A conservation win: How urban green spaces helped save a city from historic floods

The Arkansas River, well above flood stage.

Last month, I had an opportunity to sit in on a forum with the Oklahoma Conservation Leadership Academy, and while there I learned something crucial.

The academy is organized by The Nature Conservancy, a large organization that manages lands across the United States and in dozens of countries for the purpose of returning lands to their natural state and restoring plant and animal species that once flourished in these places before man-made influences became predominant.

The academy’s class is filled with bright people from across Oklahoma who asked intelligent and at times technical questions on the topic of urban conservation, which was the topic of the day. Most of these questions were directed at two panelist speakers, Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum and Tulsa Parks Director Anna America.

Both had a lot to say, but something stuck out to me. Both also had detailed stories about how the city’s urban green spaces saved the city truckloads of money and no small amount of grief when the Arkansas River flooded its banks last May.

First, a quick recap: 2019 has been an extraordinarily wet year in northeastern Oklahoma, and never more so than in the spring. Heavy winter and spring rains in Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma saturated the ground and caused the Arkansas River drainage basin to swell. And then May hit.

Day after day of rain-laden squall lines moved across the state, bringing inches of precipitation every day and tornado warnings almost nightly. As the Arkansas River swelled, so did reservoirs built to mitigate flood risks. Chief among those is Lake Keystone, and it held back floodwaters as long as it could. Ultimately, even Keystone Dam had its limits and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was forced to increase flows from the lake to near-record levels downstream. At its worst, the dam was releasing more than 287,000 cubic feet of water per second, some four times or more than normal. Such huge releases hadn’t been seen in more than three decades, and that event led to damaging – and deadly – floods in Tulsa and beyond.

As you might expect, it flooded again. Massively. Among the hardest hit places in Tulsa were its parks, particularly the River Parks along the Arkansas River’s banks, and Mohawk Park on Tulsa’s north side. Millions of dollars in damage was recorded, the cleanup and repairs were (and still are) extensive, and at one time, much of the parks were under water.

Floodwaters cover a bike path at Tulsa River Parks.

This would seem to be a sad story for the city, and in some ways, it was. But in truth, the parks did what they were supposed to do. And that helped the city avoid much bigger losses.

America, the parks director, noted that Mohawk Park functioned as designed, absorbing floodwaters that might otherwise have covered neighborhoods, commercial properties and other places where people live, do business, go to church and shop. Mayor Bynum said that the River Parks, being mostly absent of urban development, took the brunt of the flooding inside the city limits while shielding people’s neighborhoods and businesses from harm.

Few people know how vulnerable cities are to flooding just by nature of urban development. Impermeable surfaces like streets and parking lots allow water to flow freely and quickly wherever gravity and the current please. Storm drains in these areas become overwhelmed, and creeks end up flooding, covering roads, causing flash floods and damaging buildings and critical infrastructure like roads, bridges and the like. That’s what makes urban flooding so damaging and dangerous.

But permeable surfaces, where grasses, trees and shrubs grow, absorb and blunt the onslaught of flooding. The city of Tulsa consciously chose to be careful about how much any of the banks of the Arkansas River would be developed. It’s prime real estate that would be perfect for housing subdivisions, luxury apartments and an array of businesses that would make money for the city. But the banks of the Arkansas have a built-in setback of green spaces and are mostly devoid of such development. Spaces like Mohawk Park – a vast tract of parkland that is among the largest of its kind in the country – can serve as a basin to contain flooding before it seeps into populated areas. Both parklands are used almost exclusively for recreation, with minimal use of paved surfaces and other forms of development. But flood mitigation is also part of their purpose.

I live close to the river, and I remember going down to the riverbanks to watch the awesome and frightening power of the river at such an extreme flood stage. The flow of the river reminded me of video footage of what a large tsunami looks like, except in this case, the tsunami was a quarter mile wide and never receded. It just kept going, faster than a man can run or most cyclists can ride, a relentless surge of watery power. It’s remarkable that more damage wasn’t done, especially when you consider what happened to cities and towns downstream of Tulsa that weren’t so fortunate.

The takeaway is that urban green spaces have value well beyond recreation or propping up property values. Green spaces absorb pollution and help scour the air. They provide habitat to permanent and migratory species of all sorts of animals. Wetlands in these spaces act as water filters. And as we saw in the Spring 2019 floods in Tulsa, these green spaces can save communities untold grief when rivers overflow their banks. As climate change advances and more weather extremes like last spring’s rains unfold, these urban green spaces only grow in importance.

Cleaner air, cleaner water, outdoor recreation and flood protection. I can’t imagine a better case could be made for boosting cities with expanded urban green spaces. Not all conservation looks the same, but in the end, conservation works for all of us.

River Parks and Tulsa’s Mohawk Park sustained major damage, but much of the city did not despite historic flooding of the Arkansas River.

Bob Doucette

Seen on the run: A city and a state suffer from historic floods

The Arkansas River, well above flood stage.

Over the years, I’ve written about what I see when I go run. If you’ve followed along, you’ll have read about wooded hills and rugged singletrack, urban skylines and gritty streets, and sometimes the more mundane parks and neighborhoods where I log a lot of miles. Eagles and armadillos have crossed my paths, as have hipsters and drug dealers. You get the drift.

