Public Water Fountains in North Seattle: Some Maps

Dear Diary,

I've spent today making more maps for you.  These aren't the maps for the tour of city properties that I'd hoped to make this spring.  These are maps of all of North Seattle.  Today's maps show park water fountains (except the paywalled ones in Woodland Park Zoo), plus two street water fountains, whose locations I know.  It's possible there are other water fountains in the parks, but with the exception of Woodland Park and the Burke-Gilman Trail that's pretty unlikely, and even in those it's mildly unlikely.  It's very possible there are other street water fountains, but I haven't found them in all my hiking this past year, so I'm becoming a bit dubious.

There are certainly private water fountains.  One of the street fountains known to me may have been private, owned by a church, but was certainly open to the public.  I don't know what the rules are for the fountain at Top Pot's bakery on 35th Ave NE, and do know there are loose rules for the fountains at University Village on NE 45th St.  The problem is that I only know of those fountains thanks to having lived near them, the U Village ones for a couple of years, the Top Pot one for some of last winter.  So I'm not mapping those fountains because I assume there are others in North Seattle that I haven't found, and it wouldn't be fair, at times when public fountains are shut off (of which there have been many, this past year and some), to send people only to the fountains I happen to know about.

Here's my base map.  Isn't it pretty?

All those water fountains, all over North Seattle.  What could possibly go wrong?

Spring 2020

Well, let's start with the situation as I found it last May and June, in 2020.  By this point things had been locked down for well over a month.  I went to the parks with addresses in "NE" in May, and to the rest in June.  (I spent some of today building a spreadsheet of water fountains, dear Diary, on the basis of your old pages, and have uploaded it to the folder pointed to in last night's page, in .ods format and also .csv.)  Here's the map:

In May and June 2020, the default state of park water fountains everywhere in Seattle except downtown was shut off.  The parks department has since claimed that the justification was COVID-19 precautions, and I can barely imagine that at that early stage of the epidemic, they didn't know any better.

In this map, then, most of the water fountains' dots are coloured white, for the absence of water.  Some are red, pale blue, or full blue.

The red ones are ones which couldn't possibly provide water to the public, for a variety of reasons:

• At View Ridge Playfield and Sandel Playground, water fountains were removed early in 2020.  Sandel's was later returned, but not View Ridge's (its playground fountain).  I suspect, but do not know, that the reason the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation web page for Baker Park on Crown Hill uses a symbol that everywhere else in North Seattle stands for water fountains is that the park used to have one; it might have been removed in a renovation completed in 2020, but it also might have been removed as a stupid hygiene measure, as was certainly the case at View Ridge and may have been the case at Sandel.
• Water fountains at Meridian Playground and Woodland Park have been looted by metal thieves.  At Woodland, these are the two near field #1 in the southeast of the park.  I don't know when this happened, but it was before I got there in June on your behalf, dear Diary.
  
• Also at Woodland Park, a water fountain is behind a locked fence in a lawn bowling green.  I don't begrudge the lawn bowlers their water - people important to my childhood were lawn bowlers - but the fountain is factually unavailable to most members of the public, and on my hike in June I couldn't test whether it was running.  (In October lawn bowlers were present.  None could remember the water fountain running, and it wasn't running when they tried it.  That fence keeps the public out, but also is an obstacle to plumbers.)
  

Of these fountains, only Sandel Playground's has graduated from red, but two fountains shown as red on later maps have returned to apparent usefulness.

I've been comfortable, over the years, attributing a lot of damage to water fountains to "vandalism".  Something striking I've noticed today is that many of the "fountains" I've mapped are really fountain locations, with two or as many as four actual fountains either attached to one pillar, in the majority case of free-standing fountains, or to one building, in the minority case of attached fountains.  I would think that both "vandalism" and wear and tear would differentially affect these multiple fountains, but in reality, the entire time I've been hiking for you, dear Diary, I've never found one fountain working at a location, another not, except to the minimal extent that flow differences might make one harder to use than the other.  This makes it hard for me to attribute the red list even primarily to user misbehaviour.

The pale blue ones gave water, but in amounts too small for use.

• At Webster Park and the cloverleaf water fountain at Woodland Park, water trickled out.
• At B. F. Day Playground, about a teaspoon of water came out when I pressed the button.
  

Two of these ran fully later in the year; Webster Park's continued to trickle.

The blue ones gave useable water:

• In far north Seattle, at Jackson, Little Brook and Northacres Parks and Pinehurst Playground.
• In southeast North Seattle, at Burke-Gilman Playground Park and Ravenna Park, and through two street fountains on 15th Ave NE and on N 45th St.
• In southwest North Seattle, at Ballard Commons, Gilman Playground and Sunset Place.
• In mid-North Seattle, at the Green Lake Small Craft Center and at Licton Springs Park.
  

In summer 2020, BGPP's fountain was shut off for some weeks, and Little Brook's permanently to date.  Those at Northacres, BGPP, Ravenna, Green Lake, and Licton Springs were also shut off over the winter, as was the 15th Ave fountain, but Gilman's, Ballard Commons's, and the 45th St fountains weren't, and I doubt Sunset Place's or Jackson's were.

Finally, this map omits water fountains I didn't find on the May and June hikes:

• At Green Lake Park, the fountains behind the theatre's women's rooms.
• At Woodland Park, the fountains near 59th & Phinney, and near shelter 6.
• Christie Park was then beginning expansion and renovation, and the fountain it now has hadn't yet been delivered.

