News of the Arroyo
Title: | Arroyo Seco restoration has become a city goal |
Subtitle: | |
Date: | 2003-06-08 |
Summary: | June 8, 2003 - The potential for stream restoration in the Lower Arroyo and the Arroyo Seco Foundation are featured in a front page story in the Sunday Star News. |
Author: | Gene Maddaus, Staff Writer |
Publication: | Pasadena Star News |
Content: | The Arroyo Seco Foundation, a group that wants to see concrete channels removed from the Arroyo Seco, and replaced with naturalized streambeds. (PHOTO BY WALT MANCINI) PASADENA -- There was a time, Charles McKenney recalls, when paving a natural stream was an uncontroversial idea. In 1971, when McKenney was about to take office as a city director, as council members were then called, he spotted an item on the board\'s consent calendar that would authorize the \"channelization\' of the Arroyo Seco in one of the last stretches where it remained a natural stream. Consent calendar items tend to be routine matters awaiting a bureaucratic rubber stamp. McKenney asked the item be pulled for further debate, and after three years of wrangling, the board voted against paving the Arroyo between the Colorado Street and Holly Street bridges. The mayor at the time, Donald F. Yokaitis, wanted to pave the channel. \"I\'m opposed to letting Mother Nature have her way and breed mosquitoes,\' the mayor was quoted as saying, in the March 1, 1974, edition of the Star- News, which McKenney still keeps in his files. \"In those days,\' McKenney said, the attitude about flood control was, \'If something needs to be channelized, let\'s channelize it.\'\' The attitude could hardly be more different now. The city recently gathered $1 million to clean up and preserve the six- tenths of a mile of natural streambed that McKenney and others saved 30 years ago. And the soon-to-be-approved Arroyo Seco Master Plan lists \"streambed restoration\' the wholesale removal of existing flood channels as a city goal. \"The city is highly supportive of stream course restoration anywhere in Pasadena\'s Arroyo Seco that it would be feasible to do,\' said Rosa Laveaga, supervisor of Arroyo Seco Park. The idea of blasting away the flood control channels started to gain popularity in the early 1980s. Engineers began to wonder whether all that concrete, installed in massive county public works projects in the 1930s and 1940s, is really necessary to hold back a flood. \"The more we looked at it, the more we realized there is a lot of potential for stream restoration almost all the way along the Arroyo,\' said Tim Brick, the managing director of the Arroyo Seco Foundation. Brick has advocated transforming the Arroyo from a concrete wash to a babbling brook for nearly two decades. He is the idea\'s most vocal champion. Brick, disappointed that the master plan doesn\'t make any technical commitments to stream restoration, outlined his ideas on a recent trip to the Arroyo. He led a reporter and a photographer around a padlocked gate and onto the paved bicycle bridge that runs underneath the Colorado Street Bridge. The span affords a view of the natural stretch of water to the north and of the gray channel to the south. Brick believes the flood-control channel could be removed between Colorado Street and the La Loma Bridge, a distance of about eight-tenths of a mile, without increasing the flood risk to homes farther south, in the Busch Gardens development. In fact, if the channel were terraced, Brick believes the channel would be wider and safer. \"You could actually have a much more natural stream with an even greater capacity for flood protection,\' Brick said. Not everyone agrees with him. At presentations, Brick is occasionally confronted by an old- timer who remembers the catastrophic flood of 1938, and who knows that ugly though it may be, the concrete is there for a reason. \"It absolutely needs to be approached very carefully, so no increased flood damage or threat would result from it,\' Brick said. Three years ago, Brick\'s organization teamed up with North East Trees to commission a study on the Arroyo Seco watershed. A major finding, released last year, suggested the restoration of the stream is a feasible goal, Brick said. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is about to begin its own study, expected to last four years and cost $3.5 million. The study will examine whether restoration could be accomplished in the Arroyo Seco, or even the Los Angeles River. The Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council supports restoration of both waterways, but its executive director, Rick Harter said Friday he believes the goal is a long way off. \"Ultimately, it may be a goal that\'s worthy and interesting to pursue,\' Harter said. But he cautioned, especially for the Los Angeles River, that \"its short term practicality is very slim.\' For one thing, there\'s the cost. There are no hard numbers just yet, but Brick guesses it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to blast out the concrete embedded at the bottom of the Arroyo. A public works employee once gave an offhand estimate of $900 million per mile, Brick said, more than it cost to build the 13.7-mile Gold Line. There are suggestions for cheaper approaches, and Brick argues that eventually the channels will be so worn out that it will cost millions to refurbish them. Why not spend those millions on restoration, rather than reinforcement? The watershed council is focusing its energies on the more modest goal of \"daylighting\' smaller tributaries funneled into underground pipes. But Arthur Golding, the organization\'s president, said that if restoration can happen anywhere, it will be in the Arroyo. \"The Arroyo Seco is the most feasible short-term restoration project,\' Golding said. \"It\'s difficult, but it is not as difficult as almost any other part of the system.\' Much of the Arroyo is already city parkland, and there is hardly any construction in the Lower Arroyo floodplain. The area is controlled by only a handful of agencies, meaning it would be easier to build political consensus for restoration, Golding said. Golding said restoration could begin in as little as five years. Brick hopes it could start in three, but acknowledges it could take as long as 15. \"There\'s really two questions that Pasadena and the other communities have to decide,\' Brick said. \"No. 1, do we have the political will to do it? And two, what are the technical issues?\' The technical issues have been resolved in Northern California and outside the state, where successful stream restoration projects have already occurred. As far as the political climate goes, the days are long gone when the mayor would publicly oppose a preservation campaign because he doesn\'t like mosquitoes. \"If the studies support the feasibility of the removal of the channel,\' said Mayor Bill Bogaard, \"I\'d be enthusiastic about removing the channel at least from the Lower Arroyo.\' McKenney, who spared six- tenths of a mile 30 years ago but insists he\'s not an environmentalist, said it doesn\'t take an environmentalist to advocate stream restoration. \"I don\'t think there\'s anyone in Pasadena who doesn\'t share that goal,\' he said. \"I\'m just struck by how people have become more aware and more appreciative of the Arroyo since the days when the city would put the prospect of channelizing on the consent calendar. That, to me, shows tremendous progress.\' -- Gene Maddaus can be reached at (626) 578-6300, Ext. 4444, or by e-mail at gene.maddaus@sgvn.com. |
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