{"id":1974,"date":"2014-10-08T00:24:12","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T07:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.org\/weblog\/?p=1974"},"modified":"2014-10-12T17:17:47","modified_gmt":"2014-10-13T00:17:47","slug":"brownfieldlandia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/?p=1974","title":{"rendered":"brownfieldlandia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"North<\/a>

North Troy\u00a0NY brownfield savanna<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"Williamette<\/a>

safari into the Williamette Cove brownfields<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

Those of who call ourselves ‘environmentalists’\u00a0have a tendency to imagine\u00a0a prelapsarian wilderness that once was\u00a0pristine and then became\u00a0progressively defiled and diminished through\u00a0the carelessness of humankind. But the earth had\u00a0been through many environmental catastrophes long before we came along\u2013 though this doesn’t exactly excuse\u00a0us from our manifold sins.\u00a0\u00a0The infamous Chixculub asteroid impact<\/a> suddenly ended the long reign of the\u00a0dinosaurs and the more insidious yet\u00a0equally catastrophic evolution\u00a0of\u00a0photosynthesis deep within\u00a0the cells of\u00a0certain cyanobacteria <\/a>contaminated the earth\u2019s early biosphere with oxygen\u2013 a fatal poison\u00a0to the\u00a0majority of organisms present at the time, resulting in what is now known as the \u00a0oxygen catastrophe<\/em><\/a>, a mass die-off of the earth’s biodiversity and a climate change event that froze the planet in the longest snowball earth<\/em><\/a>\u00a0episode in geologic history.<\/p>\n

What is unique in the present (Anthropocenic) moment is that we know we are causing a massive and likely suicidal ecological crisis\u00a0and\u00a0yet\u00a0choose not to do anything about it.\u00a0Here we are at\u00a0the tail end of 2014 with atmospheric CO2 levels higher than they’ve been\u00a0for 800,000 years<\/a> and the 6th<\/span> mass extinction accelerating to the point where the earth has lost half of its wildlife specie<\/a>s in the past 40 years. Political leaders, particularly those of oil rich countries like my native Canada either willfully ignore the scientific consensus or in the most egregious cases, (again Canada), actively\u00a0censor\u00a0the findings of scientists<\/a> and even weather forecasters<\/a>. Because a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Or is it?<\/p>\n

In a recent video<\/a>, \u017di\u017eek makes the perhaps startling case that there is considerable poetry<\/i> in our present situation, that is to say, our disavowal, our state of knowing<\/i> that something is true and yet acting as if it wasn\u2019t. He argues that to \u201ctruly love the world, we must love its imperfections,\u201d<\/em> including, presumably, the ones for which we are directly responsible. \u201cIn trash,\u201d<\/em> he declares \u201cis the true love of the world,\u201d<\/em> a sentiment similarly observed by a Zen priest in the masterful little documentary, Tokyo Waka<\/a>,<\/i> which explores the world of Tokyo\u2019s ubiquitous and trash loving crows. To be more precise the priest observes: \u201cIn trash is the residue of desire,\u201d<\/em> a sentiment perhaps less direct but still elevating garbage to\u00a0a kind of reified affection.<\/p>\n

To follow that logic, when an entire landscape becomes trashed, it should be particularly worthy of our love and it was\u00a0in this spirit that\u00a0I embarked upon my summer\u00a0explorations\u2026<\/p>\n

But first some background:\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>The Superfund<\/i><\/a> was originally set up in the America in 1980 to identify and facilitate the cleaning up of the country’s most hazardous waste sites. In theory this might have created\u00a0sufficient funding and legislative willpower to deal with this\u00a0dangerous and unhealthy\u00a0problem but between partisan politics and bureaucratic ineptitude, implementation fell\u00a0far short of what\u00a0was needed.<\/p>\n

