News and Events plus Contest! – 30 September 2009

NEWS!

>Los Angeles Times’ invaluable Louis Sahagun on the recent bulldozing of Compton Creek. Sad story, with a great picture of Heal the Bay’s James Alamillo wading in the soft-bottom creek.

>L.A. Team Effort shows off the city’s new SUSMP handbook. SUSMP stands for Standard Urban Stormwater Mitigation Plan. The new handbook looks great and the content includes a lot of great watershed management practices. 

EVENTS:

>Come hear L.A. Creek Freak Jessica Hall speaking at Farmlab at noon on Friday October 9th. Free, including free lunch!

>The city of Los Angeles is hosting series of four public meetings on its wonderful proposed Low Impact Development (or “LID”) ordinance. Complete meeting information is posted in the comments section of Creek Freak’s recent LID post. Meetings are October 1st, 6th, 8th and 14th – all 10am to noon. First meeting is this Thursday at Bureau of Sanitation’s Media Center Offices at Taylor Yard.

>The city of Compton hosts a Compton Creek Clean-Up on Saturday October 17th from 7am to 12:30pm at Raymond Street Park.

>The city of Los Angeles has released the full new draft Bicycle Plan, which includes waterways designated for new bike paths. Creek Freak’s earlier post about the plan is here. The full bike plan documents are available on the city’s Bike Plan website. The city will be hosting four public meetings on October 22nd, 24th, 26th, and 28th.

> On Sunday, October 26th Jenny Price leads Friends of the L.A. River’s South L.A. River Tacos & Paletas Carpool Tour.

CONTEST!

Name the location where the photograph was taken below, and win a copy of Dorothy Green’s book Managing Water: Avoiding Crisis in California. Enter your answer in the comments section. If you’re the first commenter with the right answer, Creek Freak will mail you the book. (PS. I expect that it looks kinda difficult, kinda anonymous… but it’s actually a pretty unique spot. If nobody guesses it, I promise that I will give hints.)

Where in the watershed is this?? Enter your answer in the comments below.

Creekfreak gets sent to the (not-a) Cornfield

But not in a Twilight Zone kind of a way!  I am giving a talk at the Farmlab/Not-A-Cornfield space, located next to the historic Cornfields aka Los Angeles State Historic Park.

When:  Friday October 9, noon

Where:  1745 North Spring Street, Unit 4, LA 90012

Under the umbrella of Los Angeles & Water, I’ll probably touch on all my favorite subjects – water, Los Angeles, creeks, urban design, political will, birth control…

Come on down!

Film Review: Crude – Go See It This Week in L.A.!

Last night I watched Crude. It’s an excellent documentary film that I highly recommend to all Creek Freak readers, and it’s showing in L.A. theaters this week. Crude traces the history of an epic lawsuit against Chevron for damage that their oil drilling operations have caused in the Ecuadorean rainforest. It’s a story of environmental pollution, environmental justice, and the struggles of indigenous peoples.

Crude is a very compelling David and Goliath story. It’s very dramatic, with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. Texaco (which was later purchased by Chevron) left massive contamination from many years of oil extraction. The toxins have spread into soils and waters, with grave impacts to the health of the peoples there. A brave cadre of lawyers are suing Chevron for damages – which have been estimated at $27 billion.

Though the film is definitely sympathetic to the harmed indigenous peoples, it does include interviews with some lawyers and scientists from Chevron… but they come off as rather insincere. Chevron tries to drag out the case, to place the blame on others… and it’s all still in court as I write this.

Crude is showing at the Laemmle Theaters in Santa Monica and Pasadena this week.

Squeezing water from a rock

Mojave River as seen on a 2001 camping trip.

(acknowledgments and thanks to Emily Green of Chance of Rain blog for being the primary source of information for this piece)

Do you know where your water comes from?

I expect most of you do.  Besides our local groundwater (which probably supplies 10-15% of the water we as a basin consume), our water is shipped from far-away watersheds, the sources of which are magnificent mountain ranges like the Sierra Nevada and the Rockies.

But the source of your water may soon be the desert.

Along came a gentleman aptly named Brackpool, who acquired a vast swath of land in the Mojave Desert.  His proposal might sound like squeezing water from a rock, yet offered water managers some reliability:  he would use the Mojave River aquifer as a recharge basin for Colorado River delivery in wet years, and sell both this and the native groundwater for our use.  This is the crux of the term “water banking.”

