Some places were never meant to be paved. Just down the
street and around the corner, there is such a place. I call it Elderberry
Spring.
Elderberry Spring is on Elderberry Drive, which, until a
dozen years ago, was a gently sloping meadow above Thompson Creek. The
engineers who laid out our subdivision apparently didn’t notice, or pay much
heed to Elderberry Spring, because they build a broad road right over it. Or
maybe they disrupted the subterranean water flow upstream and forced it to
daylight in this unwelcome location.
Regardless of its origins, Elderberry Spring is a fact.
Every autumn, it begins to ooze up through road base and asphalt, undermining
and dissolving, potholing the otherwise unblemished face of Elderberry Drive.
Eventually, City road crews fill it in. But anyone who has tried to plug up a
spring will tell you: you can’t plug up a spring; you can only push it around. So
the City has been pushing Elderberry Spring around for a good many years,
leaving a twenty square foot section of the southbound lane pocked with pothole
patches.
Lest you think I’m rooting for the erosion of all asphalt, Iet me tell you I’m pleased with the street repair going on
around town. Whether I’m on two wheels or four, the rides are smoother and
safer (but no faster, unless the poor paving was the only thing keeping folks
from bustin’ the speed limit.) I’m especially looking
forward to the completion of North McDowell north of Corona, as it’s been dicey
riding in the gutter.
And, you know what? I’m inclined to vote for even more
paving: the Rainier advisory Measure S. A two-lane ribbon of roadway connecting
N. McDowell to Petaluma Blvd, flanked by a pair of tree-lined 10 foot wide multi-use
paths, will help unclog Washington Street when Kenilworth and downtown
redevelopment is completed (as will building ball fields along the Petaluma
River, to serve west side residents.) But there’s no need to pave the land
around the Rainier extension. Its price tag *must* include the cost of
acquiring the some of that land, to preserve Rainier’s traffic relief value; or
it truly *will* become no more than an expensive land development scheme that
increases flood risks. Measure M, however, is too much paving, too little rail.
I’ll wait for a better balanced Sonoma-Marin measure in 2006.
I have one more paving request. The residents of the COTS
family shelter have to walk along 700 treacherous feet of Petaluma Boulevard’s unpaved
shoulder to get to the bus stop and downtown. For years, I’ve seen moms
struggling to push their infants along in strollers, the wheels gyrating as
they plow across the loose rocks. I’ve seen kids and their parents hop in and
out of the vehicle travel lane to avoid walking on this soggy rutted mess. City
Leaders, can we postpone a bit of some other project, add ten feet of asphalt
shoulder here, and give these people (and our police) one less thing to worry
about?
The recent heavy rain has re-awakened Elderberry Spring. A
trail of reflected moonlight pointed to it tonight as I rode by. It won’t be
long before the crew is back, the barricades are up, and we’ve sunk another g
into fighting a losing battle. My family thinks it’s crazy, but I wonder why
don’t we just surrender and pull out. Give these square feet of street back to
Mother Nature. Jackhammer up the asphalt, dig out the base, surround it with a
curb and a reflective white rail fence; fill it with rocky soil, and plant some
rush and willows. Call it pocket wetland restoration, beautification. Make this
a quaint stretch of one-lane street. Drivers learn to avoid the barricades;
they’ll avoid this. There will still be plenty of room for cars and emergency
vehicles. Think of it as traffic calming; it’s quite common in Europe, and
growing in popularity in the US.
We’ve been fighting nature too long; and when we think we
are winning, we lose. Bring back Elderberry Spring!