Bellwood

Today is boxing promotor Don King's birthday.  The beloved sports figure turns 90 today.  

On this date in 1858, Charles Darwin first published his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Darwin's The Origin of Species was published the next year, 1859, on November 24.

More years have passed between today and Don King's birthday than between Don King's birthday and publication of Darwin's theory.

Eight years ago today, all in one day, the world lost crime novelist Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty, Touch, Maximum Bob, and Rum Punch, the source for Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown), jazz pianist Marian McPartland, jazz saxophonist Don Hassler, General John W. Morris, director and screen writer Ted Post,  South African singer-songwriter Sathima Bea Benjamin, and Indian author and activist Narendra Dabholkar. Impermanence is swift.

And in the here and now, now here comes Henri. The eighth named storm of the year, Henri, which seemed to be content cutting donuts in the Saragossa Sea circling Bermuda, is now heading north-northwest at 7 mph. A turn toward straight north is expected tonight, and Henri is forecast to accelerate in that direction through early Sunday.  

Henri is still technically a tropical storm, but is widely expected to gain strength and become a full-blown hurricane before making landfill, and a Hurricane Warning is in effect for the south shore of Long Island (my old home from 1973 to 1976), as well as the north shore (my even older home from 1964 to 1970). After that, Henri will move very slowly across New England (my old home from 1976 to 1981). The Sixth IPCC Assessment Report calls slow travel along a hurricane's pathway "slow translation speed," and predicts that while hurricanes won't become more frequent, they will become more intense and have slower translation speeds.  Heavy rainfall as Henri trudges along could result in considerable flash, urban, and small-stream flooding, along with the potential for widespread minor and moderate river flooding. Winds will damage buildings, take down trees, and knock out electrical power for many.  Good times . . . 

Down here in Atlanta, we're at least temporarily free from hurricanes and to celebrate, we have the grand opening of a brand new city park - Westside Park, now the largest park (280 acres) in Atlanta. Still, Manhattan's Central Park is 843 acres.  The park is the site of the former Bellwood Quarry, probably most famous as the setting for several scenes in Season 1 of both The Walking Dead and Stranger Things.

Bellwood Quarry was the former crushed-rock and "granite" source for Vulcan Industries (the rock is "granite" in the decorative sense only; the rock is actually metamorphic schists and gneisses). During the early 2000s planning for the Atlanta Beltline, it was noticed that old, abandoned railroad tracks that circled the city could be made into a combined transit and multi-use trail system, and that the combined transit and multi-use trail system passed very close to several of the City's existing parks and greenspace.  The Beltline could therefore become an "Emerald Necklace" circling the city and connecting the parks. 

It was also noticed that the "Emerald Necklace" passed close to Bellwood Quarry, which was set to close in 2006.  It wasn't a park yet, but the Beltline visionaries proposed that the city buy the property and make it into new parkspace.  Then some pragmatists in the Watershed Department looked at the property and realized the empty quarry would make an ideal short-term reservoir for treated City water.  The current Water Works reservoir is set in a now-heavily-urbanized area and only holds about three to five day's worth of water.  A major failure in the treatment or distribution system could leave Atlanta without water very quickly.  The Bellwood quarry holds over two billion gallons of water and could last 30 to 90 days, if needed.

These ideas then all came together and the Bellwood quarry was developed into a large Beltline park around a new reservoir.  Machinery and other pollutant sources were removed from the quarry floor and it was allowed to fill with water.  New tunnels were bored to deliver the stored water to the City's distribution system (the boring machine was named "Driller Mike" in honor of Atlanta rapper Killer Mike). For a brief while there, the rare guided tours of the tunnels were coveted by the geology community (the tunnels are de facto cross-sections exposing the bedrock geology of Atlanta).  I never got a tour, but then again, my bona fides for academic bedrock geology are pretty tenuous. But I did manage to make it to the quarry several times back in the 1980s when it was still operational.

I'm not sure I understand why it took 16 years to develop a giant hole in the ground into a reservoir and City park, but after years and years of waiting, it's finally open.  The grand-opening, ribbon-cutting ceremony was scheduled to be on Tuesday, August 17, but Tropical Storm Fred pretty much fucked up those plans, but I understand the park in now open to visitors.

I haven't been there yet, but here are some pictures harvested from social media. Sorry about the lack of attribution; if it's any consolation, I tried.