A WALK ON WATERSCAPES BY PAULINA GILSBACH
© Timmo Mahlke
„[…] urban water supply and access relies on the perpetual transformation, mastering, and harnessing of ‚natural’ water. Urban water is necessarily transformed, ‘metabolized’ water, not only in terms of its physico-chemical characteristics, but also in terms of its social characteristics and its symbolic and cultural meanings. […] this circulation of water is also an integral part of the circulation of money and capital“ (Swyngedouw 2004: 1).
© Tizian Wojan
© Tizian Wojan
© Paulina Gilsbach
INTRO
During my multiple visits to Paljassaare, it got very clear to me that we can’t talk about the peninsula in the north of Tallinn without talking about water.
Once two separate islands, divided through the Baltic Sea. Land was taken from the sea and dumped to create the peninsula, a human-made landscape.
Today the wastewater treatment plant occupies large parts of the peninsula: its tanks, basins and composting fields mark the heart of Paljassaare. Where once water was flowing free ‚urbanized‘ water replaced ‚natural‘ water, ‚dirty’ wastewater gets treated and pumped back into the sea, marking the human-made categories of ‚waste‘ and ‚nature‘.
But as we take a closer look we can see that the waterbodies are in poor condition and heavily human-affected, a fragile ecosystem that lets us reflect on environmental realities. Most climate impacts are directly related to water, - too much, too little or too polluted. It reflects how humans exploit the environment.
However, the way we look after water systems does not reflect this at all. Water is much more than just a transparent, homogeneous liquid, more than only a resource sustaining urban life, more than infrastructure. It mediates relationships and dependencies between living and non-living matter, creates so-called hydrosocial relations. At the same time, looking at the subject of water also allows to recognise power relations and mechanisms of categorization and degradation in relation to nature (Kaika 2005).
We need to take water into account and unravel it’s complex layers when thinking about the urban.
A pressuring topic.
Water(’s) pressure.
From the very first moment on I was quite fascinated by the wastewater treatment plant as one of the most striking actors on Paljassaare, located at its very center: everywhere you go, you can either see the plant, hear the pumping processes or smell the wastewater, sludge and chemicals.
This led me to the question: What is water’s agency within urbanization processes?
What does it mean for Paljassaare and its significance to host the city's water treatment plant?
I decided to work with the format of an audiowalk, trying to understand how water is shaping sociopolitical and ecological realities and how the categorization and treatment of water is connected to power dynamics.
Aiming for a bodily experience, every person was asked to take a waterbag with samples of different waterbodies and keep it in their hands during the walk, engaging with water but still being distanced.
One could choose between ‚dirty‘ water, seawater, or ‚clean’ drinking water. Waterbags that were representing humanity’s impact on water, referred to as waterscapes, illustrated by the varying transparency and clarity.
I used the legend of the Ülemiste man (Ülemiste vanake), which is quite well-known in Estonia to introduce my project in a narrative way and illustrate the interdependencies of urbanization processes and water. The legend say that every year, the Ülemiste man knocks on the city gates and asks if Tallinn is finally ready. If the guardians ever answer in the affirmative, the old Ülemiste man would flood the city and can thus be seen as the guardian of circularity. This seems to be the reason why the construction of Tallinn will never be complete (Hidden Tallinn 2024).
Starting at the seaside and introducing the topic from a theoretical angle, we followed the path that led us through the area of Tallinn Vesi. Finally arriving at the site where Tallinna Vesis compost fields are neighboring the nature conservation area, the audio focused on the conflictual relationship of the ‚urbansphere‘ meeting the ‚nature sphere‘ (Pasquero 2017: 8f.), which becomes very clearly evident through the eutrophic lake. The walk ended at this relict from the time, when water was flowing free between the two separate islands by returning the urbanized water back to where it was once flowing and performing some kind of circularity.
The walk is accompanied by a map, showing the spatial relations of the thematised waterscapes, orthophotos and giving more background knowledge about the spatial dynamics of the wastewater treatment plant and nature conservation area.
