Category: Quick mends
Short takes from around the Web.
Cherry-picking from this piece that ran in today’s Los Angeles Times:
— The city’s share of the project has ballooned from $500 million to $1.2 billion
— Restoration will take 30 to 50 years
— 9,000 construction jobs will be created
— Sale prices for riverfront property in Elysian Valley, between the river and the 5 Freeway,
have doubled in the last 24 months
See you on the river, Jim Burns
According to today’s Los Angeles Times, an architect has created a working model of a massive pool that would filter its own water from the East River. Our river and New York’s East River share the storm runoff pollution problem.
“More than 27 billion gallons of raw sewage and polluted stormwater flow into New York Harbor each year, according to the clean water advocacy group Riverkeppers. Supporters of the pool design are confident the filtering system will be a game-changer.”
One of the supporters: Google.
See you on the river, Jim Burns
The UK’s Fallon’s Angler is the sharpest magazine about fishing and writing to come out since Gray’s Sporting Journal in 1975. After all, it takes some braveness to bankroll a print magazine in this digital century. As he says, “Some of my friends think I’m two sandwiches short of a picnic to launch my own angling magazine.”
The writing includes some of the brightest young urban angling writers, including Dominic Garnett of the “Crooked Lines” blog, and Theo Pike, who published the highly regarded “Trout in Dirty Places” in 2012.
Each quarter, Garrett’s writers take readers to the intriguing and the far off, such as fishing for Atlas trout in Morocco’s mountains of the same name; or catching dorado by catamaran in Cuba. And I’m happy to say you can read my piece about carping in our river in this latest issue. It’s not available online, which makes it even more exotic. It’s worth a deep dive if you love longform journalism about fishing places you may only get to dream on. Better still, many of these stories may inspire you to actually pack up and go. Currently, mine would be to catch giant trout on Hottah Lake on the edge of Canada’s Artic Circle.
Here, an excerpt from Garrett’s 1994 musings:
“I like to take my fishing very seriously, planning everything down to the last detail and hoping in the process to catch some fish. Yet occasionally, for reasons unknown, the fish just don’t bite, and so I am consigned to hours of fruitless labour. But during these times I have earned some of my fondest angling memories, as I find myself lapsing into a state of closeness with the environment around me. I have sat there, on the banks of the canal, watching my float and wondering why on earth it has not dipped or slid under the surface in the past hour or so, when suddenly my eyes catch something moving at my feet, and a field mouse makes its way across my shoes. Once, when I was sure there wasn’t a fish within a mile of me, the biggest tench I had ever seen cruised from the depths to browse for offerings beneath my feet.
“The English writer Tom Fort has a theory about fishing, believing that somehow (using some super sixth sense), the fish waits for a lapse in the angler’s concentration, and in this moment of weakness, bites, removing the bait from the hook. There isn’t an angler alive who, during a fruitless session, hasn’t left his rod fishing by itself in order to empty his bladder in the local shrubbery, only to turn around and witness his (fishing) tackle sliding away into the depths, pulled by a great fish.
“I find sinking into the background of my surroundings deeply satisfying, but you only reach this point if you’re not thinking about it. Izaak Walton ended his later versions of The Compleat Angler with the words “Study to be quiet,” and surely these resonate with all anglers? The fact he was quoting Thessalonians 4.11 shouldn’t be held against him. He successfully makes his point with all the effort of a gentle kiss blown from the lips of a milkmaid.”
See you on the river, Jim Burns
L.A. transportation projects are the big winners in President Obama’s budget, while the L.A. River is left out, according to today’s piece in the Los Angeles Times. The article quotes Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) saying that the “president provided no support for widening and restoring the Los Angeles River.”
Meanwhile, tomorrow a diverse group will speak to a joint U.S. House and Senate hearing about the current effort to restore parts of the Clean Water Act. The Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers have proposed a rule to restore protections to small streams and wetlands that contribute to drinking water. You can read more about “Waters of the United States” here.
According to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, 2 million miles of streams are without guaranteed protection from pollution, and those streams, in turn, provide drinking, swimming and fishing water to one in three Americans.
If you want to watch the session, it begins at at 7 a.m.
See you on the river, Jim Burns
River advocates have been waiting for months to see what the next step in the river revitalization
would be, and that shoe might have dropped. In a nutshell, because of a new tax-sharing law, a portion of property taxes might be used for the revitalization effort, which has a $1 billion price tag.
