
Ecological Detectives Hunt for San Francisco’s Vanished Waterways - headalgorithm
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ecological-detectives-hunt-for-san-franciscos-vanished-waterways/
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astazangasta
This is about one of my best friends! He is an amazing local historian and a
staunchly wedded empiricist, a resident of SF in the deep, old way. I highly
recommend taking one of his ThinkWalks if you want to learn about local
history, ecology, and the meeting of the two.
[http://www.thinkwalks.org/](http://www.thinkwalks.org/)

Also check out his amazing water map of SF, which is both beautiful AND
accurate: [http://seepcity.org/](http://seepcity.org/)

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cafard
I live in a neighborhood of Washington, DC, where it is clear that old streams
have been buried. Buildings, roads, and sidewalks shed water that would have
gone into the ground, and storm drains carry a lot of it off. But you can see
houses that have settled, almost certainly because they are where a stream was
filled. And a neighbor found a sinkhole under his driveway some years ago,
probably from an old stream.

One can sometimes gauge where the streams were by the spacing and ages of the
houses.

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jackfoxy
I live on a named creek in the S.F. Bay Area, and I've recently re-discovered
what a natural wonder it is. It is mostly original creek for its entire
length. I discovered recently a tributary that at one time ran through my
property was re-routed (I suspect in the 1960s) to empty into the creek 400
yards downstream. This probably results in less flooding on my property than
historically otherwise would occur.

It used to be a steelhead creek, but in the 1950s the Army Corps of Engineers
did major flood control alterations to the major creek it flows into, making
it impossible for fish to swim upstream. New environmental laws requiring
runoff to percolate through the soil and stemming construction erosion help
the water quality. I hope someday the flood control gets rebuilt to be
migrating fish friendly.

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throw0101a
Toronto also has a bunch of "lost rivers":

* [https://www.blogto.com/city/2014/02/5_lost_rivers_that_run_u...](https://www.blogto.com/city/2014/02/5_lost_rivers_that_run_under_toronto/)

* [http://lostrivers.ca/](http://lostrivers.ca/)

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ptah
I wonder how western cities compare in this regard to cities in Japan in where
animism/shintoism is pretty prevalent still

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mc32
Usually creeks and steams are very well managed by concretizing the riverbed.
Japan is in love with concrete and with controlling river flow and coastlines.
Basically if it’s in a city, it gets paved over!

There's a duality there. The other side of that coin is they started the whole
forest bathing movement.

I’m reminded by Zizek that outsiders to a culture are apt to romanticize
things they don’t know. His go to quip is how an American Indian (native/First
Nations person) frustrates and indignant at this romanticizing bursted out
saying “we killed more buffaloes than any settlers ever did”. The point being
most humans have the same drive and desires, in this case to control nature
and unpredictability.

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seiferteric
> “we killed more buffaloes than any settlers ever did”

Is he saying in total over thousands of years that they hunted them? Or in the
time that guns were introduced to Native Americans? If the later, that is
pretty surprising and I had never heard that if true.

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mc32
It’s not meant to be taken literally. It’s a way to give oneself agency. “We
are also just regular people like you; we can do good, and we can do bad.
We’re not to be romanticized and looked at as weird noble people, something no
one can actually be.”

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ptah
yes, the noble savage idea if from rosseau

