New Elysian Valley Bike Path Getting Asphalt

Fresh new bike path asphalt behind the Great Heron Gate

The Los Angeles River Bike Path under construction through Elysian Valley is looking more and more complete. Biking past it at Fletcher Drive today, I saw the city’s contractor’s crews putting down its new dark black asphalt surface. The new surface replaces a worn and root-rutted old access road with various dips and cracks.

After the jump are more details about the bikeway construction schedule, and some observations bicycling along the river today.

Rainy Day Photos – L.A. River and Ballona Creek

Creek Freak reader Peter Bennet sent us some impressive photographs of the Los Angeles River and Ballona Creek; photos showing the huge differences between everyday flows and during large storms.

This pair was taken on Ballona  looking downstream from the Overland Avenue Bridge in Culver City:

Ballona Creek photos by Peter Bennett

Solid thinking about our favorite liquid (and that’s not whisky): water essays by Sheila Kuehl

Former State Senator Sheila Kuehl has been publishing essays about the state’s water conundrum, at her website SheilaKuehl.org.  These essays are also findable via other blogs such as Yubanet.com, Aquafornia, and California Progressive .  I highly recommend giving some quality time to these thoughtful reflections on our water future.  As a taste, here is her final essay, on the upcoming water bond, with a forward from her:

Water Water Everywhere IV:
The Bond That Ties
by Sheila Kuehl

This is the fourth in a series of four essays describing the five separate pieces of water legislation passed by the California legislature in late 2009 and signed by the Governor.  In total, the legislation amended the oversight structure of the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta, extended water conservation mandates, set up some groundwater measurement procedures, amended penalties for illegal diversion of water, authorized the use of funds from a past water bond and set up a new bond for voter approval next year. You have received this essay either because you joined my general essay list or someone forwarded it to you.  If you received it by forwarding, this essay is from former California State Senator Sheila Kuehl.  If you want to subscribe to these essays, go to my website at  www.SheilaKuehl.org.  If you want to unsubscribe, there’s an easy button at the bottom of this email.

In the first essay, I provided an overview of some of the problems created by the legislation, and described the bill affecting the monitoring of groundwater.  In the second, I described the central role of the Delta and the bill that crafted a new governance and oversight structure. In the third, I described the contents of a bill dealing with water rights, penalties for illegal diversion of water and expenditures authorized from an existing bond, and a second bill dealing with urban water conservation.

In this fourth, and last, essay, I analyze the proposed 11.14 billion dollar bond to be placed on the November 2, 2010 ballot.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Eleven Billion Dollar Question
Despite the fact that California is hocked up to its eyeballs in debt, an eleven billion, one hundred and forty thousand dollar water bond is proposed for the November ballot this year.  As set forth below, the bond would fund various projects, some of them very

What To Do When Bike Path Gates Are Locked

Lifting the kids trailer over the locked gates on Ballona Creek - photo David Pulsipher

Los Angeles County’s concreted rivers and creeks can be pretty dangerous when it’s raining. Water levels can rise quickly; wet concrete can be slippery.

Generally, reinforcing channels with concrete also includes straightening (which also means steepening.) This makes the waters flow even faster. It’s a pretty efficient solution for getting rid of stormwater, but it also makes for about as deadly a river as one can imagine. Concrete channels flow at relatively uniform velocities and depths with with almost no slower flow refuge areas. The fast moving water often carries debris and sometimes toxins. Folks who enter these high waters generally end up dead.

For these reasons, when rain is predicted, bike path gates are locked… and L.A. Creek Freak recommends that folks stay away from our streams those days… and come back and enjoy them during the 300+ non-rainy days each year.

Sometimes the locked gates don’t get re-opened promptly. This is especially frustrating when the rain has stopped and the air is wondrously clear and the day is completely perfect for riding. This happens most often when it’s raining on a Friday, then it’s clear on a Saturday… just like the last couple days. My friend David blogged here about his birthday dinner, last Saturday, which involved lifting bikes and trailers and kids over locked gates along the Ballona Creek bikeway. Another friend of mine, Bobby, who commutes on the lower L.A. River bikeways, also mentioned to me that the gates there were locked today – Monday morning and evening. 

What follows is my advice on who to complain to notify politely when the gates are locked on a sunny day. Unfortunately it’s somewhat convoluted jurisdictionally… depends which path you’re accessing where.

Albion Dairy Park Preliminary Designs, Meeting this Thursday

Design A features a soccer field, native landscape, skate park and bioswale

The city has released two preliminary design options for the new park at the Albion Dairy site in Lincoln Heights. The designs will be discussed at a community meeting coming up this Thursday night January 28th at 6:30pm at Downey Recreation Center. Higher resolution pdfs of the design options are available at the project’s website.

Design Option B which features dog park, skate park, tennis courts, native landscape, and bioswale.

Analysis of and opinions on the designs follows. Come this Thursday to give your input or give input via a three-page online survey hosted by the city (link is on the bottom right.)

LAFD Helicopters Rescue Dog from L.A. River

Well… I am going to just let this story speak for itself. Dateline: city of Vernon, eight live minutes of firefighters rescuing a dog from the swollen waters of the Los Angeles River. If it’s good enough for KTLA, Fox and a half-gazillion other outlets… then it’s good enough for L.A. Creek Freak.

