Category Archives: Water

Destination Danville 

A rural city bets on water access and landscape amenities as the keys to economic revitalization.

By Kim O’Connell

The project coincides with a decision to remove a defunct hydraulic dam.
The project coincides with a decision to remove a defunct hydraulic dam. Photo courtesy City of Danville.

Throughout its history, Danville, Virginia, has been a pass-through city—a place where people and products were often headed someplace else. Located on the North Carolina border, this small industrial city is bifurcated by the Dan River but remains largely cut off from it. Continue reading Destination Danville 

Claude Cormier: How Sweet

There’s no swimming at Sugar Beach, but the crowds come anyway.

By Daniel Jost, ASLALAM-Jan2013-SugarBeachSkyline

 It’s 80 degrees Fahrenheit, or, as they say here in Toronto, a balmy 27 degrees. Stephanie McCarthy leans back in a white Adirondack chair and digs her feet into the sand. On Canada’s Sugar Beach she’s just a short walk from her downtown apartment, though as she sits in the shade of a pink umbrella, it seems a little unreal. “It feels like you’re somewhere tropical,” she says, “like a minivacation.” Continue reading Claude Cormier: How Sweet

Farm To Water Table

California repurposes farmland to save its water supply.

By Lisa Owens Viani

Orchards planted in the old Tulare Lake bed were flooded in atmospheric river storms.Ken James/California Department of Water Resources
Orchards planted in the old Tulare Lake bed were flooded in atmospheric river storms. Photo by Ken James/California Department of Water Resources.

Last winter, 31 atmospheric rivers drenched California after an extended drought, filling the state’s reservoirs to the brim for the first time in years and enabling the state’s two main surface water supply systems—which bring fresh water from the mountains to thirsty cities and farms via a complex network of reservoirs, canals, and pipes—to provide all of their promised water allocations. Massive, long-disappeared wetlands such as Tulare Lake in the southern San Joaquin Valley reemerged, and other parts of the valley were still underwater in late spring. But despite the soaking, the state continues to plan for a hotter, drier future, including ways to recharge parched aquifers. “This year was an exception to the rule,” says Andrew Schwartz, the lead scientist and manager of the Central Sierra Snow Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re in an aridifying climate and things will just continue to get drier.” Continue reading Farm To Water Table

Resilience Theater

Berger Partnership designs a green infrastructure facility that’s part of the neighborhood.

By Katharine Logan

The station models green infrastructure strategies to manage rainwater on a densely developed site. Courtesy Berger Partnership
The station models green infrastructure strategies to manage rainwater on a densely developed site. Courtesy Berger Partnership.

As climate change and urban growth stress the ability of combined storm and sewer systems to handle the volume of water besieging cities, infrastructure that would once have been relegated to industrial outskirts increasingly needs to fit within mixed-use neighborhoods. In south Seattle, the Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station is meant to model replicable solutions while becoming “an integrated part of the community: accepted, acknowledged, actually liked,” says Michael Popiwny, the architectural design and mitigation manager for the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, who served as the senior project manager during the design phase of the facility. Continue reading Resilience Theater

A Lake at Its Limit

Historic funding for Utah’s Great Salt Lake will support water use reductions within agriculture and the urban landscape.

By Brian Fryer

Satellite imagery of the shrinking Great Salt Lake. The exposed lake bed contains toxins that can be spread by the wind.
Satellite imagery of the shrinking Great Salt Lake. The exposed lake bed contains toxins that can be spread by the wind. Images © Google Earth.

The drought conditions affecting western states, along with increased water demands from a growing population and industrialized agriculture, have drained Utah’s Great Salt Lake to its lowest levels on record. A study conducted last year by a team of experts from Utah’s research universities, known as the Great Salt Lake Strike Team, concluded that if current conditions persist, and without interventions, the lake will disappear in five years. Continue reading A Lake at Its Limit

Made for the Marsh

A pair of landscape designers come up with a winning idea for the land-starved Louisiana coast.

By Timothy A. Schuler

Larix Underground’s floating planter alongside docks
Larix Underground’s floating planter is designed to be accessible in multiple locations, including alongside docks or even in the open water. Image courtesy Larix Underground.

Like many residents of southern Louisiana, the Indigenous residents of Grand Bayou Village, located among the southernmost reaches of Plaquemines Parish in the Mississippi River Delta and accessible only by boat, live with the varied effects of coastal land loss. Continue reading Made for the Marsh

A Deep Dive Into the Archive

Albert Kahn Associates mines original drawings for the restoration of the historic Ford House.

By Jeff Link

1929 plan the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House
The design team consulted Jens Jensen’s original drawings for the restoration, including this 1929 plan for the pool and lagoon. FOE31 Jens Jensen Drawings and Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

The restoration of the 87-acre grounds of the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan, may be among the most historically faithful re-creations of the work of Jens Jensen and Albert Kahn to date. Pieced together from Jensen’s original drawings, detailed construction logs, archival photographs, and digitized film reels, the restored landscape just outside Detroit features a 185,000-gallon clamshell-shaped pool, a lagoon, a meadow, and a wagon-wheel-shaped rose garden. 

Continue reading A Deep Dive Into the Archive