What Happened to the Great Heron Gate?

Gate Interrupted

Something collided with the Great Heron Gate! As I biked past it this morning, only the right panel of the gate is standing. The doorway at the left of the gate is bent back. There’s yellow police tape strung across the space where the missing panel was. It looks like a car collided with it. I hope the missing panel is not irreparably damaged.

Another Sad Gate Shot

The Great Heron Gate was designed by sculptor Brett Goldstone. It was commissioned by the Friends of the Los Angeles River, with funding from the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority. The gate was dedicated nearly 10 years ago, on Earth Day 1999, and is the very first example of artistic gates welcoming folks onto the Los Angeles River. It’s located on the east side of Fletcher Drive near Ripple Drive in Frogtown, just south of the 1927 Fletcher Drive Bridge, at the entrance to Rattlesnake Park.

Decorative river gates have now become a cottage industry. Other great Goldstone gates are featured at the northeast side of Fletcher, Marsh Park, Steelhead Park, Acresite Street, Maywood Riverfront Park, Rio Vista Park (on the Rio Hondo), Centinela Avenue Park (on Ballona Creek), Whittier Narrows Nature Center (on the San Gabriel River) and many others. Other artists have gotten into the act and created welcoming gates into waterways in Los Feliz, Studio City, and South El Monte.

The Fate of the Gate?

Please leave a comment if you can let us know what happened to the Heron Gates! I will try to post some photos of the damage shortly – check back on Creek Freak very frequently – help drive up our statistics so we can sell out lucratively! Images posted above taken this morning, and below of how it used to look.

How it used to look (image from the Silver Lake News)

Great Plans for the Cornfield Arroyo Seco Area

Wildflowers in bloom last week at the Cornfields. Note also the adjacent industrial areas.

The Los Angeles City Planning department held scoping meetings on March 16th 2009 to hear comments on their proposed Cornfield Arroyo Seco Specific Plan, known as the CASP. The good news is that CASP has a lot of great features that will transform the area. Among these are: river greenway area set-asides, parking reform, and dozens of miles of bikeways. The somewhat-bad news is that it will take a while. Environmental review will take a year, so the plan will be adopted in 2010. Once the plan goes into effect, over the next couple dozen years, it will gradually guide private and public development.

The CASP covers approximately 660 acres located in the communities of Lincoln Heights, Cypress Park and Chinatown – including the areas around the Chinatown and Lincoln/Cypress Metro Gold Line stations.

The CASP area is today largely industrial. Much of it is older, somewhat-obsolete multi-story industrial. With the state’s purchase of the 35-acre Cornfields Rail Yard (now Los Angeles State Historic Park in progress) in 2001, the arrival of the Metro Gold Line in 2003, and the planned greenways along the Los Angeles River and the Arroyo Seco, the area is changing. Industrial sites are giving way to housing and mixed-use. The CASP attempts to steer this change.

The CASP is environmentally ambitious. The plan is one pilot for the US Green Building Council’s new “LEED-ND” (stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development) – a new green building program for certifying multiple buildings in a neighborhood context.

Some highlights of progressive environmentally-friendly policies in the CASP:

Map of planned CASP Open Space

OPEN SPACE AND RIVER GREENWAYS:
With an overall 15% open space requirement, the CASP plans a significant amount of public green space distributed throughout. Additionally, parcels along the L.A. River and the Arroyo Seco are limited to 50% lot coverage, so that, as development occurs, greenways emerges along these waterways.

PARKING REFORM:
The CASP unbundles parking from housing! Currently anyone who buys a condo in Los Angeles pays for two (or more) parking spaces. This is automatic, whether that owner ever parks car/s in them or not. As parking space can cost $20,000 to $40,000+ this requirement typically adds upwards of $50,000 to the purchase price of the condo. Unbundling means that the home and the parking are sold separately. The buyer can chose to buy only as much parking as she or he needs. Bicyclists could purchase none. Single people or small families could purchase just one. This makes housing more affordable, and incentivizes reducing excessive car ownership.
Additional excellent parking reforms include: parking maximums (instead of minimums), bicycle parking requirements, shared parking, parking design requirements, parking meter zones and more. It may not be parking sage Don Shoup‘s paradise, but it goes a long way in that direction.

