Some 50 kilometres southeast of San Francisco, where the sprawl gives way to rolling hills of grass and copses of oak, there is this amazing sight:
It’s the Sunol Water Temple – designed by Willis Polk in 1906 for a private water company. Here, where three subterranean water sources converged, the water would be filtered before being pumped to San Francisco.
It’s almost unimaginable that our culture would build anything like this to mark pride in public works.
Today, newly restored after earthquake damage, it stands among the Eucalyptus and, in late May, fields of strawberries, herbs and other produce that will eventually, like the water under the temple, end up in San Francisco and other Bay Area restaurants and farmers markets.
The Public Utilities Commission, which owns the land around the Water Temple, 
was persuaded by Sibella Kraus of SAGE (Sustainable Agriculture Education) to allow for an ‘Ag Park.’
In June 2006, a new facility named the Sunol Water Temple Agricultural Park was opened on a site adjacent to the temple. The park provides space for small businesses and nonprofit groups to grow produce. The park serves a platform for service and educational programs related to sustainable agriculure and environmental conservation.
Yes, so very San Francisco. But really, it’s just another manifestation of the return to urban agriculture that’s happening all over North America. Cities, until recently, customarily fed themselves, just as they watered themselves, and thanks to the sustainable food movement, they will again.
This is a wonderful vignette Gord. It reminds me of a passage in Will Durant’s History of Civilization, in which he quotes a passage from a decision of the Florentine Senate regarding the building of the Duomo, in which they set the terms of reference to build the most beautiful cathedral in the world, such that it would astound mankind for centuries to come, or something along those lines, but more movingly stated. In reflecting on this, and the many municipal proposal calls I’ve read over the years, I could not imagine a contemporary local government coming anywhere near a statement that bold and visionary and demonstrative of civic pride. This wonderful example of symbolic marking of the sacredness of water, and its importance in city life, demonstrates how near to us in the recent past such sentiments still lingered.