Stream daylighting covered in LA Times
August 10, 2009 § 8 Comments
Many thanks to Hector Tobar for getting in touch with me about LA waterways and writing this lovely piece about them, and about the desirability of daylighting lost streams:
A rivulet (actually, many of them) runs through it – Los Angeles Times.
Tagged: Arroyo de la Sacatela, Hector Tobar, Kuruvungna Springs, Los Angeles Times, Rio del Jardin de las Flores, stream daylighting
I think the title should be: “Stream Daylighting AND L.A. CREEK FREAK’S VERY OWN JESSICA HALL covered in LA Times!”
Congrats Jessica! Hector Tobar’s account of the Kuruvungna Springs is great… and it’s already driven our daily hits way up! Time to sell out!
… read this piece and now your blog. Love it.
Very cool. This issue needs to be more public (or should I say, less underground?).
Jessica, keep up the good work. This article gives me hope. I grew up playing on the hills of the South Bay area. There are streams on PV Peninsula that have hidden sources known perhaps only to us 50s “free range” kids. I love that you are trying to daylight the streams of the flatlands. (Which are not flatlands at all, actually.) Because of my need for nature, I live alongside one of LA’s concrete channels, the San Gabriel River. But the wildlife has made accommodations for man’s need not to have the streets flood. We have fish, heron, egrets, hawks, ducks — all of which make life here pleasant enough for city living. I applaud you and wish you well in your efforts. Thanks to the LA Times for doing this article.
Thanks, Judith. I’ve only in the past few years gotten to know some of PV’s streams – Malaga is amazing to me…and something I hope to post a piece about in the future. In the meantime, feel free to share your memories – or current observations on the SGR!
judith,
very pleased to see article about you in today’s LA times.
i live next to what has been called MCCOY CREEK, or CALABASAS CREEK for some time. the poor thing keeps going as one of the head waters of the los angeles river. it begins in the calabasas highlands at the end of calabasas road, flows east through the calabasas country club, behind the beautiful grounds of countrywide headquarters (where it looks like a japanese garden with bridge and clean garden) then goes beside the calabasas park and tennis club riparian for about a mile, beside my condo complex, to a pond at a small park next to the sagebrush cantina, then into a concrete tunnel for the rest of journey to hook up with Bell Canyon creek and others to become the Los Angeles river.
everything past calabasas is channelized. cannot flow into acquifer.
the city of calabasas has recently did quite a job with the Las Virgenes creek, cleaning and revitalizing it near the 101 freeway at Las Viergenes road, and southwest toward Malibu park.
some city of calabasas officials know about Calabasas creek, mentioned supposedly in the Portolo expidition of 1754, and might like to help it out, if you could give them some guidance.
i just think it a shame nature is not respected.
I worked clearing brush under the Shakespear bridge in 1974 for a 98yr old man who grew up there fishing for steelhead trout. He said the creek was small and spring fed and the steelhead could only come up and spawn every few years during flooding. When I asked him about swimming his blue eyes twinkled and he said it was too small but he preffered skinny dipping in the LA river back then. Rocket of Los Feliz.
Thanks for that juicy tidbit – a lot of researchers have been wondering if steelhead inhabitated Ballona’s headwater streams. I may try to follow up with you later about this.