Map of Planned Bikeways in the CASP. Bike paths show in red, bike lanes in blue.

BIKEWAYS:
The CASP plans an impressive network of bike facilities. There will be bike paths along the Los Angeles River and the Arroyo Seco. There will be bike lanes on North Figueroa Street, Avenue 26, Pasadena Avenue, San Fernando Road/Avenue 20, Avenue 19, Barranca Street, Avenue 18, North Broadway, North Spring Street, and North Main Street!

Those are just some of the highlights, there are many more environmental and smart urban design features. For more information, there’s quite a bit of detailed documentation on-line about the CASP:
>Overall CASP Website
>Notice Preparation of Environmental Impact Report (400KB 4-page pdf)
>Initial Study and CEQA Checklist (3MB 33-page pdf – good 17-page summary)
>Draft CASP Ordinance (14 multi-page pdfs)
>CASP Frequently Asked Questions

(This entry has been cross-posted at L.A. Creek Freak and L.A. Streetsblog )

Going Native with Theodore Payne

Natives in Bloom on the Theodore Payne Garden Tour

I’ve mentioned the Theodore Payne Foundation (full name: Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants) and their native plant nursery here briefly before, but I want to elaborate a bit and alert the local creek freaks to some events that they’re hosting coming up next week.

The non-profit Theodore Payne is the premiere resource for California native plants. They have an excellent nursery located in Sun Valley – not only can you purchase native plants and ask questions to experts, you can see a lot of examples of how the natives will look in the ground. You can also find Theodore Payne at the Sunday Hollywood Farmers’ market, too. They also host a wildflower hotline/website with up to the minute advice on where to find the best native wildflower blooms.

For my garden, I grow mostly edibles. Around the edges, though, but I do grow natives, including yarrow, California fuschia, sage, and a few others. All these are plants I got from Theodore Payne.

Why plant natives? Well, for one, we’re in a drought (or perhaps a climate catastrophe) so it’s important that we conserve water. Natives are adapted to the rainwater that we receive. They’re also part of connecting with the land where we live. Just as we creek freaks try to understand the creeks that used to flow through our neighborhoods, we also want to connect with the plants that originally grew in and along them.  Many natives provide habitat for local birds and butterflies.

Thinking about planting a native garden? Or just interested in learning more about natives? Well, you’re in luck. This week there are two events:

Theodore Payne Foundation’s Sixth Annual Garden Tour takes place this Saturday and Sunday, April 4th and 5th, from 10am to 4pm in 45 homes – from Altadena to Topanga, and in a neighborhood near you. You probably can’t see them all, but if you go to backyards near you, you can get a sense for what might grow well in your garden. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased online or by calling (818) 768-1802.

California Native Plants for the Garden, Cachuma Press 2006

In conjunction with the tour, there’s also a free lecture by Carol Bornstein entitled “Indulging Our Senses in the Native Garden” on Saturday, April 4th from 6:30pm – 8:30pm at Barnsdall Gallery Theatre, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood 90027 (easy access from the Metro Red Line Sunset/Vermont Station.) Bornstein is the co-author of California Native Plants for the Garden.

You can never have enough posts about Freshwater Shrimp

Freshwater Shrimp collected from the Los Angeles River in 1922

Well… Jessica already broke this story months ago, but I figure we creek freaks can never have enough posts about freshwater shrimp, right? I can add a small amount of additional information about Syncaris pasadena – the species of freshwater shrimp that lived in the Los Angeles River less than a hundred years ago.

Today I gave a talk at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. It was more-or-less my typical talk with slide show that I have given in various forms for the last half-dozen years: the past, present and future of the Los Angeles River. I felt a little intimidated, as there were people in the audience who are historians and scientists who know more about the river than I do. I am a generalist. There are a lot of stories that I hear and repeat, and I don’t think too much about it when I repeat them to the general public. In my audience today were ornithologist Kimball Garrett, who is the main author of the 1993 study of the biota of the Los Angeles River (that report was one of main sources for my past L.A. River fish blog entry) and historian Bill Estrada, who has written the history of Los Angeles’ plaza… as well as other scientists, social scientists, and other experts. I had to watch what I said… and check in with these folks when I wasn’t sure.

