#37, March 8, 2000
"It's not a river, it's a slough," my musician
friend told the crowd. He was on stage at the Petaluma River Festival, getting
good comedic mileage out of how Petalumans label their beloved and accursed
waterway.
Beloved, when the salty tides offer a smooth boat route to
the Bay. Accursed, when skies drop acre-feet of rain on pavement and soggy
soil, and the watershed funnels it all onto the Payran floodplain.
I've been pondering (no pun intended) our River's multiple
personalities. Last December, when the sun and moon conspired to create the
highest tides in two decades, my daughter Laurel and I put our canoe into the
Turning Basin and paddled upstream. Like many journeys, it began with new
perspectives on the familiar: the underbelly of Washington Street Bridge,
Petaluma's grain-filled skyscraper reflected against tidal slackwater. Then we
entered the flood zone, paddling between mountains of earth heaved against the
corrugated green iron floodwall-- the last line of defense against the next big
one. Washington Creek comes in here, then Lynch Creek, both streams reaching
back to the upper flanks of Sonoma Mountain.
Just above the confluence with Lynch is the floodgate, a
huge, notched concrete wall spanning the channel. The gate marks the upper end
of the flood control project, and the beginning of another realm. Iron and
concrete become oak and willow. Cars and barking dogs give way to egrets and
honking ducks. Laurel and I lose track of our whereabouts, then partially
recover as we pass under the old railroad trestle, portal to a canyon of
cascading blackberry vines. After more leisurely paddling, we reach the tip of
this groping finger of the Pacific. Beaching the boat, we climb up the bank
and…Surprise! The Factory Outlet Mall!
The sun sets, the tide turns, and we paddle home by
twilight. Back through the ancient oak-tree world, through the gray gate, into
the modern flood-wall world. With a radically new perspective.
We look at the hundreds of homes and businesses built in the
river's path, and wonder about the thinking that put them so close to harm.
Myopic ignorance, cynical greed, who's to say? But that was half a century ago;
we know better now, yes? Today we have a flood wall, designed to protect us
from the floods that race downstream to the ocean. But what are we doing to
keep the flood from tomorrow coming upstream, catching Petaluma in a
pincer?
For it was the ocean that carried our canoe so far
north. This, the same ocean that will rise to greet rising levels of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere should we fail to arrest and reduce the production of
greenhouse gases. If our present trend of fossil fuel consumption continues, a
two foot rise in the sea level is likely within my daughter's lifetime. (Laurel
is not looking forward to this, by the way.) And for those who still think
global warming is an unproven theory, I ask: if a young loved one is diagnosed
with a life-threatening but readily curable illness by six of seven doctors,
the lone dissenter being employed by the HMO that must pay for the cure, would
you withhold treatment until professional opinion is unanimous?
If we withhold the cure for climate fever, that twenty-year
high tide will become a bi-monthly event. Combine that with the mega-storms
produced by a warmer world, and our $20 million floodwall will often become a
mile-long waterfall, spilling into backyards. Was this in the plan?
Petaluma sits on the edge of earth's one ocean; if that
ocean rises up against human foolishness, we will suffer directly. But Petaluma
is also at the leading edge of a revolution in the way cities behave. While we
are only one vote among thousands of cities worldwide, we can cast our vote for
treating climate fever now, through policies that reduce the use of
fossil fuels. Our current City Council is on the right course with efforts to
reduce automobile dependency. A further opportunity is coming up, as the
Council considers shifting to electricity supplied from renewable sources.
We are on the edge Petalumans, at the gate. Time to make our
choice. But not much time.