Ever been to the desert?  I don’t mean the baking-hot Target parking lot on La Cienega, but a real desert:  somewhere like the Mojave where the rare river is a lifeline for the species that depend upon it.  Lined with desert willows and cottonwoods.  Point is, you suck down that aquifer even a little bit and those trees will die, as had been happening on the Rio San Pedro in Arizona, as happened here in the LA Basin when we got pump-happy at the turn of the century, and well, almost everywhere in the West.

Brackpool’s proposal got shot down earlier this millenium as its claims were questionable and the environmental impacts considerable, but he’s back – and now has the Governor’s support.  His investors have kept him afloat for years but with this support his stock shot up.What’s more, LA Observed reports that he’s been vacationing with our mayor(who was his consultant at one time), and another one of his former consultants (who was also sitting on the PUC) is now the Gov’s chief of staff.  The Gov also just nominated him to the California Horse Racing Board.  Oh, and now his company, Cadiz, is not just about water banking – but also renewable energy and conservation.  He obviously hasn’t been reading the High Country News reports (“High Noon“ and “Solar Sense” for example) on the conflict between solar and wind farms and desert conservation.

This is David and Goliath, where Goliath has taken a page from Freddy Krueger and keeps coming back.  Please take the time to follow the news on this story, and if this touches you, get involved.  Emily Green at the Chance of Rain blog has done excellent research and is keenly following this story, and LA Observed and the LA Times is also staying on top of the political relationships.  With a packed slate of investors and politicians on Cadiz’s side, it’s hard to believe the desert will come out of this fight untarnished.

Current Photos of the Albion Site

Albion Street Entrance to Ross Swiss Dairy

Regarding the city’s acquisition of the Albion Dairy site (and just how many separate blog entries L.A. Creek Freak is capable of squeezing out of a good big story), it seems like a lot of folks read the word “dairy” and get this very pastoral image of cows and rolling grassy hills.  So L.A. Creek Freak headed out to Lincoln Heights this morning to bring our readers some photos of the site as it exists today. Don’t let the word dairy fool you. You can see the site is indeed a fully-paved, industrial distribution center. Lots of 18-wheeler trucks, loading docks, basic industrial buildings, cars a-parking… not a blade of grass to be seen.

More distribution center than dairy

As our readers can see in the photo below, the Los Angeles River in this area is all concrete. Also visible in the photo are the two active railroad tracks that run between the river and the dai… er… distribution center. In the long run, as river-adjacent properties like this one are acquired, possibilities open up for river access above or below the rails, like these possible design renderings (see the four images at the bottom of the link) for the nearby L.A. State Historic Park.

The west fence of the Albion Dairy site, viewed from the North Main Street Bridge - lots of trucks visible behind the fence

City Purchases 6-acre Albion Dairy Site for River Park

I was really excited to hear that the city was voting to purchase the Albion Dairy site earlier today, so I did my first ever blog from my phone – actually from council chambers. Here’s the follow-up story with lots more details and links.

First let me say thanks to all involved! Credit for this excellent purchase goes to City Councilmember Ed Reyes, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and also staff from the Community Redevelopment Agency, the Pubic Works Department Bureaus of Engineering and Sanitation, and the City Attorney’s office. Thanks to the mayoral Director of Capital Projects Christopher Espinosa and to Council Deputy Monica Valencia for providing background information to L.A. Creek Freak.

Albion Dairy Site. Dark green is new acquisition, light green is existing Downey Park. Los Angeles River runs vertically on the left.

The Albion Dairy site is a 6.34-acre site located on the northeast side of the Los Angeles River in Lincoln Heights (google map here.) The triangular parcel extends from North Spring Street to nearly North Main Street. It’s adjacent to Downey Park and Recreation Center, and across the river from Los Angeles State Historic Park.

It’s currently in operation as a dairy, but there’re no cows there – it’s more of a distribution center and warehouse sort of thing, with lots of trucks picking up dairy goods. It’s operated by Dean Foods under the Ross Swiss Dairy label; the existing lease of the site will remain through January 2011.