„A landscape that is at once rich in biodiversity and heavily anthropic. As such it is currently shaped by two forms of conservative ideology: environmentalism that strives to maintain the site as it is in a state of illusionary wilderness, and commercial development that envisions its transformation into and ideal green city.“
- C. Pasquero
© Tizian Wojan
© Paulina Gilsbach
© Paulina Gilsbach
When I first set foot on Paljassaare, it seemed to me like a very diverse and fascinating landscape which has awakened my interest on the very first day. I felt like spending a lot of time here, trying to understand its different facets. Through intense research I dived into its diverse layers of history, different realities and imaginaries about its future. Its unique identity reveals through the simultaneity and co-existence of seemingly contrasting elements and livelihoods, both human and more-than-human.
Through an Interview with the architecture historian and military heritage expert Robert Treufeldt it got quite clear what I already sensed before: you can never understand Paljassaare as a whole, but rather look deeper into its fragmented characteristics.
Historically the area consisted of two separated islands that were connected by the Russian Empire through dumped materials, waste and excavated soil from the construction of a new military port (Pikner 2022: 15). After that, the peninsula served as Soviet Union military zone, closed to the public, characterized by heavy industrial use. The collapse of the militarized boarder regime left voids behind, the lack of public infrastructure kept the public away from the peninsula for years which allowed a rich ecosystem to grow (Pikner 2022: 6ff.). Today, this variety of flora and fauna is protected as Natura 2000 special conservation area, which is directly neighboring Tallinns wastewater treatment plant, often subject of discussion as conflictual relationship (TAB 2017 BioTallinn 2017: 9).
The peninsula is often understood as wasteland. But the term wasteland isn’t simply a spatial description, it is loaded with social, cultural, political meanings and perceptions of space as underused, as not worthy and shows an economic understanding of nature (Rosa 2016).
This degradation and mode of understanding nature as something ‚cheap‘ seems to legitimize any kind of capitalist-driven experimentation, but „not in my backyard“, pushing things to the outskirts of the city. Paljassaare seems to be this place where things end up, that you don’t want or can’t handle in the city.
„Paljassaare has become a field of experimentation, where possible relations between humans and their environs are projected in light of the climate change
crisis.“
- T. Pikner
CHEAPNESS, WATER & URBANIZATION
My work is situated within the theoretical approach of political ecology. The concept of cheapness served as entrance point of trying to understand the wide-spread perception of Paljassaare as wasteland and ongoing processes of both nature protection and appropriation of nature. The concept was introduced by Jason W. Moore and Raj Patel as set of strategies to legitimize capitalism’s „law of value“, unlimited appropriation of resources, of commodifying and exploiting nature. This commodity relation veils and hides the multiple socioecological processes of domination and degradation that feed the capitalist urbanization process, a process of cheapening (Patel & Moore 2017).
Our modern Cities are dependent on urbanizing, categorizing and standardizing water, making it accessible at every moment, differentiating and separating it from ‚natural‘ water.
Trying to better understand the complex interplay of water and urbanization, I engaged with the book „Social Power and the Urbanization of Water: Flows of Power“ by Erik Swyngedouw from 2004 as one of the most important scholars within the field of political ecology. The geographer has very precisely worked out the commodification and urbanization of water as a question of social power: „The capturing, sanitizing, and biochemical metabolizing of water to produce ‘urban’ drinking water simultaneously homogenizes, standardizes, and transforms it into a commodity as well as into the real/abstract homogenized qualities of money power in its manifold symbolic, cultural, social, and economic meanings“ (Swyngedouw 2022: 29).
Swyngedouw points out how tight the circulation of water is connected to the circulation of capital and money and how this lets us reflect on wider political, social and ecological processes (ibid.: 2).
The geographer also initially detailed the concept of waterscapes, which got quite popular within the political ecology tradition as a perspective on the co-production of water and society across time and space. The approach critically examines situated power structures, infrastructures, material flows and representations (ibid.: 2).
„Controlling the flows of water implies controlling the city…“
- E. Swyngedouw
© Paulina Gilsbach
In my project I used the term of waterscapes to illustrate where the complex interplay between humans and water and the footprint of human action become visible when talking about Paljassaare.
