The Case for Liberating This Hidden Berkeley Creek

Imagine rainbow trout and steelhead salmon swimming against the current of a little freshwater stream descending from fog-laden, pinescaped hills. Perhaps you’re picturing somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, maybe Alaska. But until the early twentieth century, this described a Bay Area waterway. Today, it sneaks ashamedly beneath Berkeley when it once ran freely beneath the sky. After decades of pollution and neglect, can Strawberry Creek go back to what it was?

From its source in the Berkeley Hills, Strawberry Creek runs the most scenic length of its course through the grounds of UC Berkeley. There, it more closely resembles its old self: a clear shallow stream, rocky riverbottom cleanly visible under redwood-dappled daylight. Then, near Center and Oxford Streets, a tunnel abruptly swallows the creek. Culverts carry the flow between downtown Berkeley and the deep BART tunnel. Downstream, between Sacramento and San Pablo Avenues, the creek surfaces occasionally in city parks and private backyards. Otherwise, you could easily stand right on top of this important brook and not know it. 

Strawberry Creek played a pivotal role in people’s daily lives until European settlers fucked it up. Before colonization, the creek thrived for millennia alongside and thanks to Ohlone people. The Huchiun Ohlone thoughtfully managed the riparian habitat they benefited from, fully aware of its fortuitous, delicate nature. Mineral exchange between fresh- and saltwater animals established nutrient levels favorable to dense creekside vegetation—shelter for insects, i.e. fish food. It offered fresh water, crawfish, mussels, clams, and plentiful trout and salmon. The stream gave them life, and therefore was life. 

Their descendants still live on and near the culverted creek that once sustained their ancestors for generations. As the Ohlone gradually reclaim their homeland, undoing the constraints placed upon it by their colonizers falls unfairly to them. Extensive work is needed along its entire length. Strawberry Creek’s downfall started near its headwaters, where thirsty pioneers panic-dammed it up, depriving the lower reaches of fresh water. Meanwhile, their families turned the diminished stream into a sewer channel. The stench repelled campus visitors before they caught sight of its source. Now it lies entombed for much of its run before being dumped unceremoniously into the Bay like raw sewage. 

Then, during the 19th century, winter rains flooded, collapsed, and overflowed the culverts. Rather than rehabilitate it, Berkeley pushed Strawberry Creek deeper underground. By the 1920s, all native fish species, including trout and salmon, had disappeared. What survived suffered further once UC Berkeley’s radiation lab started up in the 30s. History would call them participants in the invention of the first atomic bomb; others might say “collaborators.” The lab and its crude setup was built at the edge of Strawberry Canyon. Radioactive tritium found in this and other streams throughout Berkeley hints at contamination via Cal’s nuclear fuckery. 

When you culvert a stream, you do much worse than alter its natural course. Strawberry Creek’s original riverbed was grassier than its latter, artificial counterparts, slowing the flow, filtering out sediment. But anytime a UC building desired space already claimed by the creek, developers simply moved it out of the way. Trenches of bare mud and stone did nothing to calm the waters made turgid by their crudely carved confines. Meanwhile, straight channels accelerated the stream. Worse, lining any waterway with impermeable concrete means the earth absorbs none, speeding the water along even faster. We plan, nature laughs. 

Conditions at the creek went from bad to ugly. While Berkeley eventually installed a proper sewage system, pollution at Strawberry Creek would unfortunately continue. Gutters and storm drains wash trash and toxic waste into the stream. A biohazardous flood of mud and garbage sweeps downstream during heavy rains. Culverts focus the surge, so when it reaches a rare unpaved portion, it scours the earthen banks like a firehose. For every action, an equal and opposite one transpires. Strawberry Creek has been: Dammed, soiled, contaminated, irradiated, rerouted and buried alive, ultimately collapsing an entire native biome. It would seem the lovely stream, once clear as a spring, had been defeated.

It’s hard to picture a time when the creek regulated its own speed, temperature and direction, but where it can, nature blooms. Native herbs, roots, and wildflowers readily return to its banks. Animal food chains reassert themselves. The creek begins to heal. Environmentalist and co-founder of the Urban Creeks Council Ann Riley explained: “vegetated open creek eliminates more inorganic and organic pollution than any treatment plant.” A river is more than the sum of its water. The creek was a critical factor of the East Bay’s ecology. Is it so surprising that its rehabilitation is a boon to wildlife? 

While we may never restore Strawberry Creek to its precolonial state, we do have means to revive it. Razing a culvert and freeing the river from its artificial tomb is called “daylighting.” Wouldn’t you love to see daylight again after decades, in some cases centuries of darkness? Daylighting a river is the kindest act of ecological contrition. Strawberry Creek is requesting more daylit portions in Berkeley, more bay laurels, buckeyes, willows and shrubs along its banks. More plants mean more insects; more insects means more fish; more fish means richer soil, and you can see how the dominoes would right themselves. Culverting a creek provides a perfect metaphor for humanity’s tendency towards ignorance in defiance of nature’s will. Maybe daylighting it can speak to our potential to recognize wrongs and right them as best as we can.

There’s good news: daylighting has already proven successful along some stretches, like at Strawberry Creek Park. Daylighting isn’t solely about aesthetics or even doing right by nature. It sounds hippie as hell, but when we heal the Earth, it heals us back. I’ve visited Strawberry Creek aboveground at UC Berkeley, soaked up some afternoon sun in the grass, listening to the water babble. That is serenity, I said to myself, identifying this rare feeling, slowly breaking through the daylight.