The Fountain Of My Youth

Just west of the Robin Hood Bridge is a fountain which quenched the thirst of my summer days. Built during the WPA era, it overlooked the creek. Although the water was turned off years ago, so now is the view. The weeds and assorted invasives growing are not a riparian buffer. Science says that a buffer has to be 25feet wide to be of any value. A reader described this thin strip of wild growth as neglect, masquerading as conservation. All it does is block both the view and access to the waterway. It denies our current citizens the beauty and experience for which the parks were designed. Although the Wildland's Conservancy would like you to believe that the Allentown Parks are there to be wildlands, in reality they were designed by landscape architects, to provide the citizens of Allentown with what Harry Trexler called serenity. He did also appreciate conservation, but for that he created the Trexler Game Preserve, north of Allentown. There are places in the parks which can accommodate the riparian buffer zones, without compromising the intended public experience of waterway view and access. Riparians could be created and maintained in the western side of Lehigh Parkway, between the pedestrian bridge and Bogerts Bridge. In Cedar Park, the riparian section could be in western side, between the last walking bridge and Cedar Crest Blvd. It's time that the parks were given back to the citizens of Allentown. They are not funded, or intended by our tax dollars and the Trexler Trust,  just to be a venue for the Wildland's Conservancy to harvest grants.  Let a child again giggle by the creek's edge. Let us get back our intended park experience.

above originally posted in 2013

ADDENDUM JULY 1, 2022: When the above post was first written, Pawlowski's recreation trained park directors farmed many actual park decisions out to the Wildlands.  Although their influence has waned somewhat in recent years, these faux buffers remain a negative legacy. The buffers are faux because Allentown's storm system is piped directly into the streams, under the buffer weed wall. Those weed walls in turn have become hotbeds of invasive species, such as Poison Hemlock.  Now, as the downside of those invasives has become obvious, the department is cutting the grass back toward the streams, but still leaving the creek edge overgrown, hiding view and blocking access.  To further complicate the situation, in the last several years all new tree plantings were done away from the creek, at the outer edge of the then wide buffer...The end result is now cutting the grass is more difficult, with all the new trees in the path of the mowers.