It took 100 years for Bowker Creek to be transformed into a series of concrete ditches and underground pipes to move stormwater to the sea. It will likely take the next 100 years for the creek to be restored.
Originating at the University of Victoria, Bowker Creek flows for eight kilometres through Saanich, Victoria and Oak Bay. Two-thirds of the creek is channelled underground in pipes beneath some of the region’s most sought-after real estate.
A 100-year action plan to restore the watershed has been in place since 2010. The Bowker Creek Blueprint was developed by the three municipalities, the CRD, the university and many individuals. Its goal is to return as much as possible of the historic creek to the surface and restore nature, a process called “daylighting.”
Last year, that decades-long journey was furthered by the completion of a study that defines a route for the daylighting of the creek. The Bowker Creek Daylighting Feasibility Study is a tool to be used in future development decisions. Victoria and Oak Bay have accepted the study, but Saanich still awaits its engineers’ report on it.
Daylighting has become a “thing” in recent years. Stretches of long-buried waterways in Auckland, Moscow, Seoul, Zurich and various cities in the U.S. and the U.K. have once again seen daylight. Saint John, N.B., has uncovered two creeks, and Dartmouth, N.S., has uncovered part of its Sawmill River.
In Kelowna, following the success of the Brandt’s Creek restoration in the 1990s, work has begun to return three other creeks to their natural states.
Daylighting natural waterways yields esthetic and ecological benefits. Natural creeks increase communities’ green space, improve property values and provide many physical and mental-health benefits to nearby residents.
The creeks also provide wildlife habitat. Here on the coast, that includes at-risk species such as Pacific salmon, the northern leopard and Oregon spotted frogs, the western painted turtle, the coastal giant salamander and the great blue heron.
But daylighting likely earns its current place as a golden-child consideration in urban development because natural streams handle water better than concrete culverts and underground pipes do. Rivers and creeks with porous banks increase stormwater capacity and help prevent flooding and damage to infrastructure. And that lowers municipal costs.
Such concerns are becoming more pronounced. As climate changes, storms are becoming more extreme, and rainfall is falling at greater rates over shorter periods of time.
Here in Victoria, Bowker Creek is just one creek that has been pushed underground. As Victoria grew throughout the 20th century, burying streams and wetlands meant buildings and infrastructure could be built without having to account for inconvenient waterways and perpetually soggy bits that could otherwise undermine foundations and roadways.
Our sewers were primitive, too, with waste directed into drains that often flowed or overflowed into our creeks. This made for stink and illness. It was deemed better just to shove it all underground and make it go away.
Bowker Creek is also not the region’s first daylighting project. In 2000, Victoria exposed 133 metres of Cecelia Creek. Flowing as a storm sewer for most of its length from the Mayfair Shopping Centre area to the Gorge, Cecelia Creek was buried in the 1900s as the area around it was developed.
Testing 30 years ago showed that sewage from homes with sewage pipes feeding into storm drains and heavy metals, solvents and paint from nearby light industry were fouling the creek. Since then, many of the pollution sources have been addressed.
Johnson Creek is not likely to see light of day again. It once flowed to the Inner Harbour down a ravine separating Chinatown from downtown. The ravine served as a dump and a sewer, until the resulting smell and disease caused early city officials to pipe, pave and forget it.
We’ve known it as Johnson Street ever since.
Another creek unlikely to see a return to daylight is the one that flowed from the former marsh near Cook and Moss streets and emptied into the former James Bay tidal mudflats. Its final reaches were buried when CP Rail filled in the flats and built the Empress Hotel. Apparently the stream still flows through the hotel’s sub-basement.
These creeks were buried in a different time, but different attitudes, priorities and values now prevail.
Perhaps those attitudes, priorities and values will be sustained through the next 100 years.
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