Many Rivers to Cross …

Does Los Angeles County really have rivers?
Based on Thursday’s debacle of a Regional Water Board hearing, I’m not sure its staff believe that there is an L.A. River, Compton Creek, Santa Clara River, or San Gabriel River. Flood control channels, yes. Living, breathing rivers, no.
The item before the Board was Los Angeles County’s  Section 401 [...]

Bagging a Big Win

The Los Angeles City Council, spearheaded by Councilmembers Ed Reyes and Greig Smith, today unanimously approved a staff recommendation to adopt a citywide plastic bag ban by 2010 — if the state doesn’t enact a 25-cent per-bag fee by then. It also voted to support a Styrofoam ban on city property, including LAX, and at city-sponsored events. [...]

Corps Conflict

I recently had the chance to meet with Col. Thomas Magness, the head of the Los Angeles unit of the Army Corps of Engineers, which made the recent horrible decision to declare only a small portion of the Los Angeles River a so-called Traditionally Navigable Water. It’s a complicated story, but the Corps has jurisdiction [...]

Power to the People

Large cleanups along the Los Angeles River aren’t that unusual. Traditional environmental groups like Friends of the L.A. River and Heal the Bay have been leading sweeps for more than a decade. But a community drive to rehabilitate a soft-bottomed stretch of the river just north of downtown Los Angeles in late June was unusual, [...]