David Hoppe

David Hoppe is available
for freelance writing and editing assignments; and consulting with commercial and nonprofit cultural organizations. Resume and references available upon request.

Site managed by
Owl's Head Business Services

:: Canal crisis

Let's stop a bad idea

By David Hoppe

Some ideas are so bad they're laughable. Unless, of course, some deluded soul tries to turn one of them into a reality other people have to live with.

The Indianapolis Water Company has a bad idea. The IWC wants to strip the banks of the historic Central Canal between College Ave. and Rocky Ripple of trees and shrubs growing along its banks, cover those banks with a sheet of unspecified "material" and then cover that material with rip rap, or broken stone.

The banks of the Canal, which was dug in the 1830's and declared an American Water Landmark in 1971, are given to erosion. Canada geese and ducks clamor over its banks, muskrats burrow in to them and the roots of those trees and shrubs have a tendency to pop through its earthen slopes. Since the water flowing through the Central Canal winds up serving more than half the households in Indianapolis, the IWC has good reason for wanting to make sure that this conduit remains sound and stable.

But the IWC has admitted this is not an emergency. The erosion does not represent a clear and present danger to the city's water supply. This is not a crisis.

But a bad idea can create a crisis - and that's what the IWC is on the verge of perpetrating.

That's because the Canal also provides this famously landlocked city with a picturesque waterway, a bucolic stream that is a rich source of recreational and aesthetic pleasure for thousands of people. It also happens to provide habitat for six different kinds of turtles, who lay their eggs in the banks. A sculpture celebrating the turtles by David Jemerson Young stands on Guilford Ave., in the heart of Broad Ripple Village. I don't think it was intended to be a lament for a vanished species.

The Canal is one of Indianapolis' most visually appealing assets. This is something we have that a lot of other places don't. Google "Indianapolis Central Canal" and you will find photo galleries showing images of Autumn-colored trees standing over green and grassy slopes with captions attesting to how really wonderful it is to have what amounts to a water-based park wending its way through one of the most densely populated parts of an otherwise urban landscape.

The plan proposed by the IWC would turn the Central Canal from a park into something more like a drainage ditch. It adds a gross insult to the recent injury inflicted on the community by a recent rate increase.

As if this wasn't bad enough, the IWC has brought a "full speed ahead" attitude to this undertaking. Word of their bad idea first surfaced just more than two weeks ago, when Water Company officials announced they would begin work before the end of September. They also said they could have the job done in December -- yet another indication of the manhandling way in which this project has been conceived.

The lack of environmental impact studies, let alone public hearings or the presentation of alternative strategies to deal with this problem have all been disturbing, to say the least. What's worse, though, has been the fact that an idea like this one, an idea that will have a profound impact on one of the city's most valuable assets, could get this far without so much as an eyelid flutter from the Mayor's office. Is anyone minding the store?

The Water Company is managed by an international corporate conglomerate, Veolia. But Veolia's arrangement with the city does not relieve the company of accountability for decisions it makes concerning a public resource. It also does not relieve Mayor Ballard from his responsibility to speak up and defend the city's assets from bad ideas like this one.

Mayor Ballard must demand an erosion prevention plan for the Central Canal that represents an opportunity for the city to make even more of this asset than it already does. If anything, the Canal has been neglected over the years - that's why there's an erosion problem today. We should be thinking of ways to enhance the Canal, not ruin its looks. To do otherwise is dumb as the proverbial box of rocks - there's no way to put a finer point on it.

Mayor Ballard has made much of his new Department of Sustainability. He should insist that the IWC work with this new department to come up with a long-term solution to the Canal's erosion problem. Even the IWC says there's no hurry - and the benefits could become a model for other cities to emulate. The Central Canal, indeed, the city as a whole, deserves a better idea than the one we're facing now.

Direct your comments about this project to Matthew Klein, executive director of the Dept. of Waterworks: [email protected].