St. Louis: Award winning (US Society of Environmental Journalists) 2001 journalism on health hazards in Weldon Springs.
https://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlouis/the-right-to-answers/Content?oid...
I'm interested in better understanding the ongoing geological processes that shape St. Louis and the Mississippi Valley region. So far, I've been looking into the history of seismicity in the region, focusing on the fascinating but little known history of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 -- the most devastating earthquakes to have hit the US east of the Rockies. I've also been exploring how St. Louis and surrounding areas are dealing with the possibility of another earthquake occurring in the future. According to one article I read, one of the biggest uncertainties is what would happen to the heavily engineered Mississippi River in the case of another major tremblor. The shaking could break the levees, flooding wide areas along the river and creating cascading effects. The flow of the river might also reverse completely, as occurred during the New Madrid earthquakes.
On these possibilities and the lack of scientific consensus surrounding intraplate seismicity in this zone, see this article in The Atlantic.
On current efforts to create earthquake hazard maps in St. Louis, see this overview on the US Geological Survey site.
For a deeper dive into the history of the New Madrid earthquakes, see this book by historian of science Conevery Bolton Valencius.
A brief essay about St. Louis' notorious eminent domain history--
--along with 2 recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch articles about "urban renewal" projects that are scheduled to reoccupy the Mill Flats area, which hosted the most notorious episode of displacement of African-American communities: the Chouteau Greenway project (will it serve or displace low-income St. Louisans?); and SLU's Mill Creek Flats high-rise project, which certainly will, and whose name seems to me an especially tone-deaf if gutsy move...
https://humanities.wustl.edu/features/Margaret-Garb-St-Louis-Eminent-Domain
Contextual Articles
Landscapes with Purpose
One STL
Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District
EPA - Green Infrastructure
Green City Coalition
Green Stormwater Infrastructure
Prior to the 1970's, many US cities managed stormwater through piped conveyance systems. Flooding was once considered the most significant risk associated with rainfall. System builders built water infrastructure to accommodate volume. Most cities in the US have what is called a combined sewer system (CSS). This system pipes stormwater and municipal wastewater together. The water is then treated and then released into receiving bodies. St. Louis is one of the rare cities (Baltimore, where my research is based is another) that has a municipal separated stormwater system (MS4). In a separated system, a system of pipes keeps stormwater separate from other wastewaters.
In the 1970's ecological research, some of which came from the EPA's National Urban Research Program, began to demonstrate that nutrients in runoff were responsible for environmental pollution. In turn, municipal engineers transitioned to thinking about tools and techniques for decreasing this nutrient load. In St. Louis, the separated system operates under a federal consent decree with the EPA where the city must reduce the overall percentage of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) carried through runoff. The most recent strategy for managing this problem is Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI). Although the problems associated with GSI are of local relevance, they are managed through state and federal governance strategies.
While GSI is difficult to define, many times installations feature landscaped elements that aim to mimic the pre-development hydrological processes of a given site. In urban areas, these projects often utilize vacant lands or reduce existing impervious surface cover. Many planners and community groups also suggest that GSI provides additional social benefits through an increase in community green space, reduction in urban heat island, and improved property values.
This image from Missouri Coalition for the environment brings together the many suggested benefits of implementing these technologies. The diagram also provokes some questions that may interest us in our project; Does GSI represent a paradigmatic shift in techniques of stormwater management? Does natural or environmental mimicry in engineering projects act as a corrective to the anthropocene, or are these technologies merely a response? How are the social, economic, and technical benefits of GSI calculated and have attendent burdens been considered as well?
This is an article originally aired on STL public radio in 2016 regarding abandoned buildings and vacant lots. The article highlights how the St Louis Land Reutilization Authority came to be the largest landowners in the city and highlights some of the challenges the agency has faced. The main point of the article is to highlight new strategies for using/dealing with vacant land. These strategies include selling lots to adjacent residents for a price of a low dollar amount and 2 years of maintaining the land (like an urban homestead act) and creating tree farms and other green infrastructure projects on vacant lots. Additionally the articles discusses efforts made to manage LRA holdings more effectively, including increase funding for demolishing abandoned buildings that affect property values, utilize AmeriCorps volunteers to gather better data about the land within the agency’s ownership.
