By Caleigh Wells for KCRW.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

The deluge of rain over the weekend flooded streets and damaged infrastructure across California. One place that didn’t flood? The Los Angeles River.

That, of course, is by design. It’s exactly why local officials starting excavating the river and lining it with concrete 85 years ago, and ever since, most of the LA River’s 51 miles from the Santa Susana Mountains to the San Pedro Bay have served primarily as a flood management system.

But a changing climate and changing ideas about how Angelenos want to live with nature are now sparking a debate about LA’s relationship with its straight-jacketed river. Is it too late for a better way?

The rewilding argument

A nonprofit called The River Project says no, and is advocating for restoring the original river ecosystem Angelenos enjoyed 100 years ago.

The River Project’s founder, Melanie Winter, dreams of the LA River as a natural, uninterrupted public space void of steep, concrete walls. She’s referred to one such section as LA’s version of Central Park.

A version of that dream actually already exists at the Sepulveda Basin in Encino. There, the river is a naturally babbling brook weaving around rocks and between trees.

“It has become the place that I bring people to talk about the river,” Winter says. “We're sitting in the middle of a 2,000-acre, undeveloped, federally-owned piece of property that's designed to flood.”

It smells like mud and wet plants, and during a 50-foot walk from a nearby grassy lawn to the river bank, the temperature plummets 10 degrees.

“If you allow the water to slow down, you're going to get healthier soils, you're going to get groundwater recharge, you're going to get richer habitats, you're going to get reduced fire risk, and because you're allowing the river more space within this vast open space, you're going to get more flood detention capacity,” says Winter.

LA County officials say community members have told them they want a more natural, open river with trails and trees. The River Project submitted a proposal that reimagined the river in the Sepulveda Basin and prioritized its historic natural behavior.

A case for concrete

But today, most of the river is still lined with concrete and the current plan is to keep it that way. Changing it would mean a complete overhaul of our decades-old urban environment. After all, the city originally prioritized flood management for a reason.

When it rains, rivers flood. The extra room the river needs to do that is called a floodplain, and the LA River’s concrete channel has allowed thousands of people to build their homes safely in that floodplain.

The river “needs to flow to provide these adjacent communities with the protection that they need, so that they're not worried about floodwaters damaging their property, their infrastructure, or their houses, and then also their lives,” says Genevieve Osmena, a senior civil engineer with LA County’s Department of Public Works. “The river would have to be widened anywhere from three to seven times to provide that more natural river I think that folks might be really wanting,” she says.

“The urban community that we have, was allowed to thrive and sprawl up through the last century because of the flood protection that was provided.”

So now we’re stuck. Returning to a natural river would mean relocating miles of neighborhoods along the river’s course. “It would be called displacement,” Osmena says. “It's a sacrifice that I'm not sure all communities or all neighborhoods would be willing to accept or volunteer for.”

Changing climate, changing needs

Winter says she’s heard that argument before, but it’s a conversation worth having as the climate crisis worsens storms and flooding.

“These communities that you say would be displaced by floodplain reclamation will be displaced in a much more violent way if we don't do something,” she says. “These engineering marvels have a shelf life. And sometimes they create more problems than they solve. … The entire system is not built for what we're facing.”

Scientists have run the numbers, and in a 1000-year atmospheric river flood, cleverly named an ARk storm, the LA River could overflow, forcing thousands of people living in its natural floodplain to evacuate and face devastating damages. Osmena says as the climate crisis makes extreme weather more common, the county is aiming to design the river to withstand a 100-year storm. 

Winter calls that inadequate. “We're looking for more open space in communities that lack them. We're looking to secure local water supply,” she says. “There's never been a better opportunity to show how important the river is to a climate-resilient Los Angeles.”

So stakeholders are faced with this question: do you make the best river for the planet’s health, or the best river for the safety of the people living near it?

“There's something in the middle.”

Candice Dickens is the CEO of Friends of the LA River and lives in Downey, right on the river, in the floodplain. She sees room for compromise.

“We don’t believe that nature-based solutions and safety are mutually exclusive,” she says. “And it's tough to go to the table with the city and be like, ‘So when are we going to get these folks to move?’ That's a little tough to do.”

As an alternative, Osmena points to an area in Long Beach about a dozen miles before the river meets the ocean. An old water quality detention pond sits next to the concrete channel where the LA River flows in damp times. In the late 90s, LA County officials engineered this area into a wetland. If a big storm hits that risks flooding, the water can go back to the concrete channel. 

But most days, the water flow is low enough that officials can divert it through the wetland.

“We have it meander through these channels that go back and forth with carefully selected plants and vegetation that will clean the water and improve the water quality, as well as foster habitat and ecosystem. It attracted I think, a lot more biodiverse range of animals, birds. I think people come here to watch birds,” Osmena says.

Having access to the land to do this kind of thing is rare, but in Cypress Park and Glassell Park, and where the Rio Hondo meets the river on the edges of Downey, South Gate and Lynwood, LA County has already found a few other chunks of the river to try out bringing nature to the parts of town that need it most.