90 Years, 90 Treasures

The talk went fine. Lots of excellent questions, and I didn’t have to spend much time explaining words like “watershed.”

Afterwards, Bill Estrada and curator Sojin Kim took me out to lunch and rewarded me with some nice schwag. This included Bill’s book, greeting cards with images from the museum’s Forbes photography collection, and a small paperback book entitled 90 Years, 90 Treasures: Celebrating the 90th Anniversary of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (2003). Sojin mentioned that this book included the L.A. River shrimp. Sure enough, page 30 (shown at the top of this entry) features professional quality photographs of shrimp in their specimen jar, with the following text:

A Casualty of Urban Development
Although not as attractive as the city for which it is named, Syncaris pasadena, the Los Angeles River shrimp, is remarkable for keeping secrets. Once alive and well and found only in the Los Angeles River drainage, today it is extinct. The entire world knowledge of the species consists of 12 little individuals (average length 1 1/2 inches) gathered some 80 years ago and placed in a small glass jar. The specimens were then labeled, but the information was as vague as “Collected from the L.A. River, 1922, Pasadena.” We have no knowledge of what Syncaris pasadena ate, what color it was, how it behaved, or what role it played in the local ecosystem. It is a stark reminder of how much we have to lose through urban development if we do not take into account the indigenous inhabitants of the territory we claim as our own. Fortunately the Museum’s collections of Crustacea, the fifth largest in the world and the second largest in North America, represents the entire planet, including specimens from the Indian, Pacific and Antarctic Oceans.

It’s fun to see these photos and read the story of this precious creature. The account does leave me with a question. The L.A. River doesn’t flow through Pasadena, so it appears that these critters probably came from the Arroyo Seco or even Eaton Canyon Wash. Maybe it’s mislabeled, or maybe there is a practice of labeling specimens with the name of the watershed, instead of the individual tributary?

From the photo in the book, I can make out the inscription on the specimen card inside the bottle. The portion visible in the photo states, in precise hand-lettering, “L.A. River, Calif. / Coll. H. R. Hill / Alc. 75%”

I wonder about this H. R. Hill. In the sepia tone of my mind’s eye, he (though it’s not entirely clear that he is a he; I could be underestimating Heather Rosemarie Hill) is a mustachioed gentleman, wading knee-deep in the wild sycamore-lined Arroyo Seco streambed, a hundred years ago, collecting shrimp… for us.

Upcoming Events – 24 March 2009

At the L.A. Bike Summit, Siel (of the excellent Green LA Girl blog) warned me that some of my posts are getting too long… so I am going to try to keep it short and sweet here.

Cornerstone's Flow

>River Theater Reading: TONIGHT – Come hear a staged reading of Cornerstone Theater’s new L.A. River play Flow written by Julie Hébert. It’s on Tuesday, March 24th at 7pm at Farmlab at the Metabolic Studio, 1745 Spring Street, Unit 4, Los Angeles, CA 90012.

>Creek Freak Speaks: Joe Linton will present on “The Los Angeles River: Its Past, Present and Possible Future” this Thursday March 26th at 12noon at a Los Angeles Natural History Museum Research and Collections Seminar. The seminar is free, but if you’re not a member you’ll have to pay to get into the museum. It’s at the Times Mirror Conference Center at the Natural History Museum, which is located at 900 Exposition Boulevard, Los Angeles 90007.

>River Film Screening: On Monday March 30th at 10pm, watch Thea Mercouffer’s short film Heather and Goliath at the Reel Women Film Festival. The film profiles Heather Wylie, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers biologist who faced suspension for kayaking the L.A. River. Screening takes place at the Laemmle Music Hall 3 theaters, 9036 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills 90211.

>Click: Urban Photo Adventures River Tour – March 28th and 29th
>Mulch: Village Gardeners Clean-Up – April 17th-19th
>Tour: Friends of the L.A. River tour, lead by Jenny Price – Sunday April 5th
>Clean: Great Los Angeles River Clean-Up – Saturday May 9th
>Bicycle: Los Angeles River Ride – Sunday June 7th

Marching for Water

Youth Doing the Heavy Lifting at the 2009 March for Water

I had a good time at yesterday’s March for Water. The event was inspired by marches held in various parts of the world in support of the human right to water (including marches shown in the documentary film Flow.) Here’s an event recap and photo essay (apologies again for the blurry cell phone photos!)