I understood quite from the beginning, that Tallinna Vesi - responsible for Tallinn’s wastewater treatment - plays a very important and complex role in all of that as some kind of mediator of these relations, but I could not really grasp it. Through engaging with the concept of waterscapes, I recognized how much urbanizing and treating of water is connected to questions of power, environmental justice and knowledge production, the „coshaping of matter and meaning“ (Hurst et. Al. 2022: 3) through designations and categorizations of ‚good‘ and ‚bad‘ water.
„A common approach views the waterscapes as an assemblage of waters, discourse and imaginaries, people, institutions and infrastructures.“
- E. Hurst et. Al.
© Tizian Wojan
„Within this field, a focus on water infrastructures has highlighted how they are powerful shapers of sociopolitical arrangements.“
- E. Swyngedouw
If we take a closer look at the peninsula, we can see that its waterbodies and ecosystems become contested spaces through expanding urbanization: we started the audiowalk on the coast of the Baltic Sea as one of the most polluted seas in the world, heavily affected through stormwater outlets, extreme weather conditions, floods, showing in extensive algae blooming (TAB 2017 BioTallinn 2017: 5).
Not far from our route, we can find an artificial lake that was created by separating part of the sea through a dam in the 1990s, then illegally filled up with construction waste to create more land to build on and add economic value to it (OÜ Alkranel 2022: 139).
Another lake that is almost completely overgrown by reeds because of nutrient over-enrichment through the impact of the wastewater treatment plants composting fields.
Treatment plants that are reaching their limits due to urban expansion…
The Northern part of the Paljassaare peninsula is prone to potential flooding and rising sea levels: is that water trying to claim back its territory? Waves of water and flooding or waves of new urban development? Two driving forces, that are ruling on the peninsula.
Within my research I was focusing mainly on the role of Tallinna Vesi, the city’s water utility company. During my two interviews with a Technologist and the Environment and Sustainability Manager I got to know how the ‚dirty‘ water has to undergo a complex 3-step treatment process consisting of mechanical, biological and chemical treatment before it gets pumped back into ‚nature‘ through an outlet 2.8km away from the coast. Heavy rainfall can overload the groundwater system by up to 10 times, in that case Tallinna Vesi has the official permission to pump waste- and stormwater back into the sea untreated, heavily affecting ecosystems and polluting the sea through over-nutrition. I learned how the plant is reaching it’s limits due to the challenges caused by storm- and wastewater (Interview Tallinna Vesi 2024).
These interviews made me realize, how much the wasterwater treatment plant finds itself in a state of limbo, negotiating different interests and tensions between nature protection and urbanization, environmental and human demands. I understood it as a mediator between hydrosocial relations and socio-ecological flows, as one of the most important actors to sustain daily urban life. A symbol of an urban environment, but in the same time strangely resistant to further urbanization processes, following somehow a conservative logic that has prevented the peninsula to evolve an urban identity (TAB 2017 BioTallinn 2017: 4).
This role as some kind of stabilizer got quite evident through reviewing the Strategic assessment of the environmental impact of the general plan of the North Tallinn district. The planning of Ecobay as a new green and sustainable residential development has played a big role for the future of Paljassaare for several years. In the end these plans didn’t get realized because of the impact of the plant: pollution of groundwater, odor, noise and a channel coming from the plant as the main obstacles. In that report Tallinna Vesi is marked as a „major accident-prone and dangerous company“ (OÜ Alkranel 2022: 55).
Tallinna Vesi understands preventing environmental pollution as the most important thing they do and in the same time the plant is seen as something that you can’t handle in the city: „You don’t want this smell and noise next to humans. But we also can’t prevent the city to grow“ (Interview Tallinna Vesi 2024).
„As a result of a good daily operating of the plant, the water that flows out of the wastewater treatment plant is odorless and uncoloured, safe to the environment and compliant with all the requirements“ (Tallinna Vesi 2024).
