![]() The crazy stunt worked: two years later, in 2010, the EPA declared the entire river to be "traditional, navigable waters," overturning the Army Corps' decision.Īnd in 2011, the river finally opened to kayaking, for the first time since it was put into its concrete channel. Former LAist photographer Tom Andrews documented the entire thing. They set out from Canoga Park in July 2008 and reached Long Beach three days later. In response, satirical writer George Wolfe and a rogue Army Corps biologist, Heather Wylie, decided to kayak the entire thing, to prove the Army Corps wrong. That same year, the first stretch of bike path opened in the Elysian Valley section of the river.īut the US Army Corps of Engineers argued that the river wasn't safe for people, except in two small sections. County produced a master plan outlining how exactly that would happen. McAdams began advocating for the restoration of the river, and in 1997, L.A. With one fell snip, MacAdams declared the L.A. According to the non-profit he founded, Friends of the Los Angeles River, "Lewis and two friends, whiskey in their blood and wire cutters in their hands, cut a hole in the surrounding chain link fence that had defined the river as an inhospitable drainage ditch. In 1985, a writer named Lewis McAdams took a pair of wire cutters and two friends down to the river and cut a hole in the fence. So When Did The River Begin To Come Back To Life? They erected fences and put up "No Trespassing signs." It took 20 years and 3.5 million barrels of cement, according to "The Los Angeles River, Its Life, Death and Possible Rebirth," but by the end the the river had been erased, transformed from an ecosystem into a freeway for moving flood water efficiently and safely from mountains to the sea. Afterwards, the dam-building, river-righting men at the US Army Corps of Engineers began encasing the river in a deep concrete channel that would keep it from spilling out of its banks during future floods. The flood marked the end of the river being a river. Schultheis Collection / Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library)Īt least 96 people died, and more than 1,500 homes were destroyed. If It Flows With Treated Wastewater Down A Concrete Channel, Is It Really A River? This water is typically cleaner than water that flows into the river from city streets and storm drains (more on this later). Instead, it's fed by wastewater discharged from three wastewater treatment plants in L.A., Burbank and Glendale. And eventually, they flow together to form the Los Angeles River.īut in the summer, when it doesn't rain in Los Angeles, the river doesn't just run dry. The creeks flow into each other, becoming larger and more powerful. When it rains up high in the mountains that ring the Los Angeles Basin, the water flows downhill, first in tiny rivulets, and then making its way into larger and larger creeks. Two main sources: rain and wastewater treatment plants. In total, the river runs for 51 miles and passes through 17 cities. It flows east, curving around Griffith Park and passing beneath the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains before flowing south all the way to Long Beach and the Pacific Ocean. It begins in the western San Fernando Valley at the foothills of the Simi Hills and the Santa Monica and Santa Susana Mountains.
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