Rio Hondo | L.A. Creek Freak

LA River and Rio Hondo, 1932

April 2, 2012 § 2 Comments

Click to enlarge. Image: Los Angeles County Department of Public Works

This photo is taken where the LA River abuts South Gate, Lynwood, and Downey. It was a reference photo for the South Gate Riparian Habitat Restoration Project mentioned in an earlier post.

Creepy creeks

October 17, 2010 § Leave a comment

Sweet brook or death-trap?

Ever watch Bones? It’s a crime-detection series filmed in LA, standing in for DC. Bones, a forensic anthropologist, and Booth, her FBI partner, get called out to look at skeletal remains of murder victims. From what I’ve seen, it looks like a lot of them end up dumped on the Rio Hondo. Yes, I watch Bones to play “name that stream.” But Bones also reminds me that running across death and decay, the detritus of predator-prey relationships, is a reality if you hike creeks. It’s the shadow side of our life cycle, essential to recycling nutrients for the ecosystem. But still, gruesome. Thankfully I’ve not run across human remains – smashed cars, santeria offerings…but no remains. Knock wood.

Sometimes creeks are just downright creepy.

[Grim photos follow the jump – don’t follow if you don’t want to see it.]

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Landscapes at work in Downey

July 20, 2010 § 5 Comments

I went on a parking lot tour today. Gerry Greene, Water Resources Control Specialist for the city, had offered a tour to me and some folks from the Watershed Council. Having heard about Downey’s progress in the stormwater front from Shelley Luce of the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, I was interested in seeing parking lots working to retain and infiltrate stormflows.

Over 2 1/2 hours, we went to small retail developments, shopping centers, gas stations, a dentist’s office, fast food chains, a golf course, a school, building materials and industrial facilities – and each one of these places had a system in place to capture and treat runoff from a (mostly) 3/4″ storm – the infamous “first flush” storm that carries the largest amount of bacteria and other yuck that deteriorates water quality downstream. « Read the rest of this entry »

An Artesian Belt in San Gabriel: Part II

January 6, 2010 § 10 Comments

This 1904 map shows a slender stream forming in the upper end of San Marino Canyon. Vegetation is labelled as "oaks" and "brush thicket". This item reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

This is part two of a posting that describes the Artesian Belt in San Gabriel from West to East. For the introduction to this section, click here.

Grading and Draining: the transformation of the Shorb Ranch

The property we know as the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, was once part of the famed ranch of J. De Barth Shorb, named San Marino. We are fortunate that relatively detailed documentation of the property has been preserved, giving us an intimate view of shifts in land use during the intervening century. « Read the rest of this entry »

News and Upcoming Events – March 11 2009

March 11, 2009 § Leave a comment

This week’s leaks that pique creek freaks beaks! (eek!)

Places to Visit: Rio Vista Park in El Monte

September 23, 2008 § 7 Comments

(This is the first in a “Places to Visit” series. I hope we’ll blog about various parks/streams/places and other noteworthy spots so that you, my faithful readers, can go and visit and enjoy these places!)

I first visited Rio Vista Park as part of last week’s conference on the San Gabriel River. Rio Vista Park is located on the Rio Hondo in the city of El Monte. It’s slightly difficult to find as it’s tucked away in a residential neighborhood, but well worth it. The address is 4275 Ranger Avenue, El Monte CA 91731. It’s on the west bank of the Rio Hondo directly across from the El Monte Airport, and a short walk or bike ride upstream from the El Monte Transit Center. (Note that the park is on the opposite side as the Upper Rio Hondo Bike Trail – to get there from the bike path, go west on Valley, right on Arden, right on Bisby and right on Shasta)

The current Rio Vista Park, which opened June 2008, is a rehabilitation and expansion project of an existing small park – and the site has a good hybrid/palimpsest feel of an older site that has been enriched by recent additions. The project was spearheaded by Amigos de los Rios partnering with the County of Los Angeles, the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, and the city of El Monte. It’s part of what Amigos de los Rios call the Emerald Necklace – a large string of parks on the Rio Hondo and San Gabriel River.

The park celebrates multiple histories of the site, from the Tongva Native Americans to Hick’s Camp. Shade structures (visible in the picture on the left) are designed to resemble Tongva kich (pronunced “keesh”) housing made of thatched willow cuttings. Informational signage details the Tongva names and uses for native plants growing on-site.

Hick’s Camp was a colonia – a longstanding village that housed working class families, mostly immigrant agricultural workers. Hicks Camp occupied the park site and most of the surrounding neighborhood beginning from 1900 until it was demolished in the early 1970’s. Former residents of Hick’s Camp still gather for reunions. The park commemorates this history with a listing of the the names of Hick’s Camp families and a large camp map both etched in the sidewalk at the park entrance at Ranger Avenue. Interpretive signage explains the history of the site with time lines and historic photos. These tell important stories including the 1933 Berry Strike and the 1940’s successes in desegregating El Monte schools. Historic photos show the youth of the camp swimming and playing in the adjacent, still-natural Rio Hondo.

