Video courtesy of Joe Linton, L.A. Creek Freak

July 13, 2010

Listen to an interview with Shelly Backlar, FoLAR’s executive director, on KPFK’s “Uprising”,  about the EPA’s historic decision and its implications, below.

July 8, 2010

EPA declares L.A. River ‘traditional navigable waters’

The designation is crucial to applying Clean Water Act protections to the concrete-lined waterway often regarded as little more than a flood-control channel.

Jennifer Heraldez, left, of the L.A. Conservation Corps takes river-water temperature as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas get a close-up view of L.A. River tributary Compton Creek. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times

U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on Wednesday declared the entire concrete-lined Los Angeles River channel “traditional navigable waters,” a designation crucial to applying Clean Water Act protections throughout its 834-square-mile urban watershed.

“We’re moving away from the concrete,” Jackson told more than 200 residents and government officials on the banks of one of the river’s heavily polluted tributaries, Compton Creek.

“This is a watershed as important as any other,” she said. “So we are going to build a federal partnership to empower communities like yours .… We want the L.A. River to demonstrate how urban waterways across the country can serve as assets in building stronger neighborhoods, attracting new businesses and creating new jobs.”

The decision may seem odd to people who know the L.A. River as a flood-control channel of treated water a few inches deep flowing between massive, graffiti-marred concrete banks strewn with rotting garbage and broken glass, and occasionally polluted with chemicals illegally dumped in storm drains and gutters that empty into it.

Jackson said the EPA considered factors beyond whether the river’s flow and depth can support navigation from its origins at the confluence of the Arroyo Calabasas and Bell Creek in the San Fernando Valley all the way to San Pedro Bay, a distance of about 51 miles.

Among other considerations, EPA officials said, were recreational and commercial opportunities, public access, susceptibility to restoration, and the presence of ongoing restoration and educational projects.

The designation overturned an earlier ruling by the Army Corps of Engineers that only four miles of the river were navigable, which would have made it easier to develop its upper reaches by eliminating the need for certain federal permits.

“This is an important day, one we’ve been working toward for years,” said poet and writer Lewis MacAdams, founder of Friends of the Los Angeles River. “It is a day when the EPA has essentially redefined the L.A. River and its values. In other words, starting today, a flood control channel is only one of its many characteristics.”

David Beckman, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, suggested that the shift could affect the way many other river systems are managed.

“The EPA’s decision has been closely watched as an indicator of whether similar rivers throughout the West — dry as a bone one day, a torrent the next — would lose historical protections under the Clean Water Act,” he said. “So this is great news. It means less pollution in the river and provides a vital support for community efforts to rejuvenate and restore it.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas would not argue with any of that. At the news conference he announced the purchase of a four-acre portion of the Compton Creek riverbed devastated by decades of storm runoff and illegal dumping.

The stretch of creek bed choked with foliage and trash was bought from the nearby Crystal Casino and Hotel with $1.5 million of Proposition 8 funds in an arrangement led by Ridley-Thomas and partners including the environmental group Heal the Bay, the EPA, L.A. County and the city of Compton. The creek bottom is now controlled by a joint-powers entity of the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy. Public ownership of this parcel will allow for prompt restoration, Ridley-Thomas said.

“We are now launched on a project that will significantly improve the quality of life of the people of Compton and adjacent communities,” he said. “I am calling for an ecosystem restoration study of Compton Creek. In the near term, we can look at developing pedestrian and bike access.”

It was unclear whether the EPA’s announcement would prompt Los Angeles County flood control officials to alter maintenance operations along an 8-mile stretch of Compton Creek, including annual bulldozing of debris and vegetation.

County authorities contend that the operations are needed to protect lives and property during storm season along the creek, which runs through several cities en route to the L.A. River. Compounding problems, the channel’s levee systems do not meet federal standards.

Mark Pestrella, deputy director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, said the EPA’s decision “opens the door for the federal government to use habitat restoration, for example, as a value that must be taken into account when competing for dollars for various projects.”

Among those listening at the news conference was Heather Wylie, a former project manager in the Ventura field office of the Army Corps of Engineers, who lost her job after kayaking down a stretch of the L.A. River in late 2008.

The expedition was in protest of the agency’s ruling that year that only a small portion of the river was boat-worthy. She was suspended from her duties and eventually left the agency.

“All I did was go kayaking to make a point about Clean Water Act protections,” she said. “I am grateful for the EPA stepping in and fixing this.”