My eco-village neighbor and friend Bobby Gadda and I bicycled over to Los Angeles State Historic Park (aka the Cornfields) in a light rain. The rain is great for my garden, and for our creeks and streams, but I was a little worried that it might mean a small turnout at the march.

Gathering at the Cornfields

We arrived at the park and lots of other folks had also braved the rains to participate. Umbrellas and makeshift trash-bag ponchos were the order of the day.

Raul Addressing Families Assembled

I checked in and caught up with friends, until Raul Macias drew together the families he organizes through the Anahuak Youth Sports Association. He thanked them for braving the elements and attending

Estamos Listos!

The youth were excited and ready to start marching.

The Crowd Circles as the Dance Begins

A large circle formed around the Aztec dancers and drummers. They gave an invocation to the four directions and commenced to dance, which they would continue as they lead the march. The intermittent light rain ceased.

Marching Commences

The circle parted and the march headed northward along the edge of the cornfields. In the lead are photographers walking backwards, then dancers, then the mass of the march. The clouds part and the sun begins to shine.

Marchers proceeding north, lupines in the foreground, Chiparaki Cultural Center in the background

The mass continues along the vivid purples and yellows of the cornfield’s wildflowers in bloom.

Dancers following the Police Escort (The historic Womens' Building in the background)

As the procession leaves the park and enters the street, Aztec dancers follow the police escort.

Dancers Leading the March

Dancing for water.

Marching into Lincoln Heights

The march made a left onto Spring Street, then crossed the Los Angeles River on the beautiful historic (but threatened) 1927 North Spring Street Bridge, proceeding into Lincoln Heights. Organizers did a good job of keeping the front moving relatively slowly, so that the stragglers in the back could keep up.

Marchers Showing the Water in Their Buckets

Many marchers carried buckets of water. This showed symbolic solidarity with folk in many parts of the world who have to travel by foot each day to get water for their families.

Boyle Heights Chivas in the House!

The march continued as Spring turns into Broadway and through 5-Points onto Avenue 26. These youth were carrying the banner for Boyle Heights Chivas, whose goalkeeper and I became friends. (I used to be a goalie a long time ago, when I played water polo.)

Melissa and Several Hundred of Her Friends

I was happy to run into some of the youth that Jessica and I accompanied on our state water tour last summer. In the foreground of this photo (in the dark blue sweatshirt, looking over her shoulder) is one of these youth: Melissa Castro. She goes to High School in Palmdale, and is a bright and fun person, and an excellent soccer player too. She mentioned that her feet were a little tired from marching, but that it wasn’t too bad.

Drinking Water Filling Station at a Fire Hydrant on Avenue 26

The entire event was free from bottled water. Yaaaayyyy! This is no small feat… and really good for the environment. Organizers provided re-usable metal bottles. Along the 3-mile route there were several tap-water filling stations provided by the LA Department of Water and Power. Thanks, LADWP!

Capture Rainwater Not Wildlife

Participants carried handmade signs. I especially liked this slogan “Capture Rainwater Not Wildlife” as I capture rainwater in my garden.

Front of the March

Here’s another shot of the front of the march, with banners and signs. I was able to bike out ahead of the march as do a count as it headed up Figueroa and turned left onto Cypress Avenue. It was a quick count, probably not all that accurate, but I counted about 750 marchers.

March ending into Taylor Yard

The march ultimately turned left and made its way into the new Rio De Los Angeles State Park at Taylor Yard, the first 40-acres of a planned 100+acre Los Angeles River park there.

California Sunflower at Rio De Los Angeles State Park

While things were getting set up (and blown down) I got a chance to ride around the park. The bright colors of the wildflowers at Rio De Los Angeles Park…

Corner Kick at Rio De Los Angeles State Park

…matched the bright colors of the jerseys of the folks there playing soccer.

