If you swept up all the debris and general nastiness from a
typical Los Angeles city street, what would you find? There would
be oil, brake dust, paper pamphlets, chemicals from lawn-care
products, cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers, animal feces, and
… well, you get the picture. Everyone knows that we aren’t
supposed to pour oil down those storm drains on the side of the
road because they run straight to the ocean, but many people
don’t realize that all this other street-crud ends up in the
ocean anyway. I don’t want to sound like a hippie, but in a
city as big and as wasteful as Los Angeles, this pollution thing is
kind of a big deal.
The way things are set up now, all the street-water runoff is
washed into the storm drains, which lead to the Los Angeles River,
which in turn, runs into the ocean. The whole system is full of
pollutants and it’s not a pretty picture ““ trust me,
I’ve seen it. You know the scene in that
“Terminator” movie when Arnold is driving the
motorcycle in that crazy concrete channel? Well, that’s the
L.A. River, and it looks to me like they cleaned it up a bit for
the movie shoot.
One of the ways to help clean up this mess involves what is
called “watershed management,” that is, the management
of the water that naturally runs down the surrounding mountains and
the water that unnaturally runs off of our filthy streets. The
current setup involves the L.A. River acting as a concrete
expressway to the Pacific, but some say that it doesn’t have
to be this way. One such person is Jennifer Price, an environmental
writer and author of “Paradise Reclaimed: A Field Guide to
the LA River,” a series of articles in LA Weekly.
Price writes about the history of the L.A. River, which was
bulldozed and turned into a concrete channel in 1938, in an attempt
to prevent future flooding. The resulting habitat was more or less
unlivable and many of the natural plant and animal species that
used to thrive in the river and along its banks have disappeared
entirely from the area. Furthermore, the impermeable concrete
doesn’t allow for water to seep back into the ground where it
can be cleansed and help to refill the aquifer, a series of natural
water-bearing chambers in underground rocks that could provide Los
Angeles with a percentage of its usable water.
Throughout this process, the L.A. River was renamed the
“Los Angeles River Flood Control Channel,” and was
thereafter only referred to as “The Flood Control
Channel” or “The Storm Control System.” This
renaming seriously hindered any would-be restoration attempts,
because there was no official river to restore. As Price writes,
“The river now belong(ed) in the same category as the
electrical grid and the freeway system. … And it all but vanished
from our collective memory.”
I had a chance to speak with Price on the phone about the
current state of the L.A. River, and she thinks things are headed
in the right direction. She spoke to me about her vision for river
revitalization, which includes the removal of some of the concrete
and the creation of bike paths and parks along the 51 miles of
river that run through Los Angeles County. Price is excited by the
potential that Los Angeles and its river have. She told me,
“Because the problems are so huge, the solutions are huge
too.”
There are currently plans slated for 21 new parks to be built
along the river. “The larger vision,” Price told me,
“is about revitalizing the environmental and social.”
She explained that having more parks is important to social health
as well as environmental health. Los Angeles lacks the public space
that parks could provide, so really this river revitalization
project is a win-win situation. Not only can we reduce the
pollution to the river and to the ocean, but we can also create a
green space for people to escape the smoggy hustle and bustle of
our concrete- and glass-filled city lives.
For UCLA students, a restored river could mean a new relaxing
place to study on those sunny Southern California afternoons. The
L.A. River could function as a Californian version of Walden Pond
for the next Henry David Thoreau. It could be a place of incredible
interest to students of biology or environmental studies, as well
as public policy and engineering, as battles are fought over
redesign.
The work being done on the L.A. River has acted as a catalyst,
jump-starting restoration movements in other areas. Stone Canyon
Creek runs behind the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and
efforts are currently underway to restore this natural space that
could become a nice retreat for students.
Price notes that river restoration is a serious business and
said that while the parks are a nice bonus, “this is not
about aesthetics ““ this is about making the air breathable
and the water drinkable.” It certainly would be nice to have
a healthier city, and in the process, we can add a bit of green to
our gray L.A. Weeds were never meant to grow out of the roof of my
neighbor’s garage, and birds were never meant to perch on the
power lines strung outside my window. I really can’t help but
think how irreversibly changed this once-beautiful, once-natural
landscape has become.
I’m not advocating that we bulldoze the shopping malls and
flood the 405, but there are things we can do to help make urban
life coexist with the natural world. If a balance can be found, we
will all reap the benefits.