THE LAST IMPERVIOUS SURFACE IN PORTAGE COUNTY OHIO

GALEN PARDEE

On December 8th, 2008, the States and Territories of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Montreal, and Quebec, signed into law the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact [The Great Lakes Compact], prohibiting water removal outside the Lakes’ drainage basins and creating a sealed eco-political zone within the United States and Canada. On April 25th, 2018, Wisconsin approved Foxconn’s request to withdraw 7 million gallons of Lake Michigan water per day for a private LCD panel factory outside Racine: Foxconn claimed its factory’s water consumption a “public use” to skirt full Compact review. This feat of semantics exposed the Compact’s lack of actionable public water definitions and created a leak in the Compact’s closed loop.

Finally, on February 26th, 2019, the citizens of Toledo, Ohio approved the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, granting the city legal guardianship of the Lake and its’ watershed. Unchecked agricultural runoff in 2014 had rendered Lake Erie’s water undrinkable for half a million people for days at a time: algal blooms would return regardless in July 2019.

These three events inspired the foundation of the Great Lakes Architectural Expedition, an experimental public architecture office entrusted with protecting the spirit of the Great Lakes Compact, researching and designing the Watershed’s public realm, and advocating for the Compact’s human, non-human, and material subjects. The Expedition’s mission has prompted a fundamental re-thinking of architecture’s role in the Great Lakes Megalopolis—engaging legal and physical terrains with equal dexterity, expanding architectural practice with non-human client structures, and transforming architects into agents for public materials in a world of increasing scarcity.

The Last Impervious Surface in Portage County Ohio examines the disjuncture between material boundaries and political boundaries; using the Portage County Spillway—a 30-mile long, 500-foot wide, 5-foot tall asphalt megastructure spanning Portage County as a lens. A topographical intervention, the Spillway is able to redirect enough rainfall towards Akron to support 100,000 people per year.

The Portage County Spillway was rehabilitated by the Great Lakes Architectural Expedition to create a continuous public space for the entire county. With integrated supergraphics to enable satellite monitoring of water flows, the Expedition spearheaded a ban on the construction of further impervious surfaces county-wide to ensure equitable access to fresh water on both sides of the boundary. In addition to the permeable streets on the Lake Erie side of the Spillway, a full series of hazard maps were developed to educate residents on the new risks to existing structures while highlighting the public amenities developed on the Spillway’s surface.

The transformation of the Portage County Spillway was an early success for the Great Lakes Architectural Expedition, acting to mitigate unequal water conservation practices, and establishing an obligation to serve the interests of the public realm defined by the Lake Erie Watershed and straddling counties and cities. The Spillway also exposes an ugly truth to the Great Lakes Compact: although ostensibly developed for ecological reasons, many suspected the true motive was to entice thirsty manufacturing firms to return to the Great Lakes. In acting to increase their share of the Watershed, Portage County ’s decisions could be replicated elsewhere along the Great Lakes’ watershed boundary; a cautionary tale about mixing ecological and financial regulations.

Andrew Santa Lucia is a Cuban American designer, educator, and critic based in Portland, Oregon. He is Assistant Professor of Practice at Portland State University’s School of Architecture, where he teaches design studio, history/ theory/criticism seminars, and is graduate thesis coordinator. He has lectured and exhibited internationally, including Art Basel, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, as well as the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2021. Andrew’s writing can be found in a broad range of media including ACSA, Architect’s Newspaper, Artlurker, Bad at Sports, Dichotomy, EVOLO, MAS Context, and Luxury Home Quarterly. He runs Office Andorus, which designs architecture for activists, institutions, and private clients with the goal of influencing public perceptions through the architectural discipline. His work is a hybrid of bold colors, graphics, and shapes used to translate and amplify contemporary issues of social justice through aesthetics. His current research is investigating the effects of color on public health initiatives associated with harm reduction, drug treatment programs, and drug reform activism.