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

Folar Founder Lewis MacAdams watches as EPA’s Administrator Lisa Jackson makes the announcement at a press conference July 7 on Compton Creek, Photo courtesy of Miguel Luna, Urban Semillas

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Hear about River Revitalization Projects in the City of Los Angeles

AND

See a brief presentation about FoLAR’s Project:

The Piggyback Yards:  A Vision for Transforming 125 Acres of

River-Adjacent Land Through Downtown

Sunday June 13 9:30am-~4:30pm (option to leave midday) - Carpool tour South LA River, Downtown LA to River’s mouth in Long Beach– w/ Taco & Paleta stops.

Everyone in Los Angeles has seen the LA River, and has heard that it’s being revitalized. But who knows where it is, exactly–and what exactly is happening on its banks? Come walk and drive along the river’s even less well-known southern half, as we talk about the river’s central role in the region’s history and the necessity of the ambitious revitalization to LA’s future.

The tour convenes at LA State Historic Park in Chinatown, where we form carpools. Stops include the downtown spot that’s in all the movies, Maywood Riverfront Park, Compton Ck., the brand-new stunning Dominguez Gap Wetland in Long Beach, and the mouth of the River.

We’ll stop at a fabled Long Beach taco shop–or bring your own lunch–and we’ll cool off with paletas at tour’s end.

Led by Jenny Price. Car-caravan tours –$20 members/$25 non. Nonprofits and students–contact FoLAR for member rate. Group rate available. Dogs welcome (and free).

Spaces limited, and advance sign-up required–Contact Shelly at sbacklar@folar.org or 323-223-0585. 

Starting point–N end of LA State Historic Park on Baker St (access from Spring St.) — across from Farmlab and 1785 Baker St.– Park outside the gates. Note: no bathroom at this spot.

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L.A.’s iconic 6th Street Bridge is failing and needs to be replaced; can we come up with something as good?

From the Los Angeles Times

April 25, 2010|By Lewis MacAdams and Alex Ward

In Life magazine photographer Horace Bristol’s 1933 photo, the 6th Street Bridge’s graceful, steel, streamline Moderne arches gleam in the sunlight, the perfect symbol of a young metropolis just coming into its own. When it opened in 1932, according to Joe Linton’s “Down By the Los Angeles River: Friends of the Los Angeles River’s Official Guide,” the nearly mile-long link was the longest concrete bridge in the world. It was also the last great downtown Los Angeles River bridge — formally known as a viaduct because it spans not just a river but railroad tracks and roads — and the crowning achievement of the city’s engineer for bridges and structures, Merrill Butler, who, over four decades of service, oversaw the construction of at least nine Los Angeles River bridges. It was truly a bridge that a river could love.

No L.A. River bridge has more spectacular views of the downtown skyline than the 6th Street Bridge. None says “L.A.” more unmistakably. Scenes in “Terminator 2″ and “Grease” were shot at the bridge. Madonna, Kid Rock and Kanye West have featured it in videos. Dozens of car chases, hundreds of commercials and thousands of L.A. Marathon competitors have been framed in the bridge’s double steel arches.

No bridge in the city carries more symbolic weight either. There is no more direct route between Boyle Heights and the financial district than 6th Street, no bridge that better illustrates the physical proximity and the psychic distance between the working-class Eastside and the towers of the Figueroa corridor than 6th Street. No bridge more accurately symbolizes the forces that bring us together and pull us apart.

But the bridge is sick. The sand the city quarried from the site 80 years ago to produce the structure’s concrete turns out to have been toxic, triggering an alkali-silicon reaction that is slowly turning the bridge’s concrete into jelly. If you stand underneath it, you can easily see the concrete’s deterioration. The bridge isn’t unsafe for routine travel yet, but the city’s Bureau of Engineering gives the 6th Street Bridge a 70% chance of failure in a major seismic event. The bureau dispatched the dean of American bridge historians, Eric DeLony — the same Eric DeLony who just a few years earlier oversaw a study that led to the inclusion of the downtown L.A. River bridges in the Historical American Engineering Record — to survey other U.S. bridges stricken by the same phenomenon. DeLony’s report reluctantly recommended that the bridge be replaced, and there’s little doubt that it will be. The $400-million dollar question is: With what?

urrently, $200 million from the city’s Prop. 1B bond — about half what it will take to replace the bridge — has been set aside for the project. A draft environmental impact report has been completed, and a final report is expected soon. The Bureau of Engineering and its consultants have introduced five design alternatives, most of which attempt to replicate the current bridge’s signature arches. But not one of them comes close to equaling the current bridge’s singular drama. None of the designs has drawn much enthusiasm from the Bureau of Engineering’s neighborhood advisory committee, from the American Institute of Architects or from the Los Angeles Conservancy. None of the designs has stirred anybody’s blood or grabbed anybody’s imagination.

