The County of Los Angeles is seeking public comment on the LA River Master Plan 2020. Submissions close on Thursday May 13, 2021. This is a different process to comments on the Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR). Those comments are due on the same day, but they’re a separate thing. You can read more here. Your comments […]
In the latest installment of a disheartening game I’m calling “are-you-for-real-City-of-Long-Beach?!” all but 20 constituents have been locked out of speaking at the City Council appeal hearing this evening about 3701 Pacific Place. You can write an email and make an ecomment instead, which is what I’ve done. Hope you’ll do the same. Email addresses:City […]
The City of Long Beach has commenced the CEQA process for a 20 acre parcel of land at 712 Baker Street. It should be a park, but it’s currently on its way to being a 227-building gated residential development. There will be several opportunities for public comment, the first closes on Monday April 12, 2021 […]
The City of Long Beach is poised to determine the future of the Lower Los Angeles River with two utterly inappropriate development proposals currently shimmying their way through what appears to be a very careless approval process. If you have any interest in the river, the watershed, human life, or environmental justice, now is the […]
The shortest version of my PhD is “It’s about loving a concrete river!” My next briefest version is “This thesis is a contemporary environmental history that reshapes understandings of how people interact with the rest of nature in urban landscapes.” And, for the keen folks, the entire thesis is now available online at http://hdl.handle.net/10453/123262 If you […]
Restoration isn’t about taking a riverscape back to a set point when all was well, as is the popular view of restoration. It isn’t fixing up. It isn’t undoing what was done. Rather, it is about changing the direction in which a river’s becoming moves, by intervening in both the geomorphic and socio-cultural landscapes of […]
Water has been the river’s saving grace. This may seem obvious, rivers and water are surely inextricably linked. So let me be a little more precise. The visible manifestations of water, and the life enabled by them, have allowed the Los Angeles River to survive extreme human alteration. Acres of concrete, without water, are just […]
The river is not a consolation prize for those unable to live somewhere more naturally beautiful.
I meet Leo Limon beneath the crisp winter sun in a tiny pocket park at the end of Oros Ave in Frogtown.[1] The pocket of land is called Steelhead Park, in recognition of the river’s indicator species, a trout that was last seen in the waterway in January of 1940.[2] We had planned to meet at the […]
