Reclaiming Onondaga Creek

Paul Frazier

The call to Reclaim Onondaga Creek—for all the people, not just some—demands our attention.

Few issues arrive on the pages of the PNL that cross so many ideological and political boundaries. Pick your turf and the CREEKWALK calls you. Environmentalists who know the Creek understand its tragic condition and offer solutions. Political activists who speak the language of empowerment, home and abroad, identify with a residential community when county planners tell them their neighborhood is the ONLY place on earth to construct a football-sized sewer treatment facility. Those who believe race and class issues underlie corporate mismanagement of the planet need travel only as far as the Creekwalk Rally & Picnic site on Saturday, October 8 to join in a common struggle.

We have walked, driven, and biked the length of the Creek several times in preparing for the Creekwalk Rally & Picnic. Most readers know its name: Onondaga Creek. But most may not know the incredible—yes, incredible—diversity, beauty, abuse, and potential that runs as the waters flow from south of the city line into sad Onondaga Lake.

You may choose to gather at Kelly Brothers Park on Dorwin Avenue and meet with representatives of the Onondaga Nation. You will see a Creek meandering and flowing as if in the wilds. Wide meadows and grasslands line the banks. Simply: a beautiful gift. The Onondagas tell us one of their villages near where Green Hills Farm now rests was uprooted years and years ago when the Creek was rerouted.
In the five miles from Dorwin Avenue to the proposed Midland treatment site you will witness a Creek becoming urbanized and selectively cared for. Stand on Ballantyne Rd. and look south: the meandering Creek bends back towards the Valley. Turn and look north and see how the Creek has instantly become narrowed, walled, and is the recipient of storm drainage overflow sites. Stop along the way and see how the Creek can become—and already is for some—a place to walk, jog, and enjoy flowing waters. Ask about the signs you will see: storm drainage overflow.

The rains that fall along a wide area of this nine-mile stretch from the city line to Onondaga Lake pour down into sewer lines. These are the same sewer lines that collect raw sewage from homes and businesses. When heavy rains fall—about fifty times a year—the sewer lines, as they exist, cannot handle the combined volume of raw sewage and rainfall. The Creek becomes the answer: At more than fifty sites along the Creek overflow from the combined raw sewage and rainfall is dumped into the Creek. This is the problem the county proposes to resolve with a sewer treatment facility: cleaning up the raw sewage problem of the Creek. And only at residential Midland Avenue, near Oxford and Blaine, can such a treatment facility be placed, so says the County.

The Partnership for Onondaga Creek says differently.
The proposed site inflicts an environmental injustice on a community that has invested resources in redevelopment and revitalization. It is not fair that the problems caused over years of neglect and abuse are addressed by sacrificing a residential neighborhood.

This major capital project is not linked to any community vision or revitalization project within the neighborhoods along the Creek. Although the Inner Harbor demonstrates a change in attitude on the part of the city about the lake, it is not a community-based project.

The proposed treatment facility technology will not remove the biologically active ammonia or phosphorus. Ammonia is toxic to fish and phosphorus is responsible for the algae that frequently occurs in the lake. The proposed treatment facility will only remove incidental amounts of ammonia and phosphorus that are absorbed by or adhere to particulates and floatables that are removed during plant operation.

The technology offered for the proposed site is not state-of-the-art.
Considerable time does exist to find alternatives.

For those Creek advocates who choose to begin at the north end of the Creek, surprise number one is learning about the INNER HARBOR CREEK WALK, a park, located on Van Rensselear Ave. just south of Bear St. Have you heard of this park? Have you been there? Come and take a look and wander south past a vast area where the Creek widens into a harbor. See pilings driven into the water and wonder how the plans for creating the world’s largest mall in that area just might have influenced the plans to stick a sewer treatment plant on residential Midland Avenue.

Stay with the Creek as it winds around beautiful office buildings, and snakes its way through Franklin Square. See beautiful walkways and bridges and wonder why the bridge in Kirk Park is a damaged, dirty, broken, unattended walkway over this same Creek. Look where the Creek goes under NIMO buildings, and Reclaim the Creek as it flows through Armory Square—quite a potential there—and becomes an eyesore and a half as it crosses W. Onondaga Street heading south towards Midland.

You may pick up the Creek along South Avenue and walk its loop into lower Onondaga Park. What a wonderful site for development of a natural beauty for the people of that area.

As you walk or bike or ride the Creek towards the Midland—Blaine picnic, wonder why some areas of the Creek are so beautifully developed and others are left to ruin. Ask about those divisions.

Syracuse is a city of barriers and divisions. Several months ago the PNL ran a photo of the south side. The perspective: looking at the university from South Salina Street. The content: homes and more homes between Salina and the University, from Adams Street south to Castle. Pre-urban removal—renewal to some. Today: those homes are gone.

And so it will be in another brief thirty or forty years for the Midland-Blaine area. Will real estate sellers promote a home, to buy or to sell, three blocks from a treatment site? Will you look at a home for sale or a site to develop a small business on the street where the trucks roar past, hauling sewer treatment leftovers and chemicals?

Another line has been drawn separating the rich from the poor, the haves from the have-nots. The blacks from the whites. Mall here, sewer treatment there, and—“No one asked you to move, but....”

Concerned citizens from all perspectives are urged to take part in the Creekwalk Rally & Picnic on Saturday, October 8. Meet at 11 am. at either beginning site: Kelly Brothers Park on Dorwin Ave. or the Inner Harbor Creek Walk park. Walk or bike or take one of the tour busses along the creek. Gather, Picnic, and Rally at the proposed Midland site from 1 to 3 p.m. Reclaim the Creek for all!