Famous in many movies as the desolate runaway place of concrete bed and steep cement banks, it finally appears the community realizes the value of it once again, actually having a river rather than a canal that runs dry most of the year.
Very good news.
Plan for L.A. River OKd
The City Council approves a costly effort to remake the waterway. Much work remains.
By Steve Hymon
Times Staff Writer
May 10, 2007
Embracing an ambitious and expensive vision, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a long-awaited blueprint for revitalizing the much-maligned Los Angeles River.
The plan — which itself cost $3 million — calls for spending as much as $2 billion over the next half a century on more than 200 projects along the 31 miles of riverbed within city limits.
It took five years to frame the details, but the roots of the proposed river restoration go back to a fledgling group of environmentalists who in the late 1980s began insisting that the river was more than just a concrete-lined flood-control channel.
"This is a great step," said Lewis MacAdams, founder of the activist group Friends of the Los Angeles River. "One of our first slogans was when the steelhead trout returns to the Los Angeles River, then our work is done, and to see an acknowledgment of steelhead in the plan — well, I like that."
Echoing that thought was an ebullient Councilman Ed Reyes, who represents parts of northeast Los Angeles and who heads the council's river committee.
"This is now a real mandate that declares the river is a real river, and we're going to give it life and support the way it supported us when Los Angeles was first started," Reyes said.
Among the proposed projects are dozens of parks, pedestrian walkways and bridges. The plan also calls for some river-adjacent areas to be rezoned to allow for more housing near the stream.
At its most extreme and perhaps far-fetched, the plan also proposes knocking down one of the concrete walls that contain the river to expand the channel and make it look more natural. The Army Corps of Engineers is studying those issues.
"It's incredibly visionary, and I think they've set the bar high," said Nancy Steele, executive director of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council. "The key is going to be implementation."
Steele noted that the city and region have a rich history of putting together plans for rivers and then never following through. She noted that the river plan doesn't include upstream tributaries.
Hitting on that point, Councilman Richard Alarcon voted for the plan, but threatened to withhold support unless studies were conducted to include parks in his northeast San Fernando Valley district. "In the Valley" the river "goes through all the rich communities," Alarcon said.
