Yes, they've done a good job of cleaning up Mill Creek, and have eliminated pretty much all the industrial point source pollution.  However, there's still many areas that have been channelized, which is just about the worst thing you can do to river, especially since you also lose the overhanging trees in the riparian zone.  Even with that, it's not too bad overall, UNTIL IT RAINS.  That's the key problem with the combined sewer overflows.  You get a flood of fast moving storm water, which is highly amplified from hard surface runoff in the watershed, and its also polluted by human waste which lingers for a good while after the flow returns to normal.  Basically, the creek is poisoned on a regular basis and has to try to recover from that while being in an already highly stressed state. 

 

Hedeen's other book is the "Natural History of the Cincinnati Region" published just four years ago.  It does a great job explaining the sorted history of glaciation in the region, the natural order of the area's indigenous flora and fauna, and the effects of development and invasive species.  He mentions, for example, that the forests in the ravine on the north side of Ault Park, and also much of California Woods are two of the very few remaining stands of old growth forest in the area. 

 

  "I mention that the City doesn't run the sewers..."

 

    But the city DOES run the sewers!

 

    The 1968 agreement that formed MSD was not ideal, and has resulted in a lot of stress, but it clearly set up the City of Cincinnati as the operator of the sewers. All MSD employees are city employees.

 

    Yes, the city and county have clashed over sewers, and it was the county commissioners that initiated the QUEST program to extend sewers to unsewered areas, but it is clearly the city that operates the system. The city did not have to sign the 1968 agreement, but they chose to do so. 

 

  "You seem to have an extremely strange habit of missing the point."

 

    Sorry, I don't do it on purpose.  :laugh:

 

  "I mention that the City doesn't run the sewers..."

 

Meant to say, plan new sewer construction.  I've got to actually proofread my comments to your posts because I can't assume anything.

>It's a surprisingly enjoyable read, despite the rather bleak subject.   

 

I remember when CityBeat reviewed it, but it took me a few years to go and read it.  It's a shame he probably made less than $5,000 on that book. We have sucky books about our city because there's no money in it, unlike the big cities and tourist traps. 

 

The biggest thing I took away from that book was the realization that much of the argument about the pollution of the canal was probably actually the conditions of the Mill Creek transfered in the minds of citizens to the canal. This sentiment was recognized and exploited by the era's politicians in getting the City Hospital moved up to Corryville/Avondale (which neighborhood, technically, is University Hospital in?) and agitation for the subway/parkway. The average person can't tell the difference between a creek and a canal, and definitely can't trace the source of an industrial odor in a mixed urban environment.  That smell up by Paddock Rd. usually attributed to the Seagram's distillery is said to instead come from a place that makes artificial flavorings.  People blame it on the distillery because you can see it from the highway.  I don't know the answer.  I haven't taken the time to sniff the area in a systematic manner.  Possibly it's both.  All I know is I'm glad that I had a chance to ride in a car through Gary, Indiana around 1984 and smell what truly bad industrial cities used to smell like.   

 

 

This sentiment was recognized and exploited by the era's politicians in getting the City Hospital moved up to Corryville/Avondale (which neighborhood, technically, is University Hospital in?) and agitation for the subway/parkway.

 

It's pretty much all Corryville, which is a fairly consistent rectangle bound by Jefferson near UC, Vine north of MLK, Erkenbrecker, Burnet, and McMillan.  That's an interesting point about the canal vs. Mill Creek, especially when you consider that in the later years of the canal some and eventually all the water was diverted into the creek up near Spring Grove Cemetery.  The added flow of pretty clean water helped immensely to flush out Mill Creek.  However, the stretch of the canal along Eggleston Avenue was abandoned sometime in the 1850s or 60s, and as far as I can tell there was no spillway south of Spring Grove.  With fewer industrial customers (especially breweries) using the canal in OTR and downtown, I suspect stagnation really was a problem, though they could've just tapped into a sewer line near Sycamore or Cheapside to keep the flow going. 

 

    There may have been a raceway down Eggleston to dump water, and possibly use it for hydropower, after the segment of the canal down Eggleston was abandoned.

 

    I have a feeling that the raceway is still there, as well as the original canal lock walls, buried under the street somewhere.

 

    The Broadway Commons site contains about 40 feet of fill, to give you an idea of what the original ground in that area looked like.

 

   

They pretty well removed the locks and whatever structures used to be there.  No maps show any sort of raceway or anything left at all after that stretch of the canal was abandoned.  It's possible that they did drain it into one of the sewers under Eggleston or Culvert Street.  They already had to drain Deer Creek through there (hence Culvert Street), and those are some very large constructions.  There's a newer round pipe under Eggleston that's 12' in diameter, but the presumably original one made of stone is 14' high by 12' wide...damn!  There's 8' diameter pipes under Broadway Commons and Culvert Street, which could easily suck the canal dry, but I don't know if they ever plugged into those.

 

  On page 159 of Raja Rooman's book "Urban growth and the development of an urban sewer system" there is a drawing labeled "Section at N. End Lock 7" which shows a 14' W x 12' H sewer adjacent to an 8' circular raceway. I don't know if that raceway is still there or not, but it was clearly underground in this drawing, which is not dated.