Though most people would\u00a0want steer clear of toxic wastelands, I wanted to see if\u00a0there were any adaptive ecological processes operating\u00a0there\u00a0that might be transforming these zones of exclusion<\/em>\u00a0into useable\u00a0habitats. I had the strong sense that conventional ecologists and environmentalists might be missing something very important, that nature was capable of doing an end run around our destruction, if only we would get out of the way.\u00a0\u00a0My summer safari took me to\u00a0sites on both\u00a0sides of the continent\u2013Troy, NY and Portland, Oregon\u2013and what I observed\u00a0there gave me\u00a0some hope and\u00a0insight into nature\u2019s surprising ability\u00a0to\u00a0colonize the messes we have left\u00a0behind.<\/p>\n

I was invited to Troy<\/a> by my pal Kathy High<\/a> for a collaborative investigation into the area\u2019s extensive brownfields. Once known as the \u2018collar city\u2019 for\u00a0its shirt, collar and textile production, Troy is considered the birthplace\u00a0(and graveyard?)\u00a0of the American industrial revolution. A\u00a0fortuitous confluence of rivers made it possible for early factories to harness abundant mechanical (and eventually\u00a0hydroelectric) power as well as to cheaply\u00a0transport products\u00a0and raw materials. Like so much\u00a0of America\u2019s industrial heartland, the area has suffered from economic decline\u00a0and many of its once thrumming factories lie in ruin in within highly contaminated terrain.<\/p>\n

Some of the worst sites are situated along the banks of the picturesque Hudson River, which transitions here from tidal to freshwater,\u00a0the end of a long\u00a0estuary. Downstream, all of the Hudson\u00a0is classed as a Superfund site\u00a0because of extensive contamination by PCBs, a potent carcinogen, dumped for decades by the General Electric Corporation as a byproduct of manufacturing transformers and other electrical components. PCB\u2019s are a persistent organic pollutant (POP)\u00a0that bioaccumulate\u00a0in the river\u2019s fish,\u00a0making many species\u00a0unsafe to eat\u2013including the reputedly delicious\u00a0striped bass\u00a0that spawns nearby at the\u00a0junction of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers.<\/p>\n

\"chimney<\/a>

chimney swifts over North Troy<\/p><\/div>\n

Despite being a\u00a0very degraded ecosystem Troy’s former industrial landsa\u00a0are full of surprises. As part of a summer youth program, I led a \u2018bio blitz\u2019 of\u00a0a community garden that had been established on a brownfield site near the Sanctuary for Independent Media<\/a>. It wasn’t long before we\u00a0found a magnificent stag beetle<\/a> hiding in the rotting stump of an\u00a0(invasive! exotic!) Ailanthus<\/em><\/a> tree. High overhead, chimney swifts<\/a> traced\u00a0their invisible arabesques into the topaz air of the summer evening. This species, has long adapted to human presence\u00a0and as indicated by its\u00a0common name, makes its nests in disused chimneys.\u00a0The chimney swift is a close relative of the Vaux’s swift<\/a>, which puts up a spectacular display every evening\u00a0as great clouds of the birds\u00a0funnel into in a large chimney at the Chapman School in Portland, Oregon.<\/span><\/p>\n

A local Troy resident told me she had recently found red-backed salamanders<\/a> under debris in her backyard yard, \u00a0situated quite near some of city’s\u00a0most contaminated industrial sites,\u00a0with nothing that might be deemed\u00a0\u2018intact\u2019 woodland anywhere in the vicinity. With the sharp decline of amphibians worldwide, even in protected national parks, it might seem surprising to find them surviving in such anthropogenically disturbed habitats but this is consistent with findings in the UK <\/a>where rare newts and other amphibians as well as lizards, slow-worms<\/a> and grass snakes make\u00a0their last stands in these unprepossessing environs, among the trash, eroding\u00a0pavements and ruined buildings. In fact brownfields turn out to be far\u00a0more suitable habitat <\/a>for these delicate little creatures than is the\u00a0intensively managed\u00a0agricultural landscape that has\u00a0obliterated large tracts of Europes’s\u00a0biologically\u00a0diverse\u00a0‘Kulturlandschaft’<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"IMG_2874\"<\/a>