Land banking - the practice of aggregating land parcels for future sale or development and/or converting vacant/abandoned lots into “productive” property. St. Louis has the oldest land bank in the country (created by a Missouri state statute in 1971), with the land acquired when property owners fail to pay taxes for 3 years OR a parcel fails to sell in public tax foreclosure sales. A document on land banking from the Center for Community Progress: https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/LandBankingBasics.pdf
--perhaps interesting to think of this as an urban form of public lands? Seems like it is ripe for all kinds of similar multiple interpretations of what it means for a gov’t entities to own something, whether it is labeled public, whether it viewed as land meant to be for the benefit of all, etc.
People/Entities/Orgs:
Land Reutilization Authority(LRA) - is the largest landowner in the city! Although it is a city-level entity, it was created by the Missouri legislature, so any changes have to be approved by state lawmakers.
Otis Williams, the executive director of the St. Louis Development Corporation, which acts as an umbrella organization for LRA.
Patrick Brown, a deputy chief of staff for Mayor Francis Slay. Brown leads the Vacant Land and Blight Task Force.
Harvard by the Center for Community Progress, a national think tank on vacant land issues
ENERGY TECH: In April of 2018, Ameren, a Midwestern based power company, announced a 12 week energy tech incubation program. The incubation program was funded and developed through a partnership between the University of Missouri St. Louis, UMSL Accelerate (a tech incubator), Capital Investors (venture captialists), and Ameren (a Midwest power company). These sorts of partnerships, with their emphasis on innovation in the electric utility energy mark a recent and significant change in the way utilities futures are being structured and imagined. See this Q&A with Brian Dixon, the Chief Operating Officer of Capital Investors.
Dam construction along both the Missippi River, and the Artibonite Rivers have called into question corporate interests, vernacular responses, and the future of the communities that are supported by these ecosystems ( humans and nonhuman alike). Infrastructure for who? becomes a very important question that this project will examine.
Links
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2010/11/21/a_dam_for_the_people_and_a_people_damned.html
Dam construction along both the Missippi River, and the Artibonite Rivers have called into question corporate interests, vernacular responses, and the future of the communities that are supported by these ecosystems ( humans and nonhuman alike). Infrastructure for who? becomes a very important question that this project will examine.
Links
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2010/11/21/a_dam_for_the_people_and_a_people_damned.html
CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURES: Like many other cities in the US, the city of St. Louis offers open data sets. There is also a group on GitHub that draws together different open data projects in St. Louis.
NUCLEAR LEGACIES: In September 2018, after years of controversy, the US Environmental Protection Agency ordered an aggressive cleanup of West Lake Landfill near St. Louis. The landfill is contaminated with radioactive waste and has been on the EPA’s Superfund list since 1990. The Washington Post explains: “[EPA Acting Administrator] Wheeler’s decision is the latest signal that he intends to largely follow the policy course set out by his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, who resigned from EPA in July amid a flurry of federal ethics The Washington Post explained this as in keeping with the Trump administration’s stated commitment to accelerating cleanups at the nation’s Superfund sites, saying such work was more central to the agency’s mission than combating climate change and helping shift the nation to cleaner sources of energy.” See the Washington Post coverage, EPA orders extensive cleanup of radioactive waste site near St. Louis. Also, see local coverage (St. Louis Dispatch), EPA reaches cleanup decision for radioactive West Lake Landfill Superfund site, and the (very richly documented) website for Just Mom’s STL.
Two documentary films have been made about St. Louis’s nuclear legacy: Atomic Homefront and The Safe Side of the Fence. Read this interview with Tony West, director of The Safe Side of the Fence.
