Small Miracle Arrives in Disguise

A small miracle has occurred along the bedraggled reaches of the Los Angeles River. As with many miracles, this one arrived in disguise. Initially, in fact, it looked like something else entirely.

That was about the time the county’s Public Works Department announced that it was warming up the bulldozers to scrape every last living organism from what it termed “flood control channels.” Its justification was the coming arrival of El Nino.

You’re probably familiar with the department’s campaign, which has been much covered by the newspapers, so I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say the department demanded immediate carte blanche to mow down native trees such as cottonwoods, willows and sycamores as well as nonnative trash plants.

The department also demanded exemption from environmental reviews, immunity from oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency and absolution of any responsibility to replant native trees or repair damage once the floods were past. All in the name of the terrible Baby Boy who was marching toward us.

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About that time, an old friend who has labored long in the bowels of the federal government gave me a call. The friend had come across the county’s plan in the course of duties.

“I don’t normally indulge in paranoia theories,” the friend said. “But these people are out to destroy the L.A. River. They’re using El Nino to make sure it remains a ditch.”

“Righto,” I said, and put down the phone. But I wrote nothing about the river.

It was futile, no? The department’s engineers, who have long yearned to rip out the marshy wetlands of the river, now had El Nino as a club.

And who could fight that? The threat from Baby Boy was real enough, whether or not the department was cynically using the threat to its advantage. Better to lie low, say nothing, and let the rape proceed.

Which shows you how much I know. Because then the small miracle commenced.

From a half-dozen directions, a varied assortment of groups flew to the defense of the river. They ranged from the usual suspects, such as Friends of Los Angeles River, to others, such as Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s office, the EPA and grass-roots groups such as Northwest Trees and the L.A. River Task Force.

“It was a political version of the Lollapalooza concert,” says Lewis MacAdams, the founder of Friends of Los Angeles River. “These organizations just came out of the woodwork.”

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However varied, they all asked the same questions: Why did the few living stretches of the L.A. River have to be destroyed to save the city? Why couldn’t a few native trees be spared? And why couldn’t the native trees be replaced after the floods?

One group, the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains, checked the department’s homework and found it wanting. Some stretches designated as “congested” contained no bottom growth at all.

“The bulldozers would have ended up scraping algae,” said Kathleen Bullard, the group’s executive officer.

The department had sought to portray the river’s supporters as idiotic tree-huggers. But when Yaroslavsky brought the department’s bureaucrats into his office, they had no good answers as to why the river’s bottom lands had to be destroyed to save us from El Nino. Bit by bit, they began to back off.

To this date the battle continues. The department still refuses to offer replacements for the native trees it rips out. It still wants exemptions from any and all environmental reviews. But it now looks like the river will be cleared in a way that will allow its wetland reaches to live.

Here’s the most interesting point: 10 years ago this gathering of support for a battered and reviled river would never have taken place. The L.A. River had no constituency. It would have been scraped down to nothing and no one would have raised a peep about its demise.

Now, in 1997, enough people have come to understand what a resurrected river could mean to Los Angeles. And they are willing to fight for it. They have seen beyond the dreary ditch of today to another kind of river. A river that provides flood control and also offers a meandering, green sanctuary to the people of the city.

Somehow, some way, the river has acquired a constituency. And, optimist that I am, I believe it can only grow. The city of Los Angeles will soon start spending $10 million to revive a portion of the river in the San Fernando Valley, and the state is planning a $6-million project for the downtown reach.

Hey, we destroyed it, we can re-create it. And these past several weeks, which began as doom for the river, have shown how its resurrection can be accomplished.