Category: Quick mends

Short takes from around the Web.

Ecology, Quick mends

Quick mends: Dismantling gets underway for Washington’s Elwha Dam

UPDATE: “Damnation” is a documentary well worth watching.

Don’t we all love to get good news? I relish, for example, when a friend rings me up with something cheery to say, or, I check my bank account to find I’ve got a couple of hundred bucks stashed that I thought I’d spent, but didn’t.

California Fish & Game biologist Doug Killam holds an 88-pound Pacific chinook salmon. It’s hoped the removal of the Elwha Dam in Washington state could result in even bigger fish. (Courtesy California Department of Fish and Game)

As far as the environment goes, I’m always on the lookout for positive stories. Most news is depressing, scary, messy. So today’s piece in the L.A. Times outlining the largest dam removal in our history made me smile. According to the article by Kim Murphy, after almost 100 years, salmon will now be free to swim up 70 miles of their traditional home waters, the Elwha River, instead of being stopped at the dam.

“Now,” of course, is relative, in that the project involves removing not one, but two, dams along the river that runs through Olympic National Park. Then there’s the matter of dealing with the removal of  24 million cubic yards of sediment. Apparently, the number is akin to a football field as high as the Empire State Building times 11.

Sound familiar? Closer to home, we’ve been watching the sediment removal debate revolve around Pasadena’s Devil’s Gate Dam, which is close to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  I’ve written in this space before about the suspect nature of Brown Mountain Dam, farther up the Arroyo Seco and its impact on returning steelhead to this mountainous region.

To quote the Times article about the Elwha River: “The effort is the largest dam removal project ever undertaken in the United States. It comes at a time when the nation’s 80,000 dames, many of them aging and backed up with choking silt, are increasingly suspected of having outlived their usefulness.”

The best news would be to get moving on bringing down Brown Mountain Dam. The Los Angeles River and its tributaries deserve to be returned to their natural state.

See you on the river, Jim Burns

Quick mends

Quick Mends: Paddle the L.A. River sold out
Environmentalists believe it's a good sign that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers chief L.A. honcho Col. Mark Toy enjoyed the inaugural paddle. (Jim Burns)

In under four hours, the 280 spots to paddle the river over the next several weekends have sold out. Tickets went on sale today at 7 a.m. and by 11 a.m., they were gone. That’s truly rock star paced! Wonder if we’ll see any of them appear on EBay?

 

See you on the river, Jim Burns

Events, Quick mends

Quick Mends: Paddle the Los Angeles River
SAILING, SAILING: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (front of canoe) takes a tour of the L.A. River earlier this year. (Courtesy Sepulveda Basin Wildlife.org)

Well, the Army Corps of Engineers listened to all of the responses from kayakers, environmentalists and just plain folks who love the river, and guess what! If you are lucky enough to buy a ticket (cost unknown to me, but I’ll post it when I find out), Saturdays and Sundays, Aug. 13-Sept. 25, you can explore a mile and a half stretch of the water during this pilot program.

Remember, if was just over a year ago that the Environmental Protection Agency declared the entire river a “traditional navigable waterway,” paving the way for recreational usage. Sign up to get a ticket and check out the digital clock countdown. It’s sure a lot better than getting dizzy trying to watch the debt clock.

See you on the river, Jim Burns

Quick mends

Quick Mends: State Supreme Court upholds plastic bag ban
Bag Man: Now that you can be nicked a dime for a paper bag at grocery stores in unincorporated areas in L.A. County, it pays to bring your own. (Barbara Burns)

Manhattan Beach doesn’t have to complete an environmental review in order to ban retailers from providing single-use plastic bags to customers at the point of sale, the California Supreme Court ruled yesterday. Read the complete story.

This is a victory for those who want most plastic bags to disappear from the shopping landscape. I was in Trader Joe’s last week and luckily I didn’t forget my bags. The guy in front of me got a little salty when the clerk gave him the choice of either a paper bag, costing a dime, or a reusable plastic bag for a buck and change.

So “paper or plastic?” has become — what? — “paper or plastic?”

See you on the river, Jim Burns

Quick mends

Quick Mends: Oil spill fouls Yellowstone River
Dirty water: An oil spill befouls Yellowstone River. (Courtesy Natural Resources Defense Council)

According to emergency officials, a break in an Exxon oil pipeline caused the spill into the Yellowstone River Friday that has so far spewed thousands of gallons into the water, endangering residents, wild life and, of course, the rainbow trout for which Montana is famous. In fact, trout fishing is a $400 million business in that state.

The spill occurred near Billings, 100 miles below Yellowstone National Park and its prized fishing waters, which draw 11 million visitors a year to a state with a population of just 980,000, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Billings Gazette features updates on the event, while CNN has video coverage.

See you on the river, Jim Burns

Quick mends

Quick Mends: Unincorporated L.A. County bag ban

It’s the month of July so …

gimme a “B”

gimme an “A”

gimme a “G”

what’s that spell?

“BAG,” and from here on out, supermarkets and pharmacies in unincorporated areas of L.A County will charge you a dime for each paper bag you need to carry out items from the store. Single-use plastic bags will be offered, however, for carryout, fruits, vegetables and raw meats.

What’s it mean?

