Ellerbe (or Ellerbee - take your pick) Creek has been a point of contention here lately, with Northgate Park neighbors annoyed about a restoration plan that looks like 20 years of overgrown scrub and Wake County griping about how much crud it carries into their drinking water.

Hard times for a stream dubbed "the pretty rivulet" by Old West Durhamite John Schelp, on the chance it is the same water body so described by explorer John Lawson in 1709.

In truth, the 12-mile creek that drains 37 square miles of Durham real estate does have its pretty parts: for instance, a mountainy ravine off Shocoree Drive, the "17-Acre Wood" just east of Hillandale Golf Course and the beaver pond behind the old K Mart building on Avondale Drive.

But it is a very urban stream, and it has proven problematic before. In 1952, the city paid $35,125 ($283,651in 2009 money) to settle lawsuits by landowners over mosquitoes and noxious odors due to inadequately treated sewage dumped into the creek.

Coulda been worse. The plaintiffs were looking for $148,500 (just under $2 million now).

The case had dragged on since 1948, complicated by proposed state legislation to curb water pollution that the city claimed it couldn't afford to comply with.

Facing a possible contempt citation for delaying compliance with a court order to quit polluting Ellerbe, as well as Goose Creek and the Eno River, City Hall opted to buy up the offended property occasioning the lawsuits. Not that that would clean up the creek, or prevent more lawsuits if the city went on maintaining a public nuisance. One council member pointed out that sewage had been dumped into Ellerbe Creek for more than 50 years.

The land buy fell through over price - the owners' lawyer wanted $2.3 million for the 3,609 acres, the city claimed they were worth only $449,050. The suits continued until settled and the stream bubbled and seethed on until 1957 when another problem occurred: It had a way of flooding what is now the Northgate Park neighborhood.

Durham turned to the Army Corps of Engineers, which recommended dredging, straightening and widening the creek. After a couple of years' haggling over easements and prices, the project started work in August 1960 and finished in September of '61 at a cost to city and federal taxpayers of about $270,000 (not quite $2 million today). Some 300,000 cubic yards of dirt were dug, 1,000 square feet of riprap laid, and all in all the creek was made into the shape it is in 2009.

That is, the shape that carries silt, nutrients and other desirables into Raleigh's drinking water, and which the taxpayers are now facing some - umm, we don't have a price yet on undoing the damage done by the last bright idea.

By the way - by 1975, Northgate Park was getting flooded again.