A note about the work “Ditch and Drain, Fill and Build” from Amy Benson for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Winter 2025 Issue: I’ve been working on a manuscript about rising seas and the myths about floods that have been told in the past, are being told now, and might be told in the future. I got interested in the relationship between land and water and realized that I knew very little about the “ground” I was standing on in Manhattan, my home for fifteen years. I started researching the history of the land and how it has hardened and expanded over the centuries, and how the fresh water has been drained off, poisoned, and exiled to sewage pipes below ground. Following the water reveals the colonial and capitalist transformation of the island: what starts with foot long oysters in the pre-contact waters around Mannahatta ends with minuscule oysters trying to attach to new human-made reefs in New York Harbor made of waste metal and oyster shells salvaged from restaurants.