stag beetle in Ailanthus stump<\/p><\/div>\n

At a\u00a0Superfund site at the foot of Troy\u2019s Ingalls Ave, I watched turkey vultures soar over an edenic looking mosaic of meadowy expanses that have cloaked\u00a0the heavily contaminated soil. These neo-savannahs<\/em> are punctuated by lush groves\u2013a botanical mosh pit of weedy natives like box elder, black locust and cottonwood mixed in\u00a0with exotic Ailanthus and Paulownia<\/a>. All of this is gloriously unmanaged, left to its own rampancy, and though the species constituting\u00a0this habitat are largely\u00a0considered \u2018invasive,\u2019 they embody\u00a0a new kind of ecological becoming<\/em>, their\u00a0novel juxtapositionings\u00a0and processes of succession\u2013a\u00a0‘Nature 2.0′<\/em> in the making.<\/p>\n

If we put aside our purist bias, we might\u00a0celebrate brownfields as territories of regeneration and marvel at how they\u00a0adapt\u00a0to the disturbances and wastes we leave in our wake. One might even regard them as ‘wilderness’ of a certain kind as they are\u00a0one of the few ecological\u00a0realms\u00a0we have let slip from\u00a0our control\u2013leaving them free to reconfigure themselves and follow independent trajectories of\u00a0\u00a0neo-evolution.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"botanizing\"<\/a>

Troy NY’s future brownfield rangers<\/p><\/div>\n

The collapse of industry though, leaves more than just picturesque ruins and novel habitat in its wake. For human communities,\u2018Detroitization\u2019 means decaying infrastructure, diminished economic opportunity and the adverse health effects of pervasive chemical\u00a0contamination. If sufficiently de-toxified, these lands\u00a0can be rehabilitated as perfectly reasonable urban nature parks (see my previous posting<\/a>\u00a0on Berlin\u2019s Templehof airport) but the challenge is to do so without diminishing\u00a0their\u00a0often surprising biodiversity.<\/p>\n

Troy might\u00a0be an ideal location\u00a0for a Brownfields National Park<\/em>, where local youth could work as ‘brownfield rangers,’ leading tours of\u00a0the area’s ecological and historical\u00a0heritage\u00a0as well as doing field studies and\u00a0cataloging the species to be found there.\u00a0Though this necessitates a change of perspective in what we North Americans typically think of as a\u00a0\u2018natural\u2019 park experience, it is\u00a0high time we open our minds to\u00a0such\u00a0opportunities. Brownfields are the future. Brownfields are us!<\/p>\n

Over on the other side of the continent, I met up with artist Marina Zurkow<\/a> in Portland, Oregon. Together, we led artistic incursions into a Superfund site on the edge of the Williamette River. We explored first by water, using\u00a0a flotilla of kayaks\u00a0peopled by an intrepid collection of individuals who responded to our call for participation in what (to the less adventurous)\u00a0might have seemed an arcane enterprise.\u00a0\u00a0We conceived our expedition\u00a0as a kind of group imagination exercise\u00a0and christened it -\u201cIF YOU SEE IT\u2013BE IT!\u201d in the spirit of the biosemiotician Jacob Von Uexk\u00fcll<\/a>, who did such groundbreaking research on the spatio-temporal worlds\u00a0of animals, which he termed\u00a0the \u2018Umwelt.\u2019<\/i>\u00a0 Aboard our tiny craft, we collectively tried to imagine\/channel what it might have been\u00a0like to navigate the\u00a0contaminated and disturbed riparian environment from an animal\u2019s point of view <\/i>(water striders, otters, sturgeons, etc.) \u2013 inhabiting \u00a0(in our mind\u2019s eye) their biosemiotic state, \u2018becoming\u2019 them, as it were, in a collective thought exercise.<\/p>\n

Marina\u2019s long term plan is to construct a raft-like roving laboratory she calls the Floating Studio for\u00a0Dark Ecology<\/i><\/a>, on which artists and researchers ply the river, exploring its narratives\u00a0of contamination and recovery as well as disseminating practices of contemplation and engagement between its\u00a0human and non-human communities.<\/p>\n

