News of the Arroyo
Title: | Let Arroyo Seco shed concrete |
Subtitle: | |
Date: | 2005-08-24 |
Summary: | August 24, 2005 - The Star News advocates restoring natural conditions in the Arroyo Seco. |
Author: | Editorial |
Publication: | Pasadena Star News |
Content: | FOR 20 years now, Arroyo Seco advocates have been calling for the removal of the concrete flood-control channel that runs down the middle of most of our area\'s scenic Big Ditch. Winding its way south from the Angeles National Forest, touching on La Canada Flintridge and Altadena, bisecting west Pasadena, taking a dogleg right near the San Pascual Stables in South Pas and heading into Highland Park and thus to the sea, the arroyo is a geographic presence that has created, through its beauty, an intellectual and recreational culture of deserved fame. From time immemorial until the WPA years of the 1930s, it also created some really impressive floods. One of them nearly swamped the newly built Rose Bowl before the stadium had a chance to have a hallowed history. Brookside Golf Course was torn apart. No one would have dared to build houses on the arroyo floor. Then the Army Corps of Engineers, aided by Depression-era cheap labor, conceived a plan to channelize much of the arroyo stream. Though the streambed is very rarely truly seco -- it is flowing several feet wide right now, for instance, months since any significant rain -- 99 percent of the time the unsightly channel serves no purpose. But during 100-year downpours such as this past year\'s rainy season, it certainly saves millions of dollars in property damage and quite likely saves lives as well. There is an ebb and flow to everything, including theories of flood control. Two decades ago, that call by a few to get rid of the concrete was considered sheer crackpotism. Now, as Staff Writer Gary Scott\'s front-page story detailed on Monday, even the Corps of Engineers itself has signed on \"to mount a serious technical study\" of removing at least some of the concrete, and eventually improving the parkland and pathways along the riverbed. It\'s an excellent idea. Many forget that for a couple of hundred yards beneath the Colorado Street Bridge, the stream already goes back to nature, flowing unimpeded before hitting the hardscape again. Along with the Corps, it\'s also good news that county Supervisor Gloria Molina has taken an interest in Arroyo Seco restoration. She has a fine track record on similar Southland projects, helping get funding to restore the Basque del Rio --reeds, wildlife, birds -- in the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area. We see a compromise in the offing, with much of the concrete eventually disappearing but some of it needing to stay. Houses in the Busch Gardens neighborhood were built on the arroyo floor in the Lower Arroyo Seco in the 1940s and \'50s, and they need to be protected, for instance. The Rose Bowl and the golf course still need to be kept safe -- though for much of the length of the course, a streambed would be a far more challenging hazard than dull concrete. This is another important step in fully realizing the potential of one of our area\'s natural wonders. |
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