Today’s entry is going to be a little different, mostly because the places I run have collided with the relentless forces of nature.

I haven’t run or hiked my local dirt trails in over a month. In May alone, we’ve received 18 inches of rain. I know trail runners pride themselves on not shying away from mud, but this is different. When the trails are this waterlogged, foot and bike traffic do damage. I’m trying to give those paths a break. So that’s left me pounding the pavement or riding my road bike.

The river is seen more than 23 feet above its normal levels, and right under the beams of this bridge.

Sadly, a lot of the running and biking paths I like are under water. Floods of historic proportions have plagued northeastern Oklahoma for more than a week, and eventually, those floodwaters from the Arkansas River topped their banks and swamped miles of paths that I use for many of my runs and almost all of my rides. Riverbank erosion guarantees that they will be out of commission for some time, as sinkholes and shoreline collapses have occurred. It will take many months, of not years, to repair the damage.

Over the past week, I’ve ridden my bike and run to the water’s edge to see how high the river was rising. Short answer: It looks bad. Real bad. Bad to the point where on one Saturday, I saw a guy in a lawn chair on the curb outside his home, fishing. Not in the river. But in the street.

And that was before the flooding really got going.

A RIVER’S WRATH

I don’t want you to think I’m crying about my loss of running and riding routes. Far from it. I can run and ride in a lot of places that are on higher ground, so I’m good. For that matter, where I live is also untouched by the flooding. Compared to many, I’m fortunate.

But the areas that are underwater are familiar to me, and seeing them slowly consumed by the murky, brown floodwaters of the Arkansas over the past week has given me perspective on this unfolding disaster.

From the top of Cry Baby Hill, looking down on a flooded Riverside Drive. To the right, paved park trails are covered by water.

Saturday was the day I went on my bike and saw the dude fishing in the street. By then, the water had blocked off about a block or so of Riverside Drive while also flooding the adjacent park trails. Nearby, a homeless man who had a camp under a bridge up the road was standing on a rock, filling a water bottle at a drinking fountain. I know where his camp is, and it was safe for the time being. Other camps across the river are washed out.

That was when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was releasing 256,000 cubic feet of water per second from the upstream Keystone Dam, the structure that basically keeps Tulsa and many downstream communities from flooding on a regular basis. But even Keystone can only do so much, and those big releases (it normally flows at a small fraction of what we’re seeing now) are the only way to keep upstream drainage from overtopping the dam, an event that would magnify the catastrophe.

On the west bank, the flooding’s severity seemed more plain. In some spots, I could see park benches and water fountains that were nearly covered, indicating a floodwater rise of nearly two feet from just a few days prior. Ordinarily, these fixtures were at least ten feet above the water’s edge. In the middle of the river, an island is completely covered, with only a dozen or so green treetops poking out of the water letting you know it’s still there. The “new” shoreline of the river has slowly encroached on a riverside apartment complex, creeping up the banks. I’ve run and ridden by these apartments scores of times. Never in my life would I thought it possible that they’d be close to being flooded.

Another look at Riverside Drive.

By Monday, the problem had only worsened. Heavy rains upstream from the dam forced the Corps to increase Keystone’s outflow to 275,000 cfs, not far from the record set in 1986. That day, I went for a run in my neighborhood, but also to the bridges that span the river west of downtown.

As expected, the waters had risen. What was once a hundred yards of Riverside Drive under water had grown to several city blocks. The floating remains of uprooted trees zipped down the river close to its banks. Elsewhere in the city, evacuations were underway, streets and neighborhoods were inundated, and sewer drains were backing up.

But what grabbed my attention was the river itself.

When it reaches Oklahoma, the Arkansas River is a prairie waterway. In other words, it’s broad, slow and features plenty of sand bars. It’s wide enough southeast of Tulsa that it can be navigated by cargo barges (there’s a port north of Tulsa from a tributary river that empties into the Arkansas), but for much of the year it’s a sleepy, ponderous thing that meanders toward its final destination at the Mississippi.

Looking south from Tulsa’s 11th Street bridge. The current in the river is incredibly strong.

This week, its demeanor is far less benign. The current is fast. If you were to sprint along its banks, it’s doubtful you could outrun it. Where the river meets bridge supports, the roar is loud. The entire channel is full, churning and racing downstream at an urgent pace.

Observing it this week, the imagery looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. And then it hit me Sunday. The river doesn’t look like a river at all. It looks like a tsunami. A muddy, quarter-mile wide tsunami that never recedes, but keeps barreling southeast, and I wouldn’t want to be in its way.

THE WIDER PROBLEM

My own observations are fine, but I’ve escaped this flood unscathed. That’s not true for a lot of people. They lost more than a place to run or ride.

Several neighborhoods in low-lying neighborhoods in the city and its suburbs have been flooded. Towns like Blackwell, close to the Kansas border, all the way to Muskogee, Fort Gibson and Webbers Falls near Arkansas are partially or completely swamped. The town of Braggs is basically an island, accessible this week only by boat or rail. Farther east, in Arkansas, cities like Fort Smith and Little Rock are in full-on crisis.