The park features an ample grassy area, picnic tables, a tot lot (with playful child-activated running water features) and an exercise course. The site features bioswales that detain and infiltrate stormwater. The plentiful new vegetation along the Rio Hondo is all native, with plenty of oak trees. Surrounding the park are more great gates by artist Brett Goldstone.

When folks from the conference visited the park last Tuesday night, there were plenty of local families using the park for walking, sitting and exercising. Mothers walked with strollers; kids cruised on the bmx bicycles. The winged residents were at home there, too: A small raptor (which we think was a juvenile Coopers Hawk) flew in and rested a while on a eucalyptus branch. We walked and toured the park, and looked east out over the Rio Hondo running wet in a concrete canyon and imagined what this place was and what it will be again.

What’s the Plan?

August 29, 2008 § 1 Comment

Rendering of a Revitalized Los Angeles River in Downtown L.A. (from the city of L.A.'s LA River Revitalization Master Plan)

Rendering from the City of LA's River Plan

Recently someone asked me to show some sections of the L.A. River that are “not covered by the plan.” In the light of publicity around the city of Los Angeles’ recent plan (the Los Angeles River Revitalization Master Plan – the LARRMP – adopted in 2007), many people assume that it’s the plan for the river. While the LARRMP has a lot of great features, it’s actually a relative newcomer on the scene, building on the success of Los Angeles County’s plan (the Los Angeles River Master Plan – the LARMP – adopted in 1996.)

The Los Angeles River is part of an interconnected system of tributaries, many of which have their own plans. The waterways are the spine of the Los Angeles River watershed; tributaries have their nestled subwatersheds. Many problems in the river corridors – especially flooding and pollution (water quantity and quality, respectively) – are nearly impossible to solve just by fixing up our waterways themselves. Solving these problems requires planning on the watershed scale… so there are watershed plans and sub-watershed plans, too.

There are officially adopted plans by cities, counties, and other public agencies. These cover river corridors, water quality, river zones, individual parks, bike paths, etc. There are also plans created by advocacy groups, who don’t necessarily see ourselves as limited by the adopted master plans. There are also various vision plans created by students, engineering firms, artists, and others.

Often plans are referred to by their acronyms, which can be very similar – there’s the LARMP and the LARRMP, the IRP and IRWMP… Is your head spinning yet? Mine is, and I live and breathe this stuff.

So, in order to help folks familarize themselves with some of the acronyms plans for the L.A. River (and that’s just one of the half-dozen rivers in L.A. County,) here’s a short list of some that I think are worth knowing about… this is not an exhaustive list – feel free to comment with your favorite plan that I’ve omitted!

LARMP – The Los Angeles River Master Plan was adopted by the county of Los Angeles in 1996. It covers the entire Los Angeles River and the portion of the Tujunga Wash downstream of Hansen Dam. The LARMP was a collaborative effort between three separate county departments: Public Works, Regional Planning and Parks and Recreation. The pioneering document was instrumental in opening up the formerly fenced-off river, and has resulted in various additional documents, including guidelines for signage and landscaping.

LARRMP – The Los Angeles River Revitalization Master Plan was adopted by the city of Los Angeles in 2007. It covers the 32 miles (about 2/3rds) of the river within the city of L.A. – from Canoga Park to Vernon. The LARRMP calls for a greenway along the river, and for dramatic interventions at five opportunity sites: Canoga Park, Verdugo Wash, Taylor Yard, Cornfields/Chinatown, and Downtown L.A.

IRP – The Integrated Resources Plan is the city of Los Angeles’ plan for wastewater, stormwater and recycled water for the next 20 years.

IRWMP – The Integrated Regional Water Management Plan, known unfortunately as the “Urr Wimp”, is a mega-plan for Los Angeles County that focuses water supply, while also incorporating aspects of watershed management, recreation, groundwater recharge, flood prevention, restoration, and perhaps even the kitchen sink. It’s a unwieldy document that folds together various projects, mostly so the region can say that we’re working together and therefore we qualify for state funding. Creekfreak’s hero Anne Riley has called IRWMPs “the big staple” – more-or-less an exercise in stapling various water agency projects together.

Long Beach RiverLink is the city of Long Beach’s master plan for their 10 miles of the Los Angeles River. Adopted in 2003, RiverLink plans more than 220 acres of new parks along the lower river.