The city has been in negotiations for a few years. I remember hearing some inklings of a project there in 2007 or so… but it wasn’t until today that I heard that the deal had been finalized. At the meeting of the full Los Angeles City Council this morning, the vote was unanimous to approve $17.4M in Proposition O funding for site aquisition and clean-up. The actual vote today was to shift $12.5M from another pot of money already approved for Taylor Yard to add to $5M that had already been approved for the Albion site. The full council action is detailed in this 7-page report and 1-page addendum from the city’s Administrative Officer (CAO.)  The CAO report includes aquisition major deal points, cost breakdowns, and a brief project description. There’s also a 1-page project description sheet from the city’s Bureau of Sanitation.

One interesting and far-sighted aspect of the deal, told to me by Espinosa, is that the owner was helpful in consolidating a Union Pacific railroad easement that runs diagonally through the site, and forms a panhandle into the area along the Downey Park pool (the panhandle is visible at the top of the image above.) With this easement included in the city’s purchase, the city can expand Downey Park to about 10-acres – both above and below North Spring Street. Downey Park has always been adjacent to the river, but never really pertained to it or connected with it. The expanded park property will include water quality features, likely some sort of natural area that would treat street run-off before it enters the river.

It’s going to be a while before the expanded Downey Park opens to the public (and this is probably a good thing with the city’s current major budget woes.) The site will continue to service its dairy business until early 2011. At that point, the city will clean up lingering toxics at the site, which likely exist from industrial uses that pre-dated the current dairy. Then a new Los Angeles River park will be built!

Albion Dairy Purchase!

Breaking news: The Los Angeles City Council is voting to purchase the 6.3-acre Albion Dairy site! Located in Lincoln Heights along North Spring Street, this will be a new Los Angeles River park. More details later today here at L.A. Creek Freak.

View Larger Map

ACCW Wants Your Input on Bond Freeze Impacts

Los Angeles River - photo by Elon Schoenholz

I received word from Freeman House that there’s a new statewide watershed group just formed. Freeman put me in touch with David Simpson, who is coordinating the ACCW – the Association of Conservation Contractors and Workers. For background, see this ACCW article at Conservation Maven. They’re bringing together folks who’ve been impacted by the recent bond freeze.

The ACCW is gathering information on the impacts of the freeze, and requests that organizations fill out their survey. Some of these impacts were gathered by the Sonoma Ecology Center, and in L.A. by the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council. See ACCW’s survey request below, including the link to their survey:

Invitation to Survey

Colleagues

We are writing to ask for your help in restarting and maintaining the flow of funding to conservation work that was halted by the December 2008 bond freeze. Corroborating the ongoing impacts of the freeze and bringing that information before decision-makers and the public is the best tool we have to get back to our work of protecting and improving the California environment.

To this end, we ask you to participate in this on-line survey on behalf of your organization or get it to someone else who might be better positioned to respond. All surveys received will remain confidential, and we will share the total results with all respondents. The link is:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=M5PqcnjMxikktXf2DsN6yA_3d_3d

We urge you to tolerate us if we get more than one invitation to you, and we hope you will take the time to help make this survey successful — both by answering as fully as you can, and by passing on the survey to other groups. Policy-makers and the press still do not realize how severely land conservation and restoration continue to be impacted by the freeze, and gathering this data may be a powerful tool to remedy that situation. Thank you,

Association of Conservation Contractors and Workers

Mattole Restoration Council

Sonoma Ecology Center

For Additional Information contact accw.California@gmail.com

City’s Bid for L.I.D.

Andy Lipkis beginning the tour of LID features at TreePeople's headquarters.

L.A. Creek Freak pedaled up the newly-repaired Coldwater Canyon Avenue to bring our readers the latest on the plan to bring LID to the city of Los Angeles. This blog entry tells about the city’s LID efforts, and in it, Creek Freak spends as much time on important digressions as I do on the specifics of LID!

LID stands for Low Impact Development. LID is basically an approach to solving multiple water issues by detaining and/or infiltrating rainwater. There’s a longer and slightly more technical explantion for LID at Wikipedia. LID is beneficial for increasing water quality, increasing water supply, and even preventing flooding and curbing global warming. It tends to include features like cisterns, rain barrels, bioswales, infiltration galleries, mulch, and the like. It’s stuff that our keen-eyed readers are already at least somewhat familiar with, though Creek Freak hasn’t called it LID that often.

