Revealing the River Styx...

A radical idea for helping Baltimore's harbor - uncover the Jones Falls

An environmental blog from Baltimore relays this proposal to open the Jones Falls to the surface:

...some architects from the University of Virginia are proposing a radical remedy - "daylighting," or uncovering, part of the lower Jones Falls, which which flows underground two miles under city streets before emptying out in the harbor.

The Jones Falls was actually the birthplace of Baltimore, where the first settler, one David Jones, built his house along its banks in the 1600s. The river was a source of drinking water for the fledgling city, and ships reportedly could sail as far inland as Calvert and Lexington.

But growth, flooding and pollution inspired efforts to drain, tame and ultimately bury the troublesome water way around 1915. Finally, in the early 1960s, the subverting of the Jones Falls was completed with the construction of the expressway of the same name along and atop its course. It's just the largest of Baltimore's streams to get buried - experts estimate that two-thirds of the city's waterways are underground now, serving as conduits for storm water washing off city streets and parking lots.

That lower stretch of the Jone Falls is like the mythical River Styx - musty, foul and eternally in darkness. I paddled with some others upstream from the harbor many years ago, and the only living thing we encountered was a somewhat startled looking pigeon roosting in the gloom...

I rather approve of this, although I suspect it will be very difficult to get control over all the land and structures above it.  I've seen some surprisingly pleasant streams in the the midst of urban ruin in places in Washington D.C.  I believe people benefit by being in contact with their environment on a daily basis, even if its only a somewhat scruffy urban stream.

Gustave Dore - 'Dante, the Styx the Irascible'