Proposed Senate Bill to open up river access
March 4, 2012 § 2 Comments
Ready to ride the river?
I got a nifty email from Friends of the LA River Founder Lewis MacAdams the other day, informing rivvies of state Senate Bill 1201 that proposes to legalize access to the soft-bottom reaches of the L.A. River. It will also create a Los Angeles River Interagency Access Council, which the Bill states is to
“coordinate the actions of state and local agencies with jurisdiction over, or otherwise involved in developing and administering public access and safety policies for, the Los Angeles River.”
It reclassifies natural-bottom flood channels as natural rivers, which is necessary to relieve local agencies of the responsibility (liability) for harm that occurs if someone is injured goofing around in “improved” rivers, er, flood channels. I am really hoping this will open the potential for actual restoration of our concreted rivers as well – this liability being one of the big obstacles. Maintaining flood capacity, of course, being the not-insurmountable other one.
You can download the Bill from the FOLAR webpage here. Big props to FOLAR and UCLA’s Environmental Law Clinic who conceived of and drafted the bill. And let Senator De Leon and his staff know how much you appreciate his efforts for moving this forward.
K bueno, no?
L.A. Creek Freak 
the way liability currently works is so stupid… if a city runs bulldozers up and down a river for ‘flood control’ (as happened in an excessive way in many areas after Irene in Vermont) and alter the flow of the river and it kills me or destroys my home, it’s an act of nature, but if someone is allowed access to a river and falls in and drowns the city IS liable? In at least one case I’ve heard of, a kid jumped a fence and fell into a ditch and broke his leg and a city was sued, rather than the kid being given a stern talk about the dangers of stupid concrete flood control infrastructure (after they fixed his leg). If the kid had a river to play in, he might not have done that!
Just about any change is welcome at this point.
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