(Digression #1 – Language: A couple of my minor semantic pet peeves here: I tend to slightly resent that the term LID has come to mean site sustainability only in regards to stormwater, when there are many other factors that might lessen a development’s negative environmental impact. These factors can range from transportation to energy to social space to building materials… even stream protection and minimizing water usage through greater efficiency or greywater. None of which is part of what is called LID – so what LID is covers a very important slice - but not the entirety of impacts. Also, “impact” can be positive or negative – so I what I really want is “high-impact” development that is highly restorative – like a shopping center that daylights and restores a creek in its midst! Nonetheless, what LID actually is is definitely a really good wonderful creeky-freaky thing. Let’s do LID and do all these other important environmental endeavors!)

On Tuesday morning, TreePeople, Green L.A. Coalition, and the Urban Land Institute hosted a discussion on LID. Presenters included TreePeople’s Andy Lipkis, green developer Greg Reitz of REthink Development, and Los Angeles City Public Works Commissioner Paula Daniels. The meeting was hosted at TreePeople’s very cool muy-sustainable Center for Community Forestry, a proud example of LID in practice. Lipkis reviewed what LID is, and why it’s important. Reitz showed examples of what it can look like for multi-family developments.

Commissioner Daniels went into greatest detail about the current efforts to get LID adopted into law as a requirement for development, similar to what has already been done in Ventura County and in Los Angeles County’s unincorporated areas. The idea for the city of L.A. is to expand what is known as the SUSMP – the Standard Urban Stormwater Mitigation Plan – pronounced “Sue-Sump.” SUSMP is one step that developers already have to do when they build in L.A. Depending on the size of the development, SUSMP requires various practices and features to prevent strormwater pollution, both during construction activities and once the development is complete. This results in those sandbags that we see around construction sites… and quite a few other things that are less apparent.

(Digression #2 – A Vague Critical History of L.A.’s SUSMP: I am not an expert on how SUSMP works in L.A., but it’s my impression, historically, that it has been… shall we say… wimpy. It was sort of the least we could do, without the regional water board getting angry at us. It didn’t apply unless the development was huge, and even so, it mostly pertained to best practices during construction, without much in the way of long-term watershed management. It seems like L.A.’s SUSMP was revised and got a little better around a half-dozen years ago… but it still seems like it isn’t resulting in very much in the way of environmentally effective rainwater features. If you’re interested in reading even more about SUSMP, here’s the city’s SUSMP page, and the county’s 150-page 2002 SUSMP manual.)

Under the proposed new LID rules, SUSMP will take a big step forward. There’s apparently a draft ordinance circulating. It is described as applying to all new development and significant redevelopment. It will require sites to capture and re-use and/or infiltrate all the runoff that would be generated by the 85th percentile storm, hence only in very large storms would runoff leave the site.

The new ordinance is supposed to go before the city’s Board of Public Works for approval soon, then in October to the L.A. City Council’s committee on Energy and Environment, and hopefully will be approved by the full council before the end of the year. 

L.A. City's 2009 LID Report

(Digression #3 – Transparency: This is a really good proposal that really good people - true Creek Freak friends and allies - intend to have approved by the end of the year, but L.A. Creek Freak searched and searched couldn’t find more than a whiff of the planned ordinance online. On the city’s websites, LID appears in a couple places. There’s a LID city council motion 09-1554 that was introduced in June 2009, but hasn’t had any activity or supporting documents to date. There’s a LID page with LID links and even a good reports on what LID is – the informative 2009 Green Infrastructure for Los Angeles: Addressing Urban Runoff and Water Supply Through Low Impact Development. But there’s nothing I could find about the ordinance itself. I’d suggest that it would be a really good transparent-government-2.0-kinda-thing to get the draft ordinance up on-line somewhere… preferably somewhere the public can post comments… perhaps it could at least be posted at the city’s stormwater blog L.A. Team Effort? It’s the 21st century and there’s this great tool called the internet where the cost to post and notify is so negligible and the ability to build trust can be invaluable. Not revealing the draft ordinance can result in suspicion and skepticism. Publishing it can help facilitate a public dialog, build awareness, build support.)

After the meeting wound down, Andy Lipkis lead a tour of the rainwater features at the center site, including their huge cistern and their educational watershed garden. All very inspiring! I am looking forward to the new LID ordinance bringing more inspiring new rainwater projects into the mainstream of Los Angeles development.

Bursting at the seams

More broken water pipes:

Two more water mains burst overnight, bringing more questions (LA Times).

Be sure to check out the comments. Steve Lopez also enters the fray:  Awash in trouble, it’s time to spout off at DWP(LA Times).