. The blue baby syndrome in Indiana and outbreak in Ontario... as well as the Woburn Massacre (John Travolta documentary) are just a few cases resulting from polluted aquifers generating polluted drinking water. Even stormwater detention needs a second look. It’s common to store polluted runoff in basins without regard to infiltration. And this means without regard to the high risk of groundwater contamination. Contaminated water that flows into agriculture sites then impacts the food we eat. Soils can be an important source of lead in drinking water and so close monitoring of urban soils can indicate risk areas. Lives can be saved by looking at these soil and water dynamics. Children are playing in highly contaminated parks and gardens due to urbanization and its runoff. Why is it so difficult to gather this data and make it accessible to public? Core sampling is very expensive in the city area and it is difficult to gain access to private lands for mapping. All data is divided by parcels. Every time a new core needs to be drilled because we lack a data bank of previous mappings. As there is no comparative data we cannot understand the landscape as a whole and thus decide based on just a single parcel’s data. It is something we are working on in our office. One needs to have a citywide data to actually determine construction on one parcel - they are directly impacted by landscape-scale geology beneath, there’s subsurface dynamism.

A vulnerability map and a clear subterranean map is required to do risk analysis and to develop unique solutions. We cannot imitate solutions. With this knowledge we can develop a truly resilient city plan that considers unique solutions. It’s important to make projections about the future of a landscape. For example: if a site is clay then check if it would crack based on the depth of the soil that sits on it and if it’s around an aquifer. What would happen if there was also saltwater intrusion? These scenarios, when combined with data, can be very alarming. We as designers need to see how opportunities can be created by synthesizing disparate datasets on subsurface conditions and project them with designs.

Mary Pat McGuire Registered landscape architect | Water Lab| Univeristy of Illinois faculty What do you mean by the phrase ‘water territory’? How do you consider subterranean landscape in your research?

City Digital is a really fascinating project that the City of Chicago is working on. They’re 3d-mapping subsurface infrastructure and soils in order to understand what is actually going on down there and to hopefully make smarter planning decisions. The Great Lakes Geological Mapping Coalition has worked with Kentucky State to establish geological maps for every county in Kentucky. These maps are then analyzed to understand risk for future growth. They have been very active with this information and have gathered tons of data on it. They share it with the planners and zoning committee as well as developers. It is very ingrained in their culture of practice and planning. The data can also be used for zoning to shape what kind of septic systems should be built, how to manage stormwater, the density of development, and what subsurface infrastructure is most resilient. Partners who benefit from this are health department, real estate and planning committee of a town.

It means reconfiguration of under-performing urban surfaces as landscape infrastructure for water. I am currently working on a project called depave Chicago. Upipe tributaries means streets are engineered as the primary tributary to the existing gray infrastructure system. Surface conversions to promote infiltration of rainwater into the geologic substrata of the Chicago coastal realm is central to the project. Such an effort would be the first, large-scale landscape project that infiltrates water where it falls, diverts water from the over-taxed combined sanitary-sewer system, and promotes groundwater recharge and restored water flow to Lake Michigan. The target soil areas are the locations of the former dune ridges of the Chicago lake-shore that were paved over during urbanization. This project would tap into those soils as an ecological infrastructure of the city, and celebrate Chicago’s natural heritage which is currently invisible to the people of Chicago. Geological origins of cities so rarely talked about. It feels like a lot of conditions in which we live have been able to leave the base structure unacknowledged. In the 1900’s city plans used to actually acknowledge the patchy nature of soils. Because of this we can read a skyline of a city and describe the geology below. It is fascinating to see how they to relate and tell the story of what is beneath.

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Which are the other organizations researching in the area of urban soil mapping? How is this information shared and who can benefit from it?


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