All over the Earth, bridges are important symbols of their metropolises. Everyone knows the Rialto Bridge in Venice, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate. Bridges rightfully come to symbolize a city’s aspirations, its hopes and dreams.

Ours is an age of magnificent new bridges. In the past decade a new era of artistry and technical mastery has yielded a new generation of brilliant structures. The next time you’re trolling the Internet, check out Ben van Berkel’s Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, Christian Menn’s Bunker Hill Bridge over the Charles River in Boston and Santiago Calatrava’s Sundial Bridge that spans the Sacramento River, the newest tourist attraction in Redding. Look at L.A.-based Buro Happold’s Mobius Bridge in Bristol, in Britain. All are different, all are amazing. The specific style of the replacement bridge is less important than assuring that the design be unique, appropriate and iconic.

To promote the highest level of design, Los Angeles should hold an international design competition juried by bridge design experts with strong local participation.

The new bridge’s design and its surroundings should be judged, in part, by whether it adheres to the principles set forth in the city’s L.A. River Revitalization Master Plan, and to Friends of the Los Angeles River’s goal of a “swimmable, fishable, boatable river.” The design should contribute to increased riverfront open space, restored habitat and improved water quality. Dedicated bicycle and pedestrian circulation, not just on the bridge but to the bridge, should be encouraged, along with increased access to the river. The project should enhance the value of the neighborhoods at both ends of the bridge and encourage vibrant riverfront communities on both banks. The design should incorporate dramatic lighting and anticipate the eventual elimination or covering of the railroad tracks that line both banks of the river.

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Los Angeles. The city must rise to the occasion and build a bridge that is as much a landmark as the bridge it’s replacing; a 21st century viaduct so striking that it comes to symbolize the city; a bridge that our river can love.

Lewis MacAdams and Alex Ward, A.I.A., are members of the board of directors of Friends of the Los Angeles River.

Horace Bristol, 6th Street Bridge, Los Angeles, 1933

Santiago Calatrava’s Sundial Bridge, Redding, CA

Ben van Berkel’s Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam

Rialto Bridge, Venice

Buro Happold’s Mobius Bridge, Bristol

Christian Menn’s Bunker Hill Bridge over the St. Charles River, Boston

FedEx Volunteers to Serve in Six U.S. Communities April 23 through May 12, 2010

WASHINGTON, April 14, 2010 - FedEx Corp. and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) announced today the six local projects selected to receive funding and FedEx team member volunteer support in 2010 through a unique collaboration to address the most pressing urban environmental challenges in major U.S. cities. Grants will be awarded to local nonprofits in Los Angeles, Memphis, New York City, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. that will maximize FedEx philanthropic and volunteer resources to improve air and water quality and enhance urban community spaces.

“As a global company, with a significant portion of our operations, people and facilities based in metropolitan centers, we highly value healthy urban spaces,” said Mitch Jackson, vice president, environmental affairs and sustainability, FedEx Corp. “Our work with NFWF offers a unique opportunity for our team members to work directly with local nonprofits to improve the urban spaces that we share with the communities where we live and work. We congratulate the six community groups that were selected to receive 2010 grants.”

“At the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation we believe that collaboration with innovative global leaders like FedEx Corp., as well as local grassroots conservation organizations, is key to tackling some of our nation’s most pressing conservation challenges,” said Jeff Trandahl, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s executive director.

During the next three weeks, FedEx team members will participate in a day of service with NFWF’s grant recipients to help clean the Los Angeles River, plant trees in Memphis and Pittsburgh, mentor youth while building a green roof on Randall’s Island in New York City, convert a condemned nursery into a LEED-certified facility in San Francisco, and develop an outdoor-living classroom in Washington, D.C.

“Urban conservation is vital to the health and well being of city inhabitants,” said Lynn Dwyer, northeast assistant director for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. “By developing green space and providing public access in densely populated areas, we are also helping to deliver a straightforward answer to modern day problems, such as pollution and energy usage.”

