Soccer at Hahamongna?

Aerial view of Hahamongna. Photo from (and linked to) Arroyo Seco Foundation website.

Once again, active recreation and our dwindling natural resources are being pitted against each other.  This time, it’s at Hahamongna, a basin on the Arroyo Seco next to JPL.  Devil’s Gate Dam holds back the Arroyo’s flows, infiltrating some of them into the Raymond Basin, the aquifer that supplies a lot of Pasadena’s water.  Above ground, wetlands and oak woodlands abound, a rare finger of habitat extending down from the San Gabriel Mountains.

Should soccer be carved out of this? I suppose it depends on your values. A quick web search shows that the City of Pasadena sought to locate soccer here in 2005 as well, so for those of us solidly in the Creekfreak camp, there’s a Freddy Krueger element to this.  The voice of a frustrated biologist comes to my mind, who pulled me aside at a conference to say,”We have to fight and fight, to win every time, to preserve what’s left. The other side only has to win once and it’s gone forever.”

Arroyo Seco Foundation/Save Hahamongna are spearheading the conservation fight.  Follow the links to get involved.