The wastewater treatment process has to follow the idea of the modern, rational and sanitized city, where all the smelly and dirty by-products and processes of urbanization are hidden. Maria Kaikas book „City of flows: Modernity, Nature, And the City“ from 2005 and especially the chapter „Making the Visible Invisible“ helped me to reflect on our demands for clean and smooth urban environments and underlying networks such as sewerage, pipes, dirt, polluted waters etc. that are being made invisible. The geographer calls it „the dystopian underbelly of the city“ (Kaika 2005: 49), as underlying contradictions of the perfectly managed city. She stresses out how much environmental problems are expressions of exploitative urbanization processes.
These attempts of hiding moments of cheapening, commodifying and exploiting nature imply hiding power dynamics underneath the surface (ibid.: 49). Or hiding them on Paljassaare…
Contaminated water leaves our homes, gets treated on Paljassaare, creating a smelly landscape. I tried to better understand the common perception of the peninsula as a wasteland and opened up the question why all these smelly, dirty and noisy processes happen on Paljassaare as the backyard of the city.
Diving into Tallinn’s wastewater treatment opens up complex hydrosocial power dynamics and let us reflect on the city’s Soviet past: the sailing program of the moscow olympic games in 1980 took place at the coast of Tallinn, in that time an illegally annexed part of the Soviet Union. This global sporting spectacle required clear sea water following certain standards, so the wastewater treatment plant on Paljassaare was built and started operating within this context. Before 1980, the city’s whole wastewater was just pumped into the sea, untreated and highly polluted (Interview Tallinna Vesi 2024).
Water and its treatment are undeniably significant sociopolitical issues and are connected to the idea of the ‚modern‘ and ‚western‘ city: „If we don’t have the wastewater treatment plant we can not have our city at least in this western society as we would like to see ourselves, so we are like the essence of the city“ (ibid.).
In order to align with European standards and preparing for Estonia’s accession to the European Union in 2004, the treatment process was constantly improved and more steps added so that the quality of discharged wastewater into the Baltic See would meet international requirements.
Through a discourse analysis I understood how the topic of water treatment and Tallinna Vesi’s role was publicly addressed. Numerous different authorities and regulations that control Tallinna Vesi’s actions, strict quality standards, new EU laws and environmental reports. Newsletter articles about pollution, privatization, spatial expansion, erasing large parts of flora and fauna, tariff complaints and so on…managing water means managing sociopolitical realities.
© Tizian Wojan
© Paulina Gilsbach
© Estonian Land Board, orthophoto 1995 © Estonian Land Board, orthophoto 2024
The present seems like a contested terrain. Our waterbodies are in poor condition.
During my research I was not only confronted with more or less invisible power relations, as well as very much visible environmental impacts. Both I visualized in a map of waterscapes, referring to the co-shaping of water and society, showing especially in moments of cheapness, degradation and exploitation. The map should give a better understanding of complex and powerful hydrosocial relations, mostly harmful to the natural environment.
While the wastewater treatment plant expanded spatially over time, the neighboring lake and wetlands within the Natura 2000 area are shrinking constantly (TAB 2017 BioTallinn 2017: 11).
One of the most visible footprint of human action and urbanization can be seen through the almost overgrown lake, that is bordering Tallinna Vesi’s composting fields. Over years, rainwater dissolved molecules out of the nutrient-rich sludge and large amounts of nutrients have cumulated in the lake which leads to extensive growing of reeds. Since the early 1990s until today the lake has suffered from rapid eutrophication caused through the wastewater treatment plants action and infiltration of waters (Elvisto 2010 85f.).
Through my project Water(’s) pressure I aimed for a more holistic approach to analysing the interplay between water and society. Focusing on the wastewater treatment plant, I demonstrated power dynamics of various kinds in order to highlight complex relationships and dependencies. Paljassaare serves here as a burning glass through which the effects of our relationship with water become very visible.
Applied Methods:
Discourse analysis
Interviews
Observations
Sound recordings
Mappings
Storytelling
Elvisto, T. (2010): Eutrophication level of Phragmites australis habitats at a shallow coastal lake, Paljassaare Peninsula, Tallinn, Estonia. In: Estonian Journal of Ecology, 2010, 59, 2, 83-98.
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© Paulina Gilsbach