The FedEx contributions, ranging from $25,000 to $50,000 per project, will be implemented through NFWF’s Five Star Restoration Program and the Long Island Sound Futures Fund. Funds from FedEx and NFWF will be significantly leveraged by support from federal and state government agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as other private and non-profit partners, resulting in a four-to-one match.

The FedEx commitment to NFWF is in support of FedEx EarthSmart Outreach, which is a focus area of EarthSmart - a FedEx commitment to deliver innovations to meet ambitious sustainability goals. EarthSmart Outreach is a program empowering FedEx and team members to contribute to the community in environmentally-focused ways. In 2011, FedEx will expand the collaboration with NFWF to include Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Indianapolis, Philadelphia and Seattle. Complete information on the FedEx and NFWF grants are available at www.nfwf.org/fedex.

The organizations selected to receive grants in 2010 are:

Los Angeles
Grantee: Friends of the Los Angeles River (FOLAR)
FedEx Grant Award: $25,000 / NFWF Match: $48,300
Project Date: April 30, 2010
Project Description: Volunteers will participate in a river cleanup and support educational activities for River School Day, which provides hands-on educational experiences for 4th - 12th grade students along the banks of the Los Angeles River.

Memphis
Grantee: Living Lands and Waters (LL&W)
FedEx Grant Award: $25,000 / NFWF Match: $37,788
Project Date: April 26 and 27, 2010
Project Description: Volunteers will work with LL&W and Shelby Farms Park to plant, water, and mulch trees in containers to be replanted along the shorelines and islands of major waterways, as well as within towns and cities across as part of the Million Trees initiative.

New York City
Grantee: GreenApple Corps
FedEx Grant Award: $50,000 / NFWF Match: $70,222
Project Date: April 23, 2010
Project Description: The project will expand a “green roof” of shrubs, trees, grasses and rain barrels on Randall’s Island to keep storm water from running off into the sewer system, to provide habitat for birds, and for educational purposes.

Pittsburgh
Grantee: Western Pennsylvania Conservancy
FedEx Grant Award: $25,000 / NFWF Match: $610,000
Project Date: May 7, 2010
Project Description: Efforts in conjunction with TreeVitalize Pittsburgh will help beautify a portion of the public Riverfront Trail along the Ohio River by planting trees.

San Francisco
Grantee: Golden Gates Parks Conservancy
FedEx Grant Award: $50,000 / NFWF Match: $25,000
Project Date: May 12, 2010
Project Description: The project will replace a condemned nursery building with a new LEED certified facility, the first element of a larger plan for a new Stewardship Center designed to enhance public use and enjoyment of the historic Presidio of San Francisco as a national park.

Washington, D.C.
Grantee: RiverSmart Schools
FedEx Grant Award: $50,000 / NFWF Match: $100,000
Project Date: May 11, 2010
Project Description: Volunteers will participate in an “outdoor-living classroom” program that will help to teach gardening, build community service skills, provide wildlife habitat and put students and teachers in touch with the natural environment.

About FedEx Sustainability
FedEx is committed to connecting the world responsibly and resourcefully. We have set long-term goals to reduce aircraft emissions 20 percent by 2020, increase FedEx Express vehicle efficiency by 20 percent by 2020, and expand on-site renewable energy generation and procurement of renewable energy credits. FedEx works to achieve these ambitious goals through EarthSmart-the FedEx roadmap for operating in an increasingly sustainable way and engaging our team members, customers, business partners, and the circle of influencer communities to help us reduce the environmental impact of our daily business operations. FedEx has been recognized for its sustainability commitment through inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index-a global list of the world’s largest, most sustainable organizations-and ranks #93 in Newsweek’s 2009 Top 500 Greenest Companies.

About FedEx Corp.
FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) provides customers and businesses worldwide with a broad portfolio of transportation, e-commerce and business services. With annual revenues of $33 billion, the company offers integrated business applications through operating companies competing collectively and managed collaboratively, under the respected FedEx brand. Consistently ranked among the world’s most admired and trusted employers, FedEx inspires its more than 280,000 team members to remain “absolutely, positively” focused on safety, the highest ethical and professional standards and the needs of their customers and communities. For more information, visit news.fedex.com.

About NFWF
The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is an independent conservation leader that in 25 years has awarded 10,800 grants to more than 3,700 organizations. By building partnerships, the congressionally chartered Foundation has leveraged $680 million into $1.6 billion to sustain, restore and enhance fish, wildlife and plant populations. For more information, visit www.nfwf.org.