And that’s not all. There are plan for tributaries, including the Tujunga Pacoima Watershed Plan (by The River Project), a handful of Arroyo Seco plans (by the city of Pasadena for various stretches, by North East Trees and the Arroyo Seco Foundation, and one underway by the Army Corps of Engineers), more for the Rio Hondo (part of Los Angeles County’s San Gabriel River Corridor Master Plan, the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy’s Rio Hondo Watershed Management Plan, and Amigos de los Rios’ Emerald Necklace plan), and a couple for Compton Creek (the city of Compton’s Compton Creek Regional Garden Park Master Plan and the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council’s Compton Creek Watershed Management Plan.)

Thank you dear reader for getting this far with me… all these plans are making me forget the point I was intending to make. Overall these multiple overlapping and interconnecting plans are worthwhile: they include some opportunities for public input and public awareness; they direct governmental expenditures to the river; and they’ve resulted in new parks, paths, public art, landscaping and more. One of the issues with them is the scale: to really solve problems, we need to look at the whole watershed, but when we’re looking at a watershed scale, the plans become cumbersome and difficult for local communities to identify with. It’s difficult to strike the balance between comprehensive and specific.

Advocates should be familiar with these plans, and should use them where they serve us, but shouldn’t be limited by plans’ shortcomings. The 1996 county LARMP, useful and important as it was and still is, didn’t include large new parks at Taylor Yard or the Cornfield Yards or even small ones including Marsh Park or Steelhead Park. Much of the work done along the river have been bottom-up grassroots efforts where environmentalists, residents, soccer players, businesses, bicyclists, parents, and others (including some elected officials and governmental agencies) came together around meeting the needs of local communities.

To date, a lot of the river revitalization projects, from South Gate to Frogtown to El Monte have been opportunistic. Considerably less of an orderly implementation of master planning than opportunistic seizing of opportunities. Our waterways run through diverse neighborhoods, so our plans for healthy rivers should be diverse, too. We should respect the steps forward taken through past planning efforts while we continue go beyond them.

(Keep your RSS tuned to LA Creek Freak – More information on these and other plans in upcoming blogs!)

Conservancy Acquires LA River / Rio Hondo Confluence Parcel

August 28, 2008 § Leave a comment

Alina Bokde at the South Gate Site

I recently toured the Lower Los Angeles River with Alina Bokde of the RMC (that’s short for the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy.) We were showing some lower river sites to a pair of professors from Stockholm who are bringing urban design students here next year. Alina had some good news for me: her conservancy recently acquired an large riverside parcel located in the city of South Gate!

The South Gate Riparian Restoration Project site is located immediately east of the confluence of the Los Angeles River and the Rio Hondo. It has long been considered problematic for development as automotive access is nearly impossible, due to the land being sandwiched between the 710 Freeway and the Los Angeles River. The RMC closed escrow on August 12th, paying $630,000 for the privately-owned 8-acre site (mostly from county “Prop A” park monies funds.) The city of South Gate is contributing another $1.5 million (also from Prop A) for design and construction of a multi-benefit natural park. North East Trees is just beginning design work; expected features include stormwater capture and treatment through vegetated bioswales. Also planned are benches, a walking trail and a rest stop for bicyclists on the adjacent South County LA River Bike Trail. The park is much-needed for these population-dense park-poor neighborhoods in southeast LA County.

The park will be operated and maintained by the RMC‘s new JPA (Joint Powers Authority) called the WCA (for Watershed Conservation Authority – a joint powers authority between the RMC and the LA County Flood Control District.) and the project isn’t expected to be complete and open for another couple years. There doesn’t seem to be any information available online right now, but see the WCA’s website for information soon.

Throwing the waters, a real throw-down near El Monte

August 4, 2008 § 3 Comments

Scene of the fight: Lexington Wash/Rio Hondo, and the San Gabriel River bed, between Bassett and El Monte. Source: USGS circa 1900

You’ve all probably heard the Mark Twainism, “Whiskey is for drinkin’, water is for fightin’.” Here’s a tale that brings the phrase to life. “Turning” or “throwing” the waters, i.e. the digging of ditches, placement of dams, or other methods to redirect river flows out of one’s property – and onto someone else’s – was apparently not unheard of. In 1867-68, the San Gabriel River took over the Lexington Wash (which joined, or was part of, the Rio Hondo), with serious consequences for some. From the James P. Reagan interviews of 1914, in which George H. Peck sets the stage:

“…(t)he place is still known as the Old Peck place. It was a mistake to have bought the land on the river, but we did not know it at the time.

In 1868 our troubles began with the river. We lost about 150 acres that year, and each succeeding flood took its quota of spoils until there was barely 150 acres left of the original 480 acres which my father bought.

Lexington Wash was commonly known in those days as Lick Skillet Wash. In those days and even now the river bed was higher than the land on each side. When the floods came down it was no difficulty to direct the water to either side of the river bed. The water would flow readily either way if left alone it would usually split and go in each direction. However, it was not left alone.

In our case, the water began washing away our land and we wanted to protect our place and get rid of the water. Many times I have gone up the river, taking a few Indians with me to move a few boulders about and get the water going the way we wanted it to. By placing a double row of boulders across the stream it would raise the river water level enough to throw the water over the other way.

