Buffalo Bayou - Restoring The Buffalo Bayou

Restoring The Buffalo Bayou

Spurred by the 1972 Federal Clean Water Act, the State of Texas sued Houston in 1976 over pollution levels, toxic run-off, and untreated sewage that was being discharged into the bayous. This led to a $3 billion sewer upgrade in the metropolitan area which has significantly improved water quality in the region, although much effort still needs to be expended to reduce non-point source pollution from the urban watersheds.

In 1986, a mayor-appointed task force published the first Buffalo Bayou Master Plan, which outlined a vision for the bayou that took it from being an urban sewer to being a valuable natural resource and valuable park space and rich with urban waterfront opportunities. The Buffalo Bayou Partnership was created from this original task force in 1986 and in 2002 they published the Buffalo Bayou and Beyond Master Plan, an updated and comprehensive regional bayou restoration and economic development program expected to cost $5.6 billion and take 20 years to implement. The project goals include the creation of hundreds of acres of greenways and new parks by reclaiming industrial space along the bayou waterway, habitat restoration program, recreational opportunities for canoeing and kayaking, trails for hiking and biking, outdoor cultural events, watershed and flood control management, and mixed-use urban development.

The Buffalo Bayou Partnership has raised more than $45 million from private donors and foundations to implement specific projects along the bayou, including efforts to develop continuous trails along the bayou. The most recent segment of the Buffalo Bayou trail system to be completed is the $15 million Buffalo Bayou Promenade, which extends from the historic Sabine Street bridge just west of the Central Business District to Bagby Street in the heart of the Arts and Entertainment District. This new 23-acre (93,000 m2) recreation area, complete with 1.4 miles (2.3 km) of hiking and biking trails, was opened in 2006 and was designed by the international landscape architecture firm, The SWA Group.

The Buffalo Bayou Promenade has become a popular location for live performances of music and video, for outdoor sculpture exhibits (The Buffalo Bayou Art Park), for canoeing and kayaking and for walking and jogging. The promenade has won local and national acclaim for the role it has played in helping to change how Houstonians think about their waterways in general and Buffalo Bayou in particular.

The Buffalo Bayou Promenade transformed what was an almost forgotten and neglected stretch of the bayou where it passed beneath and threaded between numerous freeway and street bridges and overpasses into an inviting, safe and attractive public space. The project included the placement of stone filled gabions along the water’s edge to provide an ecologically friendly way to control bank erosion, the removal of thousands of cubic yards of old rubble and fill, the construction of new and improved trails. One of the most important aspects of the project was the construction of highly visible staircases and ramps connecting almost all the adjacent streets to the bayou trails to give park users the comfort of knowing they are never disconnected from the city around them and to give city residents easy access to the trails below along the bayou.

The SWA Group-led design team is also credited with designing an innovative lighting plan for Buffalo Bayou, first unveiled at the Sabine-to-Bagby Promenade. This lighting system illuminates the bridge, trails, and waterfront in cobalt and white lights that shift from one color to another in coordination with the changing phases of the moon. Stephen Korns, an Amherst, MA-based artist, working with the New York lighting firm L’Observatoire, conceived of the color phase shifting which will ultimately include the entire Buffalo Bayou greenway. The plan incorporates three levels, or orders, of lighting, providing first, general trail lighting for public comfort and safety, second, environmental lighting to illuminate just the dark corners and hiding places amidst the undersides of all the infrastructure, and third, artistic lighting for public art and local events.

The project includes a 189-foot (58 m) steel and concrete pedestrian bridge that links acres of new landscaping with the downtown theater district and enables pedestrians and bikers to make a complete loop around the bayou without crossing up and over busy city streets.

New pathways in the Sabine-to-Bagby Promenade now link Houston’s popular Allen Parkway/Memorial Drive trails to Sesquicentennial Park in downtown Houston. Each of 12 public entrances to the new park are celebrated using a combination of public artwork (John Runnels), artistic lighting, and perennial gardens to create inviting and accessible entry points to the greenway.

A significant design challenge, specific to bayous, is to accommodate the ever present threat of flood. Water on Buffalo Bayou can rise rapidly from sea level to 35 feet (11 m) deep, often within several hours. SWA met that challenge by designing all landscape plantings, trail markers, signage, benches, lights to withstand periodic submersion by muddy, debris filled flood waters. In the event of high water, small hydrants, spaced conveniently, wash off any deposited silt, returning it to the bayou before it dries.

In 2006, Kevin Shanley, president of SWA Group and leader of the design team, and Anne Olson, executive director, Buffalo Bayou Partnership, Houston, Texas, won The Waterfront Center’s Excellence on the Waterfront Award, Park and Recreation Category. The Waterfront Center, formed in 1981, has chronicled and supported the national movement to reclaim and restore abandoned, unused, and polluted urban waterfronts. The project also won a design award from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 2006 and an award of distinction from the Urban Land Institute (ULI) in 2007.