Thank YOU, FedEx and NFWF!  

We look forward to working with your volunteer at River School Day, Friday April 30, 2010. 

Panel Discussion on the Los Angeles River Revitalization Movement
3:00 – 4:00 pm

Panelists include Lewis McAdams, Friends of the Los Angeles River; Mia Lehrer, Principal, Mia Lehrer and Associates; Jeff Chapman, Center Director, Audubon Center at Debs Park

Moderated by Shelly Backlar, Executive Director, Friends of the Los Angeles River

Free with Admission
Free for PMCA Members
RSVP: 626-568-3665, ext. 17

Click here to visit the Pasadena Museum of California Art’s Website for more information

The Ulysses Guide to the LA River Exhibit is open until May 30, 2010.  This is a show that should not be missed!

Check out uglarbook.com to see the River artwork come to life.

6th Street Bridge by Mark Indig

 Thank you to everyone who entered our first ever FoLAR Photo Contest! After judges were shown the photos without knowing the names or affiliations of any entry, FoLAR is pleased to announce that Mark Indig, of Urban Photo Adventures, submitted the winning photograph of the 6th St Bridge. We believe this will make a beautiful postcard and we are grateful to be able to use this photo. Congratulations and Thank You to Mark!

We found the above image to be the most stunning and appropriate for a FoLAR postcard, however we had other favorites and we’d like to recognize a couple of runners up.

Our second favorite, a photo that some judges chose as their first choice, was submitted by Laurie Perlowin, entitled “She Weeps Into the River”.  Beautifully done Laurie! Thanks for your consistent membership and for submitting to our contest.

She Weeps Into The River by Laurie Perlowin

And third place came all the way from Seattle, from member James Lockwood, who took the photo below, looking north towards the Main St Bridge and Elysian Park. Thanks for continuing to support us James, even from afar!

Main St Bridge by James Lockwood

The four and a half miles of River through the central city is already the most isolated and inaccessible stretch of the entire River because of the train tracks that line the channel on either side. FoLAR’s proposal would essentially move the High Speed Rain right-of-way away from the River entirely, and hug the Gold Line right-of-way north of Union Station and parallel the 5 freeway. You will be hearing much more about this in the months to come, as the route of the High Speed Rail could impact River revitalization for the next Century.

December 1, 2009 was one of those history, big-step-forward days - the first meeting of the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles River Revitalization Corporation (RRC). One of the key recommendations of the City’s LA River Revitalization Master Plan, the RRC is a not-for-profit body established by the City of LA empowered to own and develop land and buildings, manage and operate facilities, and to use all legal funding tools and parnerships to implement the objectives of the Master Plan, the city’s primary entity to do direct public and private financing to River-related revitalization projects.

The five directors of the RRC, appointed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Councilman Ed Reyes, who chairs the Ad Hoc LA River Committee, and Council President Eric Garcetti, represent a real cross-section of the City. Chairman Harry Chandler is a long time friend of FoLAR. Other members include Bruce Saito, the head of the LA Conservation Corps, actor Daphne Zuniga, lawyer Daniel Tellalian, and civil engineer Dennis Martinez. The five Directors bring a variety of experience in project management, funding dispersal, and construction oversight.

The spirit in the room, among the newly appointed Directors, the representatives of the city departments, and environmental observers, was very high. The effort to create a Los Angeles River Greenway has taken another big step.

FoLAR’s Board, with the leadership of newly-elected Board Chairman Alex Ward of lxw design, is calling for an international competition to propose alternatives to the current plans to tear down and re-build the 6th St Bridge over the LA River. The weakened bridge has fallen victim to a well-documented problem that has destroyed many older poured concrete bridges. A chemical reaction causes the concrete to disintegrate, creating cracks and eventually causing the collapse of the bridges that were made with a certain kind of sand, used widely when the 6th St Bridge was built in 1932.

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www.kevinscamera.com

Working with architects at Buro Happold and Hargreaves Associates, FoLAR is proposing a call for ideas from around the world to create a new bridge, iconic on its own merits, rather than a pallid imitation of our current 6th Street Bridge. If we are to lose such an icon, something of international scope selected from a pool of international talent should take its place as a centerpiece of the Los Angeles city scape. If you would like to support this idea, please feel free to contact FoLAR via email. Updates will come as this effort unfolds.SPACE
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www.kevinscamera.com