Nestled between the Bush Kill and Dry Creek just west of the Ashokan Reservoir, climate projections from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and National Weather Service anticipate a high likelihood of flooding within a 30 year period. Most of FEMA’s flood projections range on a scale from 100 to 300 years, thus rendering this plot of land in immediate danger of flooding and irreparable harm to the West Shokan hamlet in the town of Olive, New York. Today, this land ranges from bone dry to overwhelmingly flooded with published turbidity reports challenging the understanding of clean versus dirty water. If the water is clean enough to overspill from New York City’s heavily policed and intensely surveilled Ashokan Reservoir, then the reservoir, the creeks and land, the plants and public programs, and everything the water touches must be clean as well. However, this water is filled with harmful chemicals to coagulate rainwater and river pollutants or “floc.” Local agricultural soil is infiltrated with leaded soil and salted “floc” water. Residents cannot file flooding insurance claims on toxic chemical pollutants and byproducts from the city’s desperate efforts to clarify the water. Riddled with concerns for this land and its future, abandonment is not an option. Instead, efforts to construct on the land with its inevitable destruction in mind demonstrate continued resiliency and determined articulate design choices that will not rescue the land itself but will forge a new commons. This project, titled Clean / Soapy / Dirty, proposes a water filtration laundromat and communal gardens attached to the public programming of the Town of Olive’s Department of Recreation. Where clean water is accessed via public wells, dirty and soapy water gets filtered by companion planting and phytodegradation as toxic pollutants naturally convert into less toxic or entirely clean water as the process (and residents’ laundry) rinses and repeats.