Autumn 2020

In late summer 2020, many park water fountains were turned on.  I was told at the time that the medical advice had changed, so the parks department's practises had also changed.  It now appears that the Seattle / King County Department of Public Health had urgently demanded that the water fountains be turned on to stem epidemics of shigella, cryptosporidium, and other infectious creatures that spread among people with inadequate access to clean water, epidemics the majority of whose victims were homeless, but not all.  Nobody seems to have died of these epidemics; they just added to the burdens on the health system while it also dealt with a pandemic.  Oh, and the people who got sick probably none had paid insurance, so one way or another, taxpayers or hospitals got to foot the bill.  Isn't it wonderful how harmless to the rest of society it is to punish the homeless for existing?

Anyway, I noticed what seemed to me a geographical pattern.  Fountains in the southeast of North Seattle, basically the U-District and environs, were on, but fountains in the belt around NE 65th St weren't.  I wondered if a weird form of discrimination were going on, so I went hiking again.  Ultimately I couldn't make a case, and Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for the parks department, assured me that all fountains that could be turned on had been, but there is a massive belt stretching from Northgate to View Ridge of strangely consistently defective water fountains.  Similarly, it's weird that fountains in Green Lake Park all worked, but those in Woodland Park right next door mostly didn't.

The map:

This time the default colour is blue.

Coloured white, then, are the fountains that still weren't on, but showed no obvious flaw:

• Albert Davis Park
• Bryant Playground
• Dahl Playfield
• Gas Works Park
• Little Brook Park (previously running in 2020)
• Magnuson Park, playground fountain
• Maple Leaf Reservoir Park
• Meadowbrook Playfield, fountain attached to the restrooms
• Northacres Park, playfield fountain
• Northgate Park
  
• Soundview Playfield
• Victory Heights Playground
• View Ridge Playfield, field fountain
  
• Woodland Park, fountains attached to the "Pink Palace" restroom building.

The only light blue "trickle" fountain was Webster Park's.

Red this time is much more numerous.  I've maintained that water fountains are much more often vandalised when not running; here's some evidence.  But I also suspect that quite a few fountains, specifically in Woodland Park, were actually "vandalised" by parks department staff, as their damage is strangely consistent and rather unlike metal thieves' usual work.  As I said, only Sandel Playground's fountain, of those listed above, has come off the disabled list; here are the additions:

• The western of the Burke-Gilman Trail's fountains had been knocked over and eviscerated, presumably by metal thieves.
  
• At Magnuson Park, the fountain near the "tower" restroom building had appeared damaged but usable; but in October, it was specifically no longer possible to push the button meant to draw water.
• At Ravenna-Eckstein Park, the fountain was temporarily behind tape put up by construction workers warning of "danger".
• At University Playground, the fountain had become blatantly damaged - exotically, in its pipe, not its control.
• At Wallingford Playfield, the fountain's button had been dismembered, and part of it removed.
• At Woodland Park, the fountains near the "50th St" restrooms had been disabled by removal of their controls, and that's how I first found the fountain at 59th & Phinney.

Ravenna-Eckstein and Wallingford were only temporarily on the red list, and came off it in January.

Finally, I left off the map fountains I didn't find:

• At Golden Gardens Park, the fountain at the south end of the beach.
• At Green Lake Park, the free-standing fountain near the "wading pool" restrooms at the park's north end.  NB I did find this yesterday.  I went through Green Lake Park for the October hike pretty late, and I think I missed this in the dark.

Winter 2021

I didn't hike in January specifically to test water fountains, but did in fact test them nearly everywhere I went.  However, about a dozen parks in North Seattle that have water fountains weren't on my itinerary.  Also, I didn't take notes, so any parks I skipped, or observed poorly, were ignored in the reconstruction I did today.  Notably, it was pouring rain when I visited Webster Park, and I don't see how I could have told whether the fountain was not running or trickling.

Anyway, here's the map, for what it's worth:

The default colour is again white, and of that I'm sure:  although the private water fountains known to me were running, as were the street fountains until construction did in the one on 15th Ave, the park fountains were shut off with remarkable uniformity.

No fountains were added to the red list, although the 15th Ave street fountain, which had been damaged all along, finally stopped running.  As I said, Ravenna-Eckstein Park's and Wallingford Playfield's fountains came off the red list.

A few park fountains were running:

• Ballard Commons
• Gilman Playfield
• Loyal Heights Playfield, the fountains attached to the Community Center

I didn't visit the following:

• Baker Park on Crown Hill
• Bryant Playground
  
• Burke-Gilman Trail, apparently both fountains
  
• Crown Hill Park
• I don't think I looked for Golden Gardens Park's southern fountain
• Jackson Park, whose fountains, if true to form, ran all winter
  
• I don't remember finding the other two at Loyal Heights
• At Meadowbrook Playfield I remember not finding the easternmost fountain
  
• Sunset Place, whose fountain, if true to form, also ran all winter
• Victory Heights Playground
• Virgil Flaim Park

Spring 2021

I've now visited 32 of 78 actual or suspected water fountain locations in North Seattle this month.  Here's the map as far as I know, with the other 46 fountain locations removed:

The dominant colour is again white.  Nothing has entered or left the red list, and I haven't found any fountains trickling.  I've found all the fountains known to me to exist in each park.  A few are running:

• In far north Seattle, at Jackson and Virgil Flaim Parks and Pinehurst Playground; I haven't been to Northacres Park yet.
• In southwest North Seattle, at Gilman Playground and Sunset Place; I haven't been to Ballard Commons yet.

This is why I now suspect we're in year two of what I think can only be called the Durkan Drought, and the shut-off street fountains and Green Lake SCC fountains already show it to be worse than year one.  That's one reason I gave up photographing P-patches and explicating Natural Areas.  The parks department isn't tending to its bread and butter, so it's time for me to return to my bread and butter, until it does.

Tomorrow:  restrooms.  Also, I hope tomorrow but anyway soon, my best attempt to sort out what excuses the city has for trying to cause year two of wasteful and unnecessary epidemics.