Councilmember Reyes Speaking

The many excellent speakers at the end included Los Angeles City Councilmember Ed Reyes, State Senator Fran Pavley, Department of Water and Power General Manager David Nahai, City Public Works Commissioner Paula Daniels and representatives from the Winnemem Wintu, who came down from Northern California to join us (which makes plenty of sense, because that’s where we import a lot of our water from.) Organizations presenting included Urban Semillas, Anahuak Youth Sports Organization, the Southern California Watershed Alliance, Food and Water Watch, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, Green LA Coalition, Friends of the Los Angeles River, and the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles. Speakers tied together various topics including water conservation, global warming, reconnecting our communities with our rivers, and organizing and involving our youth. Winnemum Wintu elder Calleen Sisk-Franco invoked our relationship with our wild salmon, stating “without them, there won’t be us.”

Ollin Takes the Stage

The weather became windier and cloudier as the Irish-Mexican music of Ollin rounded out the program.

Bobby and I rode home with Alex Kenefick and Ramona Marks on the access road along Taylor Yard, enjoying the windy sunny weather and the herons, cormorants and coots in the L.A. River.

Kudos to all of the folks who played big roles in making this event a great success. Here are a few that I actually got decent photos of:

Raul

Raul Macias,

Renee (left) with Claire of Amigos de los Rios

Renee Maas,

Miguel

and the inimitable Miguel Luna!

Discourse and distraction. In other words, California water policy.

This may be grim reading.  I’m sorry.

Back in Los Angeles, I’ve had a few days to digest the water policy discussion from the Salmonid Restoration Federation‘s annual conference in Santa Cruz.  Indeed, with the upcoming March for Water on Sunday, I’m thinking about it in the context of local water issues and discussions.

For me, the take home message from Santa Cruz is that the salmonids are the canary in the proverbial coal mine that is California water.  For every culverted road and dammed river or stream, there is a political career at stake or an agency policy exercising an interest group’s political will over our water resources and the life that depends upon them, canaries be damned.

The interest groups – and alliances – are numerous and overwhelming.

And we in Southern California are one of them.  Beyond kvetching about sprinklers running in the rain and people who spray their sidewalks with water, we the public are largely silent.  The piscine “canary” of our local coal mines, the LA and San Gabriel Rivers, is unconscious, our groundwater contaminated and depleted, and we look far afield for water that allows us to live beyond the means of our ecosystem.  The public rarely engages policy makers on these big picture issues.  In one conversation, I was told that people in Sacramento don’t think the public in Southern California cares about protecting northern California’s water.  I am always amused by that argument, given that many cities in central and northern California don’t meter their own residential water users -someone may be ranting about us without even knowing what they consume.  And we SoCal city-dwellers only consume 20% of the water shipped south by the Bay-Delta, and have held water consumption levels relatively stable despite population growth, so we do deserve some props.  Yet as you may have read in an earlier post, I believe we can improve even on that – and hopefully by the end of this, you will feel that to be a worthy goal, if for no other reason than to extricate ourselves from some mind-bending politics.  

I’ve also been told that Sacramento needs us to want the water, so they can keep the projects going. For whom?  The other 80% of exported water goes to agricultural interests, at a nicely subsidized price to keep agricultural production in California competitive.  Now I like California produce, and I absolutely support the idea of locally-grown produce. But at the same time, I hear that some ag interests then re-sell their subsidized water to our utilities (at market rate) while converting ag lands to more sprawl.  

To further complicate the mess, a conference speaker noted that there’s tension between the ag interests around the Bay Delta (around Sacramento) and the West San Joaquin Valley. So it’s not that the ag interests are “all in it together” – they too are competing (or fighting) over this precious resource.  

In addition to farmers, there’s the energy companies and irrigators and fishermen and Indian tribes and of course environmentalists who fight over water.  For a glimpse of how complicated it can be in just one case, check out this blog by Felice Pace at the High Country News, and you’ll see that it’s Yurok and Trout Unlimited and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman vs. Hoopa and Klamath Riverkeeper and the Northcoast Environmental Center, over the relicensing of dams by an energy company. I’m really not clear why anyone’s taking a position to make PacifiCorp’s life easier.