Our early evening voyage proved suitably anthropocenic: a bald eagle gliding through the shimmering cottonwoods of Ross Island\u2013a section of river whose bed is being continually scoured by heavy gravel mining machinery\u2013the blue tarp and scrap lumber bricolage of homeless encampments festooning\u00a0\u00a0the\u00a0banks of the\u00a0Williamette<\/a>\u2013the third world within the first world, the metabolic waste of neoliberal capitalism as it eats\u00a0its way through our material reality.<\/p>\n

\"Neo-ecologies<\/a>

Neo-ecologies of Williamette Cove<\/p><\/div>\n

Once again there were fascinating and new ecological assemblage in these zones of dereliction and abandonment. Washed up on the industrial shore of a former shipyard\u2013exquisite\u00a0hydrozoans <\/a>of a type I have never seen before:<\/p>\n

\"hydrozooan\"<\/a>

hydrozoan<\/p><\/div>\n

The brownfields of the former factory site at Williamette Cove<\/a>, though dangerously contaminated with heavy metals, wood preservatives and organic pollutants, proved not so ‘brown’ after all and\u00a0were resplendent with novel botanical groupings\u2013neo-succession<\/em>!\u00a0Native species like Arbutus menziesii<\/i> (Madrone) formed habitat groupings\u00a0with such hardy exotics as Paulownia tomentosa<\/i> (princess or empress Tree) and Crataegus monogyna<\/i> (European hawthorn). It is thought the empress trees made their original landfall in North America via their fluffy seeds, once used as a packing material for porcelain and other fragile goods originating in China and Japan. A gust of wind and an open crate at the dockside and their botanical colonization of the continent would have been begun.<\/p>\n

In addition to brownfield\u00a0neo-ecologies<\/em> there is a parallel and equally fascinating neo-geology<\/em>\u00a0emerging\u00a0from\u00a0the\u00a0material\u00a0detritus of our age. Mineralogically, these are mostly composites and conglomerates or\u00a0pyrolized residues of industrial processes such as coke and slag, as well as ceramics that have been fired\u00a0into the form of brick, tile and pipe, much of it broken up into rubble. This so-called \u2018urbanite\u2019 is dominated by concrete and ferro-cement in various states of decay and\u00a0petrochemically based asphalt and asphalt concrete, widely used in paving.<\/p>\n

Sometimes though, \u00a0a geologic object occurs that\u00a0is\u00a0of \u00a0more obscure though still clearly anthropogenic\u00a0provenance. At Williamette Cove, we came upon an\u00a0exquisite specimen\u2013a fossil of sorts\u2013consisting\u00a0of a fused mass of ribbed metal fragments, the\u00a0armouring of\u00a0\u00a0industrial electrical cable, \u00a0set within a matrix of a\u00a0more indeterminate material, which might have been\u00a0partially incinerated plastic. Perhaps this mystery\u00a0mineral\u00a0was formed when\u00a0some itinerant metal collector tried to salvage copper wire by throwing scrounged cable into a campfire to melt\u00a0off its rubber insulation and loosen the metal cladding. I may never discover\u00a0this exquisite object’s\u00a0true origin\u00a0and it might well become the topic of\u00a0frenzied conjecture to\u00a0some future archeologist, wondering\u00a0what our experience was like as we drifted\u00a0deeper into\u00a0the\u00a0fraught and turbulent\u00a0horizon of our\u00a0anthropocenic<\/a>\u00a0future.<\/p>\n

\"neo-geological<\/a>

neo-geological form<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those of who call ourselves ‘environmentalists’\u00a0have a tendency to imagine\u00a0a prelapsarian wilderness that once was\u00a0pristine and then became\u00a0progressively defiled and diminished through\u00a0the carelessness of humankind. But the earth had\u00a0been through many environmental catastrophes long before we came along\u2013 though this doesn’t exactly excuse\u00a0us from our manifold sins.\u00a0\u00a0The infamous Chixculub asteroid impact suddenly ended the long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,13,21,55,110,22,53,68,8,105,52,3,111,14,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-architecture","category-art","category-birds","category-brownfields","category-cities","category-climate","category-climate-change","category-environment","category-extinction","category-physics","category-plants","category-ruderal-ecology","category-trees","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1974"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2023,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions\/2023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}