Rain Rain Rain… Pouring Down Upon the Night

There’s a lot of virtual ink that this Creek Freak has been reading about the huge rainfall that Southern California is receiving this week. I am staying warm and keeping away from L.A.’s dangerous floodwaters (not necessarily inherently dangerous, mostly made so by our societal choices.) Here’s a round-up of some of the articles and images that I found interesting:

>Photo galleries at The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. 

>Streets flooding in Long Beach (LAist) and San Pedro (LAist, Daily Breeze, and YouTube.)

>River rising in Atwater Village and in the San Fernando Valley.

Tracking stream flow on the Arroyo Seco

>Nancy Steele’s In the Watershed blog shows cool tools to track local rainfall.

>Mark Gold’s Spouting Off blog blames excessive storm damages on our inability to raise stormwater funding taxes.

>The L.A. Times’ invaluable Louis Sahagun article Storms could test L.A. County’s aging flood-control system reports on the upstream end of things – filling and overflowing debris basins in our foothills. Some excerpts:

Officials said that of the 30 catch-basins located along the south-facing slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains between Big Tujunga Canyon and Altadena, one was filled to the brim and nine others were a concern because of fast-rising debris levels. Crews worked around the clock with earthmovers and dump trucks to keep the basins flowing, but were slowed by intermittent hail, lightning and heavy rain.

Of particular concern was the Mullally debris basin above La Cañada Flintridge, which overflowed on Monday, contributing to a decision to temporarily evacuate neighborhoods at the base of steep, denuded slopes.

A few miles to the west, the Pickens debris basin in Sun Valley — which is the size of a baseball field and about 40 feet deep — loaded up with mud 35 feet deep within four hours Monday. The basin was recently expanded to handle up to 125,000 cubic yards of silt and debris, officials said.

(Pickens Canyon Wash is the creek that divides La Crescenta and La Canada Flintridge. It’s a tributary of the Verdugo Wash which runs through Glendale then empties into the L.A. River. Pickens was the site of the infamous and deadly New Years Day floods in 1934.)

>The flows of the creeks downstream of the massive Station Fire are flowing black - full of ash. See videos at The San Gabriel Mountains: Stories & Rants of a Quasi Mountain Man and Pasadena Adjacent.  The latter asked our advice on where all that ash goes. I don’t have a good answer… a lot of it ends up in the ocean… and it seems like the ash will smother some things in the short run, but that it will serve as nutrient/fertilizer as these upper watershed creeks bounce back. If anyone else has an informed answer or links to information, please comment.

>The creek park at the end of my block and the rainwater harvesting garden in my front yard are doing well.

Plenty more rain to come… imaginary prize to the person who can identify the song referenced in this article’s title.

Kids, do what I say, not what I do!

Man captures a big one in the LAR. Photo: David Kimbrough. Image linked to LAist

Even though I absolutely love this photo (and the entire sequence, available at LAist here), remember kids(especially you wayward big ones), stay out of our fast-moving waters during and after the rain. Please!

Places to Visit: Bimini Slough Ecology Park

A manmade creek runs through the Bimini Slough Ecology Park

Located on the northeast edge of Los Angeles’ Koreatown, the Bresee Foundation’s Bimini Slough Ecology Park is an excellent and innovative example of how we can heal our urban watersheds and bring green spaces to underserved neighborhoods. I was glad to see that my co-blogger Jessica promoted this park in Emily Green‘s recent L.A. Times column entitled The Dry Garden: Capturing the spirit of L.A.’s streams, even if they’re gone. Here’s an excerpt:

No matter how many rain barrels we put out and percolation pits we dig, many homeowners can do only so much in compensating for the absorptive and cleansing power of lost streams. Because many sites cannot capture all the rain that falls on them or flows through them, [Jessica] Hall sees cleverly situated public water-catching projects as crucial companion pieces to the water gardens put in by homeowners.

Asked to point one out, Hall chose the Bimini Slough Ecology Park. Designed by city landscape architect and wastewater engineer Nishith Dhandha, this mere half-acre sandwiched next to the Breese Community Center in Koreatown acts as a giant filter by taking urban runoff from a full city block. First it captures the water, then passes it through grates to catch trash. From there, the storm water runs through a meandering marsh, where riparian plants do what they have always done: cleanse the water.

That quote tells the basic story of the Bimini Slough park, located at the corner of Bimini Place and Second Street. Our readers know that I am capable of turning a short story into a really long one, so… what follows is that long story: how to get there, the history of the slough, how the park came about, and what it features.

LID Ordinance Approved by Public Works Committee

Permeable pavement sidewalk at L.A. Eco-Village. When LID passes we should see more of these kinds of rainwater infiltration practices thoughout Los Angeles.

Last Friday January 15th 2010, the Low Impact Development (or “LID”) ordinance was approved unanimously by the city of Los Angeles’ Board of Public Works. I recommend reading Spouting Off’s excellent coverage. 

First off, big props to Public Works Commissioner Paula Daniels who has spearheaded L.A.’s work on LID.  There are certainly lots of other commissioners, city staff, non-profit folks (and even bloggers on the sidelines) who’ve done some worthwhile work on this LID effort, but Commissioner Daniels has really been the driving force on this one. She’s an articulate and committed environmentalist, a valued friend, and a true creek freak! Kudos to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for appointing such a great leader to serve on the board that oversees the city’s public works.  

After the jump below, L.A. Creek Freak links you to LID background, posts Green L.A. Coalition’s announcement, and highlights LID’s next steps.