According to this morning’s Los Angeles Times, L.A. City council members have ordered a feasibility study to cash in, so to speak, on creating what is believed to be the state’s first Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District. These districts would replace redevelopment agencies statewide that Gov. Brown dissolved during the Great Recession.
There’s already opposition to the plan, coming within council from Gil Cedillo, whose district includes several of the river’s projects.
“It’s great to talk about how great the river can be. I’ve got four of the six major projects in my district. But I’m concerned that we would be doing river work in lieu of housing,” Cedillo said in the article.
See you on the river, Jim Burns
UPDATE: Despite strong opposition from neighbors and recreational enthusiasts, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a five-year project Wednesday to remove debris from a basin above Devil’s Gate Dam in Pasadena. — Los Angeles Times
Generations of fly fishers have relished the area above the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which before the massive 2009 Station Fire and subsequent flood the following year, enjoyed a reputation as an enjoyable fishery. This reputation, for now at least, has certainly faded. On top of back-to-back environmental disasters, we’re in this ongoing drought. But remember, these skinny waters still contain native trout, and this region was once one of the coveted destinations for returning spawning Southern California Steelhead.
The area is important to protect, even though, for some mysterious reason, it was left out of the final draft of the San Gabriel Mountains national monument. That will be the topic of another blog post.
So today’s question: Do we need a human-made disaster on top of all of this?
Take a look at this PDF from the Arroyo Seco Foundation, the environmental voice of our conscience for this area. Anyone with a brain would want the “Pasadena Alternative” — unanimously approved by the Pasadena City Council — instead of the much more invasive one proposed by the Los Angeles County Flood Control District. As the Pasadena Star-News put it:
The City Council this week unanimously approved a set of recommendations for the county’s sediment removal plan in Devil’s Gate Dam, in its ongoing fight to prevent the treasured Hahamongna recreation area from turning into a giant ditch.
For example, the original county plan counted 400-plus trucks per work day, for five years, to haul away sediment, while the Pasadena plan calls for a quarter of that amount, an estimated 120. The county’s plan for habitat impact — a euphemism for “no more fishing” — measures more than 120 acres, while the Pasadena plan calls for 40 acres, including a 10-acre “conservation pool.” From what I read here, the county has somewhat backed off on its original proposal, but not nearly to the degree concerned homeowners want.
The final Environmental Impact Report comes before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Wednesday, as the flood control district seeks approval for its chosen alternative. According to this story La Canada city officials are scrambling to get their objections heard before it’s too late.
See you on the river, Jim Burns
Making good on his pledge to push for a billion-dollar makeover of the Los Angeles River, yesterday Los Angeles Mayor
Eric Garcetti pushed the idea to President Obama, whom he campaigned for in California.
Here’s a report from KPCC, and another from Los Angeles Magazine.
See you on the river, Jim Burns
Just in time to rouse your river passions for tonight’s U.S. Army Corps hearing comes KPCC’s Photos: Angelenos share their L.A. River stories. OK, I’m in it (shameless self promotion), but the point is if you haven’t ever been to the river, take a look at what the site’s social media editor Kristen Lepore has put together, all from crowd sourcing. Awareness of what our river is — and what it can become — continues to grow.
You can watch the hearing live here.
See you on the river, Jim Burns
While we all wait for a decision from Washington about the fate of the Los Angeles River, here’s something to ponder: urban rivers in both the United States and Europe are experiencing major cleanups, moving them from dumpsters to recreation areas. World Rivers Day, which was celebrated yesterday, should give us all some tangible goals when it comes to fly fishing urban waters. Consider:
The River Wandle, which runs through central London, went from a haven for brown trout where the disabled Lord Nelson tossed a line in the early 1800s, to an officially declared “open sewer” by the 1960s. Now, thanks to vastly improved water quality, trout actually spawn again in the river. A £2 million award from the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Landscape Partnership Scheme means that the river literally won the lottery in June.
And much closer to home is Denver’s South Platte, covered extensively by the Fly Carpin‘ blog.
Environmental scientist John Novick told the Denver Post this summer “the city has a stated goal of improving water quality for all streams and lakes so they’re fishable and swimmable. We’ve got some issues with elevated background levels of arsenic, and fish are pretty sensitive to arsenic. It’s not a level that’s harmful to human health.” Denver has banned urban camping, an issue that affects cities nationally, a social justice issue with consequences for water quality.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is funding the new Urban Waters Small Grants to improve water quality, and will award grants of $40,000-$60,000 up to $1.6 million, according to its website. The Los Angeles River watershed is one of 18 eligible geographic areas. The deadline is Nov. 25.
See you on the river, Jim Burns
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