While we argue, a salmon is slamming itself into the wall of a dam, exhausting and injuring itself before it can spawn.  Others are dying in overheated waters, the result of too much water being diverted.  In some people’s opinions, we are beyond talking about fisheries collapsing – they are collapsed.  

And while all enviros deplore the state of salmon, delta smelt and other aquatic life in the Bay Delta, there are plenty of disagreements over solutions. Is the Bay Delta too saline, or not enough?  Does a peripheral canal restore the Bay Delta or not? Are we screwed no matter what we do? Whose scientific charts and graphs are more convincing?  The Blue Ribbon Task Force proposed a restoration vision, but there are critiques from the grassroots.  Yet through much of this arguing, there is a consensus that Southern California will want its water, and has the power to get it.

But! According to an attorney speaking at the conference, only surplus water is supposed to go south.  Surplus meaning that which is left over after the Bay Delta has received enough to maintain its water quality (which has declined over the years) and those with primary water rights (Sac Valley farmers) have gotten their allotments.  These basic principles have been routinely breached in order to ensure that water goes south.  How?  By declaring states of emergency.  Indeed, according to Michael Fitzgeralds at RecordNet.com, the “state and feds wrote contracts promising 130 million acre feet” of water, when the average Delta flow is 29 million acre-feet, resulting in overdrafts of Bay-Delta supplies during the 90s as water agencies in the south cut in line to enforce their entitlements.

(Right about now, my mind is swinging back and forth like an oversized ping-pong ball.)

And then it spills over into social justice issues.  Some enviros have really stuck a stinky foot in the mouth, conflating water consumption in the San Joaquin Valley with immigration and crime (HUH?), while at least one politically-connected Latino organization has taken the position that when we declare emergency drought conditions, flows are restricted (just the opposite of what we heard above). They argue this means unemployment, so we need secure water exports (i.e. infrastructure) in order to keep jobs for Latinos secure.  In other words, peripheral canal = environmental justice.

Meanwhile on the sidelines of the bickering, communities of color in some agricultural areas are simply shafted in terms of access to potable water (it’s contaminated from fertilizers); only through tremendous grass-roots efforts is anyone addressing this.  

Our rivers may be running dry, but the torrent of self-interest runs rampant over legitimate needs, reasonable use, and the longevity of an ecosystem.  How do we get past this to preserve the resources that sustain us, and equitably and fairly distribute the surplus? 

Contemplate what water means to you, to all the life that surrounds you.  People are gathering, March 22, bringing their own unique beliefs and appreciation of water, at the Cornfields/LA State Historic Park at 10am.  March for Water.

Saving salmonids: some technical fixes

Continuing on my earlier post from the Salmonid Restoration Federation‘s annual conference, I wanted to share progress and research on preserving and restoring steelhead and salmon runs along the California coast.  Not surprisingly, most of the people & projects are from the Central Coast up to the North Coast, with scarce representation from Southern California.  After all, we’ve pretty much extirpated (pushed out) most of our steelhead populations in the South Coast, and restoration is often a more difficult and less frequent undertaking.

One thing that is true in both So. Cal. and on up the coast, is that dams are a significant factor in the onset of the collapse of salmon and steelhead fisheries.  (The list of issues for So Cal steelhead is a bit longer)

So while some folks work on dam removal (a largely political activity that gets us into water policy), others focus on technical fixes to get fish around the big barriers in the meantime.  If you are an avid fisherperson or environmentalist, none of this is news to you.  But for the rest of us, here’s a little info on these fixes.  Some of these projects have also been done in the Santa Monica Mountains (topic for future posts, methinks).

Quick sketch of fish ladder on a small dam outside of Watsonville.

Fish ladders.  Under natural conditions, fish swim upstream by jumping from pool to pool.  Adult and juvenile fish have different abilities to breach certain heights, and they also need eddies and places to rest, hang out, and even hide from predators.  Dams – even small check dams – are often too high for fish to breach, so fish ladders are structures built to help fish gradually surmount them. The effectiveness of fish ladders vary, and there were a few skeptical eye-squinches by some of the participants as we toured some.  I was mostly fascinated by how industrial they looked.

