Riverdale Green Street Opened, City Standard Plans Shared

Council President Garcetti opening the Riverdale Green Street Project. Seated, left to right, are Zaldivar, Daniels, Cardellino, and Moore.

Under yesterday’s midday heat, on a quiet block in Elysian Valley, a small crowd gathered to celebrate the ribbon-cutting of the city of Los Angeles’ newest green street: Riverdale Avenue. The ceremonial opening was presided over by Council President Eric Garcetti, Public Works Commissioner Paula Daniels, Bureau of Sanitation General Manager Enrique Zaldivar, City Engineer Gary Moore, and Project Manager Joan Cardellino of the California Coastal Conservancy, which funded Riverdale’s retrofit.

Luminaries’ speeches took place under a tent at the intersection of Riverdale Avenue and Crystal Street, in front of the gates of Jardín del Río community garden and alongside the city’s very first official ”V.S.C.E.” which, of course, stands for “Vegetated Stormwater Curb Extension.”

Sewage spill contaminates Sepulveda Channel

Yuck. Over 500,000 gallons of sewage have been reported as spilled into the Sepulveda Channel in West LA, which carried the gunk to Ballona Creek and possibly destinations west. There will be a beach closure in Playa del Rey at least through October 2. If you were planning to beat the heat at the beach…well, you may want to focus on another one.

An extra note from the press advisory:

Recorded information on beach conditions is available around the clock on the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Ocean Water Quality Hotline at 1-800-525-5662 and online at www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/beach.

Cleanup is underway.

Riverdale Avenue Green Street Opening Celebration Today 2pm

Sorry for late word on this one: the city of Los Angeles is hosting a grand opening and ribbon-cutting celebration for the Riverdale Avenue Green Street Project TODAY 2pm Wednesday September 29th 2010.

Flier for Today's Riverdale Grand Opening - click to download pdf

Hydrology in Richard Russo’s Empire Falls

Empire Falls by Richard Russo, 2001

I just finished reading Richard Russo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Empire Falls, which I recommend.

It’s definitely not about Los Angeles, but about a river town in Maine. As a Los Angeles Creek Freak, I enjoyed a sub-plot, not even integral to the main story, about their Knox River, the trash that it carried, and attempts to realign its waters.  

(Spoiler alert: I quote from the end of the novel below. While it’s not central to the plot, the river does come back into the picture at the end of the book.) 

Here’s an excerpt from the introductory prologue, describing past events leading up to the present-day (2001) story. Though I couldn’t find a specifically date, it seems like these events take place around the 1950s or maybe ’60s:   

When the bulldozers began to clear the house site, a disturbing discovery was made. An astonishing amount of trash – mounds and mounds of it – was discovered all along the bank, some of it tangled among tree roots and branches, some of it strewn up the hillside, all the way to the top. The sheer volume of junk was astonishing, and at first C. B. Whiting concluded that somebody, or a great many somebodies, had had the effrontery to use the property as an unofficial landfill. How many years had this outrage been going on? It made him mad enough to shoot somebody until one of the men he’d hired to clear the land pointed out that for somebody, or a great many somebodies, to use Whiting land as a dump, they would have required an access road, and there wasn’t one, or at least there hadn’t been one until C. B. Whiting cut one himself a month earlier. While it seemed unlikely that so much junk – spent inner tubes, hubcaps, milk cartons, rusty cans, pieces of broken furniture  and the like – could wash up on one spot naturally, the result of currents and eddies, there it was, so it must have.

Restoring Malibu Lagoon

 

Malibu Lagoon, 2008. Image: Google Earth, 2010.

 

Back when I was involved in native planting projects and miniparks along the rights-of-way of flood control channels, I sometimes worried that people would get too attached to those things – to the extent that they’d not support restoration of the channels if it meant losing their minipark (any restoration would require us to widen the channel within the right-of-way). Would people object to bulldozing a created upland habitat to re-establish riparian habitat? That may seem like an overblown fear, but I see that reflected from time to time in environmental debates. There are good reasons for keeping some things the way they are, but sometimes there are also important reasons to make changes. The currrent reflection of that for me is at the Malibu Lagoon.

