a background of daylighting in the US (compared to the UK)

From what I have searched,
Ann L. Riley's Restoring Streams in Cities (1998, Island Press, Washington D.C.) seems to be one of the earliest text about the new tides of restoring and daylighting streams in urban area.
Then comes Richard Pinkham (2000, 2002).

Both are engineer or scientist background.

Ann L. Riley is executive director of the Waterways Restoration Institute, where she works on the design and installation of stream restoration projects. She is involved in the evaluation of national water policy for the National Research Council, the Institute for Water Resources, and federal task forces.

Richard Pinkham is an independent consultant and an Adjunct Research Scholar with Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), a nonprofit natural resources policy center. He advises clients and prepares research studies in the fields of urban and agricultural water efficiency, water system planning, stormwater management, stream restoration, instream flow protection, decentralized wastewater management, and water reuse.

His recent reports for the U.S. EPA and various foundations include Water 2010: Four Scenarios for 21st Century Water Systems; Re-Evaluating Stormwater: The Nine Mile Run Model for Restorative Redevelopment; and Daylighting: New Life for Buried Streams.


I didn't get a chance to read Riley's book yet. But according to Richard Pinkham (2000),
there are a few cases done in the 70s. One is in Napa, California and another in Urbana, Illinois.

... ... Daylighting began in the Bay Area when the city of Napa removed a cover over a channelized portion of Napa Creek in the 1970s. While this project did not renaturalize the stream, it may have been the first North American project to re-expose a previously hidden stream. ... ... (p.17)


The Urbana Park District re-established roughly 4,000 feet of the headwaters of Embarass (pronounced “Em-bruh”) Creek in the early 1970s by plugging and removing farm field drainage tiles at a newly purchased park property. Crews graded a rough channel into the landscape, allowing the creek to surface and redefine its path. This project was probably among the first in the country to re-establish a creek previously hidden by human actions, but it has received little attention to date. ... ... (p.28)


His words also replied half to my question of "why 1984"?


Berkeley completed the path-breaking Strawberry Creek project in 1984. ... ... The Strawberry Creek project is widely considered the archetype of daylighting. It inspired many other projects. ... ... (p.17)



trying to construct a time and spatial framework ~