On the heels of a 1 percent drop in sales tax here in the county, it is now wise to save your pennies by bringing your own bags for shopping.  Yesterday, according to various news sources, shoppers who forgot their bags got creative by enlisting cardboard boxes, multitasking hand and arm grips a la Brazilian jujitsu, reusable totes and even Gucci purses.

Reaction has been mostly positive, according to store personnel.

After having covered this for the past several months, I have mixed feelings about the piecemeal bans we’re seeing. A statewide ban would have been more effective and easier on consumers. Now, your bag burden depends on where you’re shopping: Altadena, yes; adjacent Pasadena, no …

Let’s wait and see if the ban decreases the amount of plastic harvested in next year’s river cleanup.

See you on the river, Jim Burns

Quick mends

Quick Mends: (legally) kayaking the Los Angeles River

What a difference a year makes!

Last summer, the Environmental Protection Agency declared all 51 miles of the river navigable. This summer … well, it looks as if beginning July 8 for 50 bucks a person you’ll be able to kayak three miles of the rio through the idyllic Sepulveda Basin. For the full scoop, read Louis Sahagun’s piece in today’s Los Angeles Times.

Sign of the times: Kayaking could be coming to a river near you. (Jim Burns)

First off, this pilot program must win the approval of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Next,the Los Angeles Conservations Corps and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority will partner up to offer these wet-n-wild trips. Details to follow.

A shout out to George Wolfe, who was willing to break the law to get this rolling. Another shout-out to Councilperson Ed Reyes, a champion of the river. And to the many, many others (blogger Joe Linton comes to mind) who have pushed, cajoled, persuaded, informed, and insisted that the Los Angeles River must be transformed from a concrete channel to a natural river, for the people’s use and enjoyment.

See you on the river, Jim Burns

Quick mends

Quick mends: ‘mousing’ the new The L.A. River

Question: exactly how much time have you wasted this week (it’s not over yet …) “browsing” the Web?

I’d have to answer “lots.” Always on the snoop for info about our river, I came across the new (to me, and copyrighted this year) The LA River. According to a press release, “The Los Angeles River Revitalization Corporation (LARRC), set up by the City of Los Angeles and funded through the Community Redevelopment Agency, has launched a comprehensive, state-of-the-art website at http://www.thelariver.com. It contains hundreds of maps, user guides, photos, development activities, information about the Corporation, a store, and more.”

There apparently is no limit on the number of carp you can take from the L.A. River. But ... who determined this? Certainly not the California Dept. of Fish and Game. (Courtesy http://www.thelariver.com)

Fair enough. Take a look and you’ll see that the site breaks the river into three fishing spots: Lake Balboa, Glendale Narrow and the Long Beach Estuary. Earlier this year, fisher-friend David Wratchford and I wondered about the estuary, and what might lurk to be caught there. Then, we wondered about the legality of fly fishing those waters.

Now we read on this new site:

“Today, although fishing in the river is not an officially-sanctioned activity, since it is currently illegal to walk in the river channel below the bike paths, officials rarely cite the many anglers regularly seen along the soft-bottom sections where fish are to be found.”

True, it’s a far cry from the infamous days when the Duckman had the Griffith Park rangers on speed dial, and would not hesitate to contact them when he saw folks with poles angling the perfumed waters.

Yet, you have to wonder how any elected official can have his cake and eat it, too. How can fishing not be officially sanctioned (in fact, illegal, according to a release given out to the press earlier this year from Councilperson Ed Reyes office), yet turn up on a publicly funded Web site under “Fishing the L.A. River?”

Access to the river means just that. It’s time to officially saction fishing in designated areas of the river. No more double speak!

See you on the river, Jim Burns

Quick mends

Quick mends — How do you use the river?
Yucking it up in 1938: Herald-Express photographer Coy Watson Jr. (left) and reporter Fred Eldridge (Courtesy KCET).

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board is conducting an evaluation of the recreational uses of the channelized rivers and streams in the Los Angeles River Watershed.

As part of this effort they are soliciting information from stakeholders (through a survey) regarding what rivers or streams are visited in the watershed and which recreational activities are enjoyed in and around these bodies of water.

They are conducting this survey in conjunction with KCET and Council District #1 (City of Los Angeles).

Can you tell I didn’t write the above?

See you on the river, Jim Burns

Quick mends

Quick mends — Get plugged in to Congress

First off, congratulations to everyone who attended yesterday’s big river cleanup! Pictures will be posted in this space tomorrow from the event.

Next, now that you’re fired up, take a look at these two links that make it easy to find out who your elected officials are and, equally important, what they’ve been doing.

Fletcher Bridge is definitely in the 31st district (Courtesy Rep. Xavier Becerra Web site).

Govtrack.us features a handy mash-up map of each state that includes districts. True, some of the district numbers can be hard to read, but if you continue to zoom in, visibility increases. For example, Griffith Park is located within congressional district No. 31, the purview of  Rep. Xavier Becerra, a democrat.

Armed with that information, you can then plug the name into the aptly titled Legistalker to find news about the politico, including old school, YouTube and Twitter. There are also links to the rep’s Web site, blog and social media. It’s a powerful way to humanize legislators.

See you on the river, Jim Burns