It’s part of a trend this year. In the central and southern Rockies, massive snow dumps have left the mountains with snowpack so deep that it will take at least a month longer than normal to melt out. Earlier in the spring, communities in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas have suffered massive, sustained flooding. The Mississippi River valley is facing the same fate.

These Canada geese would ordinarily be puttering around in a nearby lagoon, but that lagoon has been swallowed by the river. So the birds are hanging out on higher ground, hunting for bugs and worms.

And let’s not forget the tornadoes. It seemed like we went several days straight where there were nightly tornado warnings. One tornado killed two people in the Oklahoma City suburb of El Reno. Others ripped through numerous towns across the state, including here in Tulsa. Across the country, more than 200 tornadoes from the Great Plains to the Great Lakes touched down in the past 12 days. They even had a tornado warning in Staten Island, N.Y.

Earlier this week, someone on Twitter called out the local media for not reporting on this as an example of climate change. I’m not climate change denier. Far from it. But I know that weather is not the same as climate, so I’m slower to make the link.

However, scientists have told us that as climate change deepens, weather extremes will proliferate. Periods of severe drought will be followed by seasons of extreme flooding. Roasting hot temperatures can be followed by record cold. More intense hurricanes and thunderstorms will be more common. Longer and more severe fire seasons will come. You get the drift. Look at last year’s western fire season, or hurricanes named Harvey and Maria, and you could make an argument that the patterns are already emerging.

And if so, a lot more will be lost than a few running routes or bicycle paths.

In the meantime, I’m hoping the waters recede soon, and for the suffering to end. It’s been said that it will take years to come back from this, and I believe it. We’ll all have some adjusting to do for quite some time.

Tulsa’s River Parks have miles and miles of paved trails for runners, walkers and cyclists on both banks of the Arkansas River. But most of those paths are covered in water, and many are heavily damaged. It’ll be awhile before they’re repaired.

Bob Doucette

The Weekly Stoke: Ueli Steck to tackle Annapurna, non-competitive racing, extreme selfies and kayaking flooded Boulder Creek

Annapurna. (Wikipedia Commons photo)

Ah, home sweet home after a week in Colorado. Plenty to talk about, but before going any further on that, let’s get into the news of the day. Time for the Weekly Stoke!

Ueli Steck’s last trip to the Himalaya didn’t go so well, with a near brawl on Everest. But he’s back, and this time planning to tackle the range’s deadliest peak: Annapurna.

Car camping is one thing. Living out of your car is another. But how about rehabbing an entire bus? This guy is road living in style and spent maybe 5 percent of what it costs to buy a new RV.

Are running road races becoming less competitive? This writer says races are becoming less “race” and more “parade.”

Social media is filled with annoying, duck-lipped selfies, but this link has some extreme versions that are kind of cool.

Finally, this group of kayakers decided to make the best of a bad situation, riding the currents of a flooded Boulder Creek last week.

Lessons from the weekend: Mother Nature is the boss

At about this time, my hope was to be standing on the summit of Capitol Peak in northern Colorado.

Obviously, since I’m writing this, I am not. The forecast for Capitol Peak right now is a 90 percent chance of precipitation with 1-3 inches of snow possible. Given the difficulties already on that mountain in the best of conditions, it’s no big secret why my group had to bail on this one.

There are just times when your best-laid plans get scrapped by Mother Nature.

It’s been a horrendous several days of weather in Colorado.  Unusually heavy rains caused some of the worst flooding along the Front Range that the state has ever seen. People have lost homes, and in a few cases, their lives. A group of school kids on a field trip near Estes Park had to be airlifted out of there by way of a military helicopter. There’s something surreal about watching little kids, with colorful backpacks strapped to their backs, running out of a helicopter like they just got off the school bus.

The weather did not stop some people from trying to get up to a summit. Further south, I know people had good conditions in the Sawatch, but up north, on Longs Peak, two women from Maine, Connie Yang and Suzanne Turrell, tried to climb the peak in the height of the nasty weather that was pummeling Rocky Mountain National Park. They got stranded in a whiteout of sleet, snow and ice somewhere above 13,000 feet and were afraid to descend because of icy conditions on the bare rock sections below them.

A text message sent out by them on Friday asked for help. They had a tent and 30-degree sleeping bags, but they were justifiably afraid they might be at risk for hypothermia.

Fortunately, they were eventually able to get down on their own. All’s well that ends well.

If anything can be learned from this weekend’s storms is that nature will do what it wants, and if you’re in the way bad things can happen. Those of us who live in Tornado Alley can attest to that, as can anyone who lives along the Gulf Coast or the eastern seaboard during hurricane season.

For hikers and climbers, the lesson becomes more pointed. So if you take nothing else from this post then please remember this:

If you decide to ascend into the teeth of the storm, do not be shocked if you get bit.

I’m bummed I lost out on my shot at Capitol Peak this year. But I’m glad I’m not stuck on its flanks right now. Maybe I can be there another day, when Mother Nature is in a better mood.

Bob Doucette

On Twitter @RMHigh7088