"Onondaga Creek is the main artery flowing through the heart of the city of Syracuse. Beginning in headwaters fed by springs and rivulets along the Valley Heads Moraine, it flows through the Tully Valley, the Onondaga Valley, and north eventually into Onondaga Lake. I grew up on Onondaga Hill, and when I was a teenager I practiced on the swim team at Valley Pool. Outside the floor-to-ceiling pool windows you could see Onondaga Creek flowing in the ditch designed for flood control. I often thought, wasn’t it strange that we could swim in a man-made pool, but not in the Creek flowing outside?
The Creek was dangerous because the waters were too fast and too dirty. I would like to see Creek waters clean enough to swim in, not just for humans but for fish, invertebrates, waterfowl, amphibians. For my master’s thesis work I studied Onondaga Creek riparian habitats and their potential for restoration. I learned that “the Creek” is not just the ribbon of water we see flowing, but includes the adjacent floodplain, as well as groundwater and alluvial systems. Land and water, surface and underground, form one continuous watershed system. Plants play a huge and critical role in this system, and I’m interested in recovering and renaturalizing plant communities throughout the Onondaga Creek corridor, through forests, gardens, wetlands."
-Catherine Landis, OCCC participant
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