The scent of water: Searching for hidden springs in downtown Atlanta

A humorous factor occurred final September after I got down to discover the springs within the Gulch: I bumped into town’s watershed safety director. I used to be standing on Forsyth Road, gazing down on the prepare tracks under, when Susan Rutherford, from the Atlanta Division of Watershed Administration, rode by on her bike. She was on the lookout for the springs, too.

What introduced us there was Emergence, a brief public artwork venture by Rachel Parish that tried to hint downtown’s springs and mark them with monuments. Proctor, Tanyard, Clear, and Intrenchment creeks all start downtown and move out from town like spokes—west, north, east, and south. The creeks predate the railroads and highways which have almost buried them, however their precise sources stay a thriller.

“Are you aware how the artist got here up with these areas?” Rutherford requested. “We don’t even know the place they’re.” (By “we,” she meant the DWM.) Rutherford steered I ask Caroline Smith, a former colleague. “She’s a water nerd such as you.” This was a praise primarily based on the numerous occasions she’s heard me speak concerning the river piped below the airport—the Flint—and about how finding out it has led me to seek for hidden creeks throughout Atlanta.

I cherished {that a} public artwork venture had us so-called specialists meandering round downtown on a blue Saturday sniffing for water. There’s one thing alluring concerning the concept of water flowing below layers of crumbly asphalt, graffitied bridges, and railroad tracks. All creeks have to begin someplace.

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I recruited some fellow water nerds and requested Jeffrey Morrison, architect and creator of Atlanta Underground: Historical past from Under, if we might be a part of one among his strolling excursions of the Gulch. “Spoiler alert,” he warned. “I don’t suppose we’re going to see any water.”

As we descended a stairwell to Decrease Wall Road, an unhoused lady in a bathrobe waited for us to cross. Half parking storage, half deserted subway station, the unique Wall Road felt just like the forlorn basement of Atlanta, hid below a viaduct that stole its identify. We walked for 2 hours and—spoiler—we discovered water. As Morrison was sharing railroad historical past, I stored drifting off to storm drains to search for my reflection in a distant puddle. As we handed by means of the dim underground, our banter interrupted individuals making an attempt to sleep.

Again within the daylight, Wall Road emerged as a again alley alongside the railyard. I longed for scattered showers to rinse away the grit and litter within the postapocalyptic panorama. What little plants flourished right here nonetheless seemed parched—magenta stems of pokeweed springing out of a jumble of railroad ties, yellow butterweed tangled within the fences.

Later, deep within the parking decks behind Mercedes-Benz Stadium, we heard water, loud as a faucet. There was a Hawks recreation underway, and State Farm Enviornment vibrated with equipment and bass and cheerleaders. An invisible freight prepare echoed by means of the vaultlike chamber fashioned by parking decks and the outer partitions of the Georgia World Congress Heart. Nonetheless, we might hear a trickle in a storm drain, close to the supply of Proctor Creek.

{Photograph} by Growl

Days later, I shared this with Caroline Smith. A water sources engineer for Dewberry, she left DWM in 2017, however not earlier than she discovered, examined, and documented just a few springs in Atlanta’s underground community of sewers. “It’s form of my pet venture,” she stated. “Discovering water that’s thought of a nuisance and on the lookout for methods to reuse it.”

Throughout her time with town, Smith not solely heard the water behind Mercedes-Benz Stadium however popped the manhole cowl and examined it for contaminants (indicating runoff) and chlorine (handled water). Primarily based on location and move, this needed to be the springs on the supply of Proctor Creek.

Smith instructed me about some current developments that built-in pure springs into their plans: NCR’s headquarters, for instance, reused rainwater and “nuisance groundwater” to irrigate their landscaping and flush bathrooms. “I’m at all times on the lookout for locations the place we will meet a number of wants,” she defined—cut back flooding, lower your expenses, make town extra resilient. “I need future builders to know concerning the water and consider it as a free useful resource.”

That strategy is a large enchancment over the usual apply of directing groundwater into the sewer system. However shouldn’t springs be daylighted, protected, and celebrated?

“Spring water is ‘waters of the state,’” argued Invoice Eisenhauer, one of many founders of Metro Atlanta City Watershed Institute. He’s an engineer, financial feasibility analyst, and activist who’s been working for many years to unravel Atlanta’s flooding and sewer issues. “Waters of the state,” together with rivers, creeks, and is derived, are a public useful resource protected below Georgia legislation. In idea, springs shouldn’t simply be pumped into the HVAC of a personal improvement however shared with the neighborhood.

“There’s a whole lot of water over there,” he defined. Along with a number of perennial springs on Spring Road (therefore the identify), 30 million gallons of stormwater pour off the Gulch in a significant storm. It’s the stormwater that floods west facet neighborhoods as a result of it will possibly’t attain a stream. (Particularly, he added, “it goes into outdated, undersized mixed sewers and blows off manhole covers, [which erupt with] untreated sewage and stormwater.”)

Eisenhauer and a group led by city designer Ryan Gravel are proposing a stormwater seize and conveyance system (aka a stream) flowing from the 5 Factors MARTA station, throughout the railroad tracks and Northside Drive, and right into a collection of parks designed to handle water. The thought is to imitate nature with a artifical creek that directs stormwater and spring water to Proctor Creek.

“A babbling brook with a path subsequent to it, going all the best way all the way down to the Chattahoochee,” stated Eisenhauer. “Are you able to think about?”

Water has worth. Actual financial worth, by way of the charges charged by DWM. Then, there’s the placemaking worth, that ineffable high quality that distinguishes one generic mixed-used improvement from one other. For me, although, there’s one thing extra that compels me to search out it. I wish to peel again the layers of improvement, earlier than the parking decks and railroads, earlier than the Civil Struggle, earlier than Marthasville and Thrasherville, earlier than the land was stolen from the Muscogee and Cherokee individuals. Again to some historical bedrock of Atlanta. I need this place to make sense.

The human nostril is extremely delicate to water. We are able to detect geosimin, the chemical compound launched by soil after a storm, at a stage of 5 components per trillion. Our our bodies have developed to find water.

As builders generate futuristic renderings of megaprojects downtown, will they acknowledge water’s worth? Can we reveal the springs in a approach that’s inexperienced and free and reorients us to the pure sources now we have repressed for generations?

Rachel Parish, the artist who spent months attending to know downtown’s springs by means of maps, visits, and analysis, developed a way of the water flowing underground, simply out of attain. Requested how builders ought to deal with these springheads sooner or later, Parish was open-minded. Something that “lets that water sing its personal music,” she stated.

“Whereas we have been doing the installations, the primary factor that folks would ask us for was water,” she sighed. “You can really feel the dearth of water. There’s a giant public that lives on the periphery of the house with out entry to bogs or ingesting water.”

Whereas I used to be dreaming of lush parks and concrete springhouses, the necessity for water was much more elementary: Downtown is thirsty.

Again to “Who’s Downtown Atlanta For?”

This text seems in our January 2023 problem.

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