Restoring Los Angeles' RIVER system (video)

Xochitl, Tim Martinez, Ashley Wells (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly; Arroyo Seco Foundation 

(AS) Arroyo River Parks presents an exciting approach to stream restoration and watershed management in L.A. County's Arroyo Seco. Parks and open spaces along the river can be restored to make a living river. (Featuring Tim Martinez and Tim Brick, produced by Derrick DeBlasis for the Arroyo Seco Foundation).

LA's raging watershed, Devil's Gate

With regard to backward-thinking pro-capitalist nature of daylight savings, Native American wisdom teaches: "Only a fool can cut a foot off of the top of a blanket, sew it onto the bottom, and think that [one] now has a longer blanket" (BB). The same is true of our native Los Angeles river system, ruined to make concrete flood control channels only to realize Nature had done a far better and more sustainable job in the first place. Now the Army Corps of Engineers wants to restore the river to its natural state.

 

Restoring a Living River

LA River's mountain tributaries (sgranf/wiki)

HAHAMONGNA, Los Angeles - This year (2015) we have a historic opportunity to restore and even enhance the Arroyo Seco River, one of the main tributaries to the famous waterway that made possible the world's largest metropolitan area.

Arroyo River Parks map

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has adopted an ambitious $1-billion proposal to restore 11 miles of the mostly concrete Los Angeles River, and attention is turning to the Arroyo Seco (Spanish "dry creek bed" or intermittently dry wash, stream) and its future.

 

The Arroyo Seco confluence (merging area) with the Los Angeles River is included in the Army Corps' L.A. River Study, but the Corps has also been conducting a similar plan for the Arroyo Seco extending up to the San Gabriel Mountains, the range of foothills and peaks at the northern border of the massive County of Los Angeles.

Hiking to the top of the San Gabriel Mountain watershed above the city (Wisdom Quarterly)

Los Angeles native trout upstream in the L.A. foothills. Contact Tim Brick.

 

The Army Corps' concrete river (LA Times)

The Corps' "Arroyo Seco Watershed Ecosystem Restoration Feasibility Study" provides an enormous opportunity for river restoration throughout the urban portion of the Arroyo watershed (the area where most of the water exits the mountains onto the desert plains of Los Angeles and pours, or used to pour, into the nearby Pacific Ocean).

In response to the Corps' desire for community involvement, the Arroyo Seco Foundation has developed a guiding vision for this restoration -- the Arroyo River Parks Program.

River Parks Vision

Himalayas to the sea: Zanskar river, Ladakh

The goal of the Arroyo River Parks Program is to link existing parks and open spaces to each other and to the city's once vibrant river. Rather than focusing on a few key sites along the 11-mile urbanized water course, Arroyo River Parks is an approach that will integrate the more than 30 parks and open space linkages.

These linkages line the concrete-lined seasonal stream, and the goal is to make them part of a cohesive network supporting hydrological, ecological, and social connections -- to emphasize respect for place. Rather than just being parks that overlook a river, these parks and open spaces will be reconfigured as part of the river system.

 

We look forward to your involvement and support as we pursue this exciting opportunity for the restoration of the Arroyo Seco watershed. More

• The Arroyo Seco Foundation
• Why I refuse to eat or use plastic
• California plant natives: many sages
• Attorneys Mitchell M. Tsai and Christina M. Caro filed the lawsuit against the LA County Flood Control District on Dec. 11, 2014. After that, the hard work began, painstakingly going through the extensive administrative record and monitoring the regulatory permitting issues and process. In Feb. 2014 a mandatory settlement conference was held to explore whether an agreement on the sediment removal program could be reached without going through a trial. No settlement was reached. More

World-famous Pasadena Rose Bowl just below Hahamongna dam, northeast LA (woo/wiki)

Suing L.A. to save pre-Los Angeles Native American land in Hahamongna (now upper Pasadena), standing on dam in front of JPL with San Gabriel foothills in the distance (AS).