Dam notching.  Small dams may be passable for salmon if a low-flow notch is carved out of the top.  We were treated to a visit to one by fisheries biologist Matt Stoecker.  The dam in question was for mostly recreational use, and the solution enabled the recreational activity to remain.  

Step-pools lead fish to the culvert and allow for safe passage.

Culvert barrier removals and in-channel fish passage.  If only we thought like fish.  Humans don’t often notice that culverts at road crossings carve out deep pools below them, get choked with debris, and often have no internal stream channel – things that make it hard for fish to move on upstream.  This is a particular problem in dry Southern California where the lower reaches of a stream may dry up – trapped endangered fish die every year because of this.  Mauricio Gomez of South Coast Habitat Restoration showed us great examples of barrier removals, installing bridges where Arizona Crossings used to block fish on Carpinteria Creek (a SoCal project!). Outside of Santa Cruz, we also saw projects that created step-pools leading up to and through culverts so that the fish could continue up to safe waters upstream.  

Off channel fish passage.  As an alternative to fish ladders, fish-folk are experimenting with creating artificial side-streams that send low flows around the dam.  These mimic more natural stream channel forms, making the journey upstream more desirable for the fish.

 

These fixes are helping localized steelhead and salmon populations to survive and rebound, but more is needed to ensure longevity of these species.  With all the roads and dams crossing our coastal streams, these kinds of projects could easily consume a fair chunk of stimulus funding alone, yet these endangered fish deserve a concerted effort of that scale.  

Coming soon:  an attempt to make sense of a painful water policy discussion. (really a merging of several painful water policy discussions)

Arroyo Seco Bikeway Meeting This Wednesday Night

Existing Arroyo Seco Bike Path (photo: Arroyo Seco Foundation)

The L.A. County Department of Public Works recently announced a meeting that will be taking place tomorrow night – at 6pm Wednesday March 18th at the Los Angeles River Center – 570 W. Avenue 26, LA 90065.  Here are a few excerpts from the county’s memo:

The County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works (DPW) will be conducting a meeting regarding the feasibility of the Arroyo Seco Bicycle Trail project. DPW has concluded that there are no reasonable and feasible options for the construction of the project; therefore, the project is being cancelled.

Description of Work
A 2.6 mile long Class I bicycle trail from just south of Avenue 52 to Avenue 19 was previously proposed.

Background
An overwhelming majority of the comments received during the environmental review of the project were negative. Some of the issues raised were concerns for the safety for the bicyclists, lack of usage due to the alignment of the trail primarily inside the channel, removal of over 150 established trees, acquisition of a large amount of right-of-way, remediation of contaminated soil, placement of additional concrete into the channel bed and the destruction of riparian habitats. Upon consideration of these comments, it was determined that
the original alignment of the trail proposed within the channel could not meet the community’s requirements.

Other alternatives were investigated; however, these alternatives also presented several obstacles. The other alignments required the removal of an even greater number of established trees, access through Heritage Square (a historic preservation site), and a mid-block bicycle crossing on a busy secondary highway.

As it is not possible to create a reasonable and feasible alternative that meets the goals of the proposed project and satisfies the community, it is recommended that this project be cancelled.

These are pretty frustrating words to read.  I’ve never heard a transportation department express that there were “there are no reasonable and feasible options for the construction of the project” when it came to tearing out houses to build a freeway… but the prospect of putting a 10′ wide bike path along the already-concreted lower Arroyo Seco doesn’t sound possible for them.

Unfortunately the problem is less with the county than with environmentalists getting on the same page. The existing bike path in the Arroyo Seco (from just below York Avenue to just short of Avenue 43) is at the bottom of a trapezoidal concrete channel.  This isn’t optimal – obviously it’s impassable during even a small storm.  There are also issues with debris, and visibility… but it does work.

The county initially proposed putting the new bike path (which would extend from just above Avenue 43 down to Avenue 26) along the top of the channel.  This would have meant taking out a large number trees planted along the top of the channel.  At the time, folks from North East Trees (the group that planted the trees) urged the county to put the bike path in the channel, so it wouldn’t impact so many trees.  The county re-drew their plans with the bike path inside the channel.  This took a couple years.  When they presented the new design, it was mostly in the channel, but included a portion running along the top of the channel to create an access point at the Cypress Avenue Ped Bridge.  This alignment was strongly opposed by the Arroyo Seco Foundation as it would add more concrete to the already-concreted channel (read ASF’s critque “More Concrete in the Arroyo Seco Stream???”)  In addition, the initial county designs called for taking out plenty of trees along the top of the channel… a 20-30′ swath of trees were being taken out to construct a 10′ wide bike path.

