One district, poised to harm an entire nation

There’s a lot riding on this season’s federal discretionary spending allocations.  Literally – House Republicans have been attaching riders to the bills moving through the House to block many environmental programs, and some of these riders read like love letters to special interests.  If you are already involved in environmental causes, you’ve probably seen emails or posts about this.

Some of these riders have implications locally – here’s some delicacies from H.R. 2584:

• If you think the Navigable Waters of the U.S. designation that triggers Clean Water Act protection should apply to our at times flashy western rivers and streams, there is a rider that will restrict the EPA and the Army Corps to Bush-era definitions of navigability, in other words, not cover our waterways if their current designations were challenged.  Remember last year’s victory declaring the L.A. River navigable?  The agencies charged with protecting our waterways wouldn’t have been able to make that declaration under this rider. (See Section 435 of the bill text);
• The EPA would also be restricted in its ability to oversee how water is used to cool power plants.  The intakes of power plants suck in and kill significant quantities of marine life locally, one of the reasons this affects our local ecosystems. (Section 436);
• Congress would also require additional studies and delays in the implementation of urban stormwater (runoff) management regulations. (Section 439);
• Do you have a bad taste in your mouth yet? If you like that special flavor methyl bromide, atrazine, diazinon, or glyphosate adds to your produce, you will like it even more in your water!  (Title V) You can thank Representative Simpson (R-ID) -also the author of the previous gems – for adding a rider to prohibit the EPA from regulating its application and discharge into Waters of the U.S. Not that you will have any Waters of the U.S. in your vicinity anymore anyway.

The NRDC is keeping a running list of the riders* as they bubble up.  Unfettering of agricultural pollution discharges into Florida wetlands; cutting loose on mountaintop coal mining and stream destruction in Appalachia; radioactive waste storage near groundwater that, uh, may feed the Colorado River at the hotly debated Yucca Mountain site; uranium mining near the Grand Canyon; banning restrictions on Great Lakes ballast water that is intended to prevent the spread of invasive species; and several riders that impact, as in halt, the recovery of Pacific salmon are a sampling of the issues that pertain to those of us with national Creekfreak tendencies – and the riders go on and on, degrading our air quality, integrity of land and wildlife management, and of course sticking it to greenhouse gas emissions regulations.

But if you wanted to share your thoughts about these issues with the gentleman from Idaho, who put forward many of these eyepoppers, I have to warn you – his website has a filter to prevent you from contacting him unless you have an Idaho zipcode.  He may represent one district, but he stands poised to harm an entire nation.

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*From which I’ve cribbed these notes – with additional info from OpenCongress.org

Real Creek of the Week #1

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 While LA CreekFreak is almost always about real creeks, I thought I’d start this feature as a follow up to the Fake Creek of the Week, the not-really-weekly feature lampooning (at times probably lamenting) our Angeleno appetite for fakery, even when it comes to the “natural” world.

Malaga is a perennial watercourse draining northwest-facing hills of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, outletting at Malaga Cove, aka Rat Beach to locals.  This creek is the only one in the Peninsula that I know of that retains an almost natural profile (lengthwise section) in its lower reaches – the upper reaches have been altered at Malaga, what with housing and golf course development.  But that lower reach, with challenging access due to very steep (in places dangerously vertical) slopes is an escapist wonder, a place owned by tree frogs, snakes and small birds, that when trekking up the narrow canyon feels like a set out of an Indiana Jones movie.

New Atwater Village Historic Photos Book by Arcadia Press

Atwater Village - Arcadia Publishing - cover image is the 1927 Glendale-Hyperion Bridge

There’s a brand new book on the history of Atwater Village, one of the neighborhoods along the Glendale Narrows stretch of the Los Angeles River.

From Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series, the book is titled, simply, Atwater Village. It was written by Netty Carr, Sandra Caravella, Luis Lopez, and Ann Lawson all of the Friends of Atwater Village (FAV.) I played a small role in helping out with their chapter on the river and the bridges over it.

The book is chock-full of great old historic photos of the neighborhood, including heretofore unpublished images of the L.A. River in flood stage, and much more. 

Bike Ride on the San Luis Rey River

Rex on the San Luis Rey River bike path in Oceanside

Last week, my friend Rex and I bicycled from San Clemente to Oceanside… where we stumbled onto the San Luis Rey River and biked up its 7.2 mile San Luis Rey Trail bike path. I confess that I don’t know a lot about the San Luis Rey River, and most of the San Luis Rey’s flow wasn’t all that visible in the thick riparian foliage… willows, sycamores, and more… but there’s plenty of good information online regarding its watershed. 

When a tree falls in Hollenbeck Park

In my work with CicLAvia, I’ve been enjoying passing the time sometimes in Hollenbeck Park in Boyle Heights. It’s a great historic park in a great historic neighborhood, well-loved by the community… both community and park have been degraded by freeways… but both community and park are hanging in there doing all right.

I forget when I first became aware of it, but I was kinda fond of this tree, leaning over the lake at Hollenbeck:

Lakeside sycamore tree at Hollenbeck Park - August 2010

After Sunday’s CicLAvia group ride, I noticed the tree wasn’t there:

Lakeside sycamore stump at Hollenbeck Park - July 2011

(sorry I didn’t quite succeed in getting exactly the same angle on my before and after shots.) 

Lamentation and prescience, in a poem to a creek

A big thanks to Creekfreak Anne Boyd, who shared a link on the L.A. Creek Freak Facebook page with a snippet of the Robert Frost poem, A Brook In The City, posted at the Poem Hunter website (for some reason it seems worth mentioning that the Poem Hunters are located in Paris, France).  Forgive me, oh Poem Hunter and any copyright holders, for reprinting here.

A Brook In The City

The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square

With the new city street it has to wear

A number in. But what about the brook

That held the house as in an elbow-crook?

I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength

And impulse, having dipped a finger length

And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed

A flower to try its currents where they crossed.

The meadow grass could be cemented down

From growing under pavements of a town;

The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.

Is water wood to serve a brook the same?

How else dispose of an immortal force

No longer needed? Staunch it at its source

With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown

Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone

In fetid darkness still to live and run –

And all for nothing it had ever done

Except forget to go in fear perhaps.

No one would know except for ancient maps

That such a brook ran water. But I wonder

If from its being kept forever under,

The thoughts may not have risen that so keep

This new-built city from both work and sleep.

Robert Frost

Sometimes I think this care and concern for our creeks and waterways must seem so small a thing in the minds of others.  So it is quite a surprise when I find that some very big minds, like the poet Robert Frost, noticed the culverting and loss of creeks with urbanization.

May we all forget to go in fear. Perhaps.