Short Film on L.A. River Fishing

Here’s an excellent recent short documentary about fishing in the Los Angeles River. It features Carmelo Gaeta, Camm Swift, Sabrina Drill, and Friends of the Los Angeles River’s Shelly Backlar. I especially enjoyed the footage of biologists Swift and Drill surveying fish species via seine netting technique.

News and Events – 21 September 2010

Undated historic photo of Red Car trolley crossing the L.A. River below the Glendale Hyperion Bridge. Given the complete lack of vegetation in the river, this was likely right after concrete channel construction. From Coralitas Red Car Property - click on image for link

 

NEWS 

> Culver City construction on the Ballona Creek bike path from Overland Avenue to the Westwood Avenue pedestrian bridge. Looks like another good creek revitalization project, but bicyclists should expect detours now through January (Culver City Bicycle Coalition) 

> Federal funding secured for the Watershed Council’s Water Augmentation Study (Congresswoman Linda Sánchez) 

> Downstream cities are installing nice single-purpose gray grates to keep trash out of the Los Angeles River (L.A. Times and L.A. Now - also earlier Creek Freak coverage, though we somehow missed coverage any accompanying source control efforts.) 

> Genetically modified salmon coming soon to a plate near you? (L.A. Times Greenspace) 

> Beautiful graphical history of the meanderings of the Mississippi River (NPR) 

> Long Beach awarded grant for river parkway wetlands restoration project at DeForest Park (Supervisor Don Knabe) 

EVENTS 

> L.A. River panel tomorrow September 22nd (Zócalo) 

> Coastal CleanUp Day on September 25th 2010. (Heal the Bay) 

> Jenny Price River tours on September 26th and October 3rd (Hidden L.A.) 

> Ballona Wetlands Science and Research Symposium on December 8th 2010. (Creek Freak) 

(Just the headlines, m’am, courtesy of Joe being busy with CicLAvia – come and check it out on October 10th!)

Ballona wetlands happenings

This weekend tour the Ballona Wetlands -

Community Open House / Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission
Featuring guided tours of the reserve
Sunday, September 19, 2010
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Fiji Gateway
13720 Fiji Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90292 (Across from Fisherman’s Village)

The public is invited to enjoy the Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve during a community open house. Stop by and learn about the unique resources of the Ballona Wetlands. Guided tours will depart from the trailhead at 9:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., and 11:30 a.m.

RSVP’s are encouraged! To RSVP or for further information, please email Karina Johnston or Diana Hurlbert or call 310-417-3093.

Also, check the Ballona Institute and Friends of Ballona Wetlands pages for their upcoming events (none listed for this weekend).

And Plan Ahead – free symposium on wetlands research and monitoring.

Ballona Wetlands Science and Research Symposium / Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Loyola Marymount University
University Hall 1000
1 LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90045

Please join us for a free scientific symposium that will highlight current monitoring and research being conducted at wetlands throughout the region. Presenters will include wetland scientists from throughout California. This event is open to the public. RSVP’s are encouraged.

To RSVP or for further information, please email Karina Johnston or Diana Hurlbert.

Coro Fellows Seek the Logic of the L.A. River

I had the pleasure of showing off the L.A. River to the 2010-2011 class of Los Angeles Coro fellows last week, then attending their presentation earlier this week. Above is a short video they did as part of their presentation on ”The Logic of the Los Angeles River.” The video features Urban Semillas‘ Miguel Luna, FoLAR‘s Shelly Backlar, yours truly, and others.

Trout vs. People?

Click image to link to news video

Not exactly breaking news at this point, but here’s a link to local creekfreaks Mark Abramson and Rosi Dagit on Fox’s Sean Hannity show.

Yes, Hannity. He’s gotten them interviewed so he can trash restoration of steelhead runs during our state’s financial hard times – but he couldn’t do it to their faces. Let’s put Mark and Rosi in the room with Hannity and see who comes out sounding like the rational one.

(and for the fellow who thinks restoration would be a waste cuz he’s not seen any trout swim up the concrete channel by his property…that’s actually the point)