Of course, it brought opposition for people on the other side did not want the water either. It finally became serious, and when a man wanted his work to stand it was necessary to stay with it, armed with a double-barrelled shot gun…

Mr W. R. Dodson complains of his bad neighbors:

In 1889 he had a house washed away and quite a piece of ground. The house stood just above where the bridge is now. He says the principal cause of the big water in 1889 in the west of El Monte branch of the San Gabriel river was on account of the people on the east or Bassett side of the San Gabriel turning the water over into the west branch.

He says sometime in about 1890 himself and others built a rock dam about half a mile above the Peck place, to keep the water over in the old or east channel of the San Gabriel. The dam was some 300 or 400 feet long, and about two to two and one-half feet high. He himself paid about 50 men for 2 or 3 days work, and he claims parties from down Downey way — the Scott people and Jim Durffy – came up and turned the water back into the west branch, and helped the water to tear down their dam. He claims their dam stopped the water from coming down the west side, and would have continued to do so if the other parties had left the water alone.

He says another time he had about twenty men working up there and 3 or 4 from the other side came to turn it back. Says he had a shot gun with him, and told his men to go ahead, and the other parties to beat it, and they beat it.

He says there has been more or less fighting and turning of water for the last thirty years; the people of the east side turning the water to the west side, and the people of the west side building dams and trying to keep it from coming that way.

He says they had more water in the Rio Hondo at El Monte in 1914 than every before. Says Davis, the rock quarry man, was mostly to blame; took all the rocks out of the stream and on this side of the Santa Fe for about a mile, and that naturally made the water run to the westerly, or El Monte side.

Mr. Walter P. Temple recalled the events:

..(t)here were efforts by various parties to turn the river back to its old channel but there were other parties who wished it to continue to the westward and who would undo or help to undo the work of the first parties. It became serious for a time and force was used in the way of shot guns to maintain the levee built…

Mr. Victor Manzanares chimed in:

…(t)here used to be some trouble between the Americans who then were trying to turn the river either to the east or the west. Sometimes some men would go up above El Monte where the river divided, and put a dike or bank across the river to turn all of the river to the east or back to the original bed. Other men would find it out and go up there and tear their work down and turn the water down the west side, which would come down and join the Rio Hondo. There was some bad feeling about turning this water from branch of the river to the other and some times it was necessary to guard the work with a gun to get it to stay there. I know three men who were sent up there at night to break one of these levees…

And Mr. Jose Silva:

I never knew much about the changing of the San Gabriel river to the west of El Monte. We have always known the San Gabriel to pass over to the Bassett side and think that is where a river has always been and where it belongs, although there are a good many people who think that it should go over west of El Monte, and who will object to all of the water being cut off and turned to the Bassett side.

…I have heard that many of the old time Americans have put small levees of sacks and sand to turn the water from one side to the other according to where they wanted the water to go. Mr. Peck used to turn the water to the west while Mr. Dodson wanted the water to go through the east side. There was some strong words about it and sometimes a man would have to stay on his work with a shotgun to insure its staying there. I have heard that Mr. Durfee was interested too, but I do not know any of the men who did the work…When the water was running it was easy to turn the river either way and a man with a pick or shovel could easily turn the water…”

Here’s Mr. Durffy’s side of the story:

Mr. Durffy says that about 1889 the water from San Gabriel Canyon broke out of the old bed just below the Santa Fe tracks, where the steel bridge is, and went westerly toward Duarte, and then down on the westerly side of El Monte. The Santa Fe and some of the people down at El Monte decided to turn it back into the old channel one Sunday, and he, and others interested did not say what the names of the others were, did not get wind of it until Saturday afternoon, and he came to town to get an injunction, but County offices were all closed up and he could not get an injunction out. The Santa Fe (b?)ought out quite a bunch of men and quite a number came up from El Monte early Sunday morning and commenced building a dam to turn the water back into the easterly branch, or where it had run before it broke out. He and some others that were interested in keeping the waters over on the westerly side as it had gone over there from natural causes, and it was the lowest side, found by experimenting with a shovel, and as the other side has all the disadvantage of a direct drop from 2 to 2 ½ feet, that one man with a shovel was worth more than 50 men on the other side building up, and they decided they did not need an injunction. He says part of the water has gone there ever since.

He says he does not know anything about the rock dam Mr. Dodson built about half a mile above the Peck place, and claimed that some people from Downey and the Scott people and himself helped the water tear down. He thinks Mr. Dodson is mistaken; and anyway the dam he built could not have amounted to much in keeping the water from going over El Monte way, as it was too far south to help much; that most of the water went over on the west side before it got down that far.

We know the river was a difficult neighbor – I’m not so sure about some of these people either!

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