At the time I, as well as Friends of the LA River, the LA County Bicycle Coalition, and many others, supported the new in-channel alignment, but requested that the county re-examine its plans in order to minimize tree removal.  The view of the Arroyo Seco Foundation held sway, though, and the county went back and to the drawing board to re-design the project in a way that didn’t add so much concrete to the stream. They went back to the drawing boards to study an alignment that would keep the path at the top of the channel – as they had initially proposed.

So… now they’re saying that they can’t do anything.  There’s no easy flawless solution, but I think it’s inappropriate for the county to merely throw their hands up and give up.  There are options, and it’s the county’s job to study the environmental impacts of various options.  We creek freaks need to negotiate things out and get behind a compromise alignment that we can all support.

I do urge folks to go and attend this meeting to show support for the Arroyo Seco Bike Path.

Events This Week!

A shout-out to some important events this week – including important hearings TODAY for the Cornfield Arroyo Seco Specific Plan (CASP.) Just click the links or read below for more info on the CASP and March for Water:

Monday 3pm & 6pm – Cornfield Arroyo Seco Specific Plan meetings more below
Tuesday 7pm – Joe & Damien’s Internet Class
Saturday 8am – Tour de Sewer Bike Ride on the Rio Hondo
Sunday 10am – March for Water more below

River-cat artist Leo Limon at the historic conlfuence of the L.A. River and the Arroyo Seco - a site located in (and hopefully to be transformed by) the Cornfield Arroyo Seco Specific Plan (photo pilfered from the Nature Trumps blog)

Creek Freaks, bicyclists, and livable cities advocates should plan to attend one of today’s two meetings on the Cornfield Arroyo Seco Specific Plan – called the CASP. The meetings are today – Monday March 16th at 3pm and 6pm at Goodwill in Lincoln Heights. (It’s the same meeting repeated twice.)

The CASP is a new L.A. City Specific Plan being written by the Department of City Planning, to be approved later by the City Council. A specific plan is a smaller subset of the city’s general plan and includes stuff like zoning (what kinds of private buildings and uses can go where) and street designations (what kinds of public spaces can go where – including bike lanes, sidewalks, car capacity), among many things. The CASP is attempting to plan the future of the area from Chinatown to Lincoln Heights into a neighborhood that embraces the river, instead of turns its back on it.

Creek Freak has mentioned the CASP a few times, but we haven’t gotten around to giving you, our readers, a full report about it… maybe after today’s hearings I can get to this. My quick take is that it’s an important step in the right direction in terms of urban form – bicycle and pedestrian friendly streets, transit-oriented development, etc. – which is very important for sustainability, and something that I believe in strongly. Urban form is what plans are good at influencing, and the CASP is excellent (maybe even pushy!) in designating great things like pedestrian paseos, bike lanes, and road diets where in the past the city would have designated lots more space for cars, cars, and even more cars.

Where earlier versions of the CASP seem to fall a little short (of Creek Freak’s high standards) is actual river revitalization. It’s not clear to me how a city specific plan can actually do this and not get tangled up in lawsuits. There are laws against “takings” – ie: in today’s Los Angeles, it’s nearly impossible just take a privately-owned factory zoned as a factory and re-zone it as a public park, because that would cause a private owner to lose value. Industrial areas along the river can become parks, but it’s going to take community activism and political will (as opposed to civil servants coming up with a new specific plan.)

Come to the CASP meetings TODAY. I’ll be at the 3pm meeting.

Lastly, here’s an inspirational video for us to watch to get inspired for this Sunday’s March for Water – which starts at 10am at the Cornfield – aka Los Angeles State Historic Park, adjacent to the Metro Gold Line Chinatown Station. The clip is an excerpt from the movie FLOW – For Love Of Water.