Caleigh Wells wrote this article for KCRW.


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As Wyoming and other states grapple with shrinking Colorado River water levels - new research pinpoints how much water is being diverted to feed cattle, to sprawling desert cities, and the river's 40 million other stakeholders.

The stakes are high in a time of persistent and widespread drought.

Brian Richter - president of Sustainable Waters - said if Upper Basin states can't deliver the volume of water required under a century-old agreement, Lower Basin states could force the issue with what's known as a compact call.

"The likely result would be that the Upper Basin states, including Wyoming, would be forced to use less water," said Richter, "so that more water could be flowing into Lake Powell and downstream into the Lower Basin."

Researchers found that in Upper Basin states, cattle-feed crops soak up 90% of all irrigation water - which is three times the amount that goes to all cities, towns, commercial and industrial uses combined.

Just 19% of the Colorado River feeds the wetlands and riparian areas wildlife depend on.

Richter noted that cities in Utah and along Colorado's Front Range are at risk because they have very low priority for accessing water under the 1922 Colorado River Compact.

Despite calls for closing off spigots used exclusively for cattle feed, Richter said blaming any single user is counter-productive.

"Farmers and ranchers are growing the things that people want, and are willing to pay a necessary price for," said Richter. "So they are just responding to consumer demands."

He said he believes the new data could be an important tool for Colorado River stakeholders as they work to build a long term plan to bring the total use of water back in balance with what nature provides.

Richter said right now, water use is at least 10% to 15% over that limit.

"We need a long range plan that says how much water do we want to use in the cities? How much water do we want to use on the irrigated farms? How much are the industries going to need?" said Richter. "And until we do that long range plan, we are just going to be reacting to these water shortages on a year-by-year basis."




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Colorado lawmakers are considering legislation to restore protections to key waters and wetlands struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court last year in a decision leaving more than half of the nation's water supply at risk of industrial pollution.

Margaret Kran-Annexstein, director of the Colorado chapter of the Sierra Club, said House Bill 1379 is in sync with Colorado voters, pointing to a recent survey which found nearly nine in 10 voters want to limit damage and pollution from development, industry and mining on wetlands and streams.

"Recent polling has found that massive majorities of Coloradans, whether they are Democrat, Republican or Independent, really support common sense water protections that would happen under this bill," Kran-Annexstein reported. "I think we can all agree that clean water is a necessity."

A coalition of conservation groups support the measure to create a permitting program for responsible development through the Colorado Department of Health and Environment.

Last month, Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, R-Brighton, introduced an alternative proposal supported by the homebuilding industry, which would require a new division and staffing in the Department of Natural Resources.

Kran-Annexstein stressed clean, reliable water resources drive the economy and are vital for the health of communities. She believes the high court's ruling, claiming some waterways do not have significant connections to watersheds, was a win for corporate polluters who want to avoid permitting.

"In Colorado we know that there are a lot of streams and rivers and wetlands that run dry for certain parts of the year," Kran-Annexstein pointed out. "This ruling said that those waterways don't deserve protections and they don't count, just because they are seasonal."

Mountain states like Colorado are the source of drinking water for some 40 million Americans living in downslope states and Kran-Annexstein said the House bill is an opportunity to pass important and necessary protections after last year's Supreme Court decision.

"This decision left half of the waters across the United States unprotected by the Clean Water Act," Kran-Annexstein emphasized. "And really left it to states to make their own laws to protect state waters. And now it is the responsibility of states to step up and close that gap."

Today is World Water Day, a global observance to raise awareness about the importance of access to clean, fresh and safe water.

This year, advocates in the U.S. are urging Congress to restore protections under the Clean Water Act for smaller streams and wetlands, which were overturned in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year.

Jim Murphy, senior director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation, said rivers and streams in Mississippi used for swimming and fishing flow into larger bodies of water, so it is essential for the waterways to be safeguarded.

"It's really important for people to ensure that, with the rollbacks from the Supreme Court, that they're ensuring that their state and local leaders are doing what they can to protect the waters that people rely on," Murphy asserted.

A bill in Congress, the Clean Water Act of 2023, would reinstate the rule the Supreme Court struck down, and broaden the definition of which streams and waterways are subject to federal protection. It has more than 120 co-sponsors, but remains stalled in the U.S. House.

Murphy pointed to a poll, which found more than 90% of Americans think protecting the safety of drinking water, and the water in lakes, streams and rivers should be a priority. He added the most effective and cost-efficient approach to safeguarding water is to protect it before it gets to your home faucet.

"Protecting water at its source is the most important and one of the cheapest things we can do to ensure that people who are facing a crisis of dirty water are protected," Murphy explained. "In other cases, we also have to invest in the right type of infrastructure, to make sure that water is clean."

A boil water alert was issued for Jackson this week, as the result of repair work performed on the water system. In 2022, Jackson's water system crisis affected more than 150,000 residents, who were without clean or running water for weeks at a time.