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RIVER RESTORATION IN L.A. ON FRONT PAGE OF L.A. WEEKLY

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Dear Friends,

Our campaign to save the rest of the open spaces in the Los Angeles
area got a big boost with the publication of a huge, extremely
favorable story by Judith Lewis in the November 9th edition of the L.A.
Weekly. To read it, click on this link:

http://www.laweekly.com/news/the-lost-streams-of-los-angeles-2146181

The article explains how our beaches and rivers which have serious
water pollution problems can be cleaned up while at the same time
unpaving some of our concrete-covered metropolis, creating more parks
and wildlife habitat and linking together the parks we have.
The article explains how the project to clean up the Bay is mandated
under Federal law and thus presents a great opportunity to restore
natural rivers and wetlands which can help clean up this polluted water
that now runs down our streets, gutters and storm drains straight into
the ocean.

Longtime Ballona advocates were interviewed for the story and we are
very pleased with the result! (We are featured starting in the middle
of the article.)


Also, with the passage by the voters of Proposition 84 last week, more
money is available to buy and preserve parks. The last park bond
approved by voters in 2002 led to public acquisition of 600 acres of the
Ballona Wetlands and the 3000 acre Ahmanson Ranch, two long-fought-over
nearby open spaces.

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more on river restoration from Judith Lewis' blog:

http://blogs.laweekly.com/judith_lewis/prop-84-dig-up-the-culverts/
Prop 84: Dig up the culverts!

by Judith Lewis, L.A. Weekly

California voters on Tuesday approved Proposition 84, a $5.4 billion
bond measure for clean water and coastal protection that I would have
pushed hard for were I not playing journalist these days. And I was
worried about it-- 84 had been polling inauspiciously.

Coincidentally, the story I wrote about Jessica Hall and her search for
L.A.ís buried streams is on the cover this week. Money from 84 could go
to some of the projects discussed in this story: It’s been earmarked
for projects that prevent toxic runoff from entering the ocean--which
in many ways means returning natural waterways to as close to their
natural state as possible. Nature already did what infrastructure
continually fails to do. I began researching this story thinking that
Hall’s ambitions were sort of far off and visionary, but over the six
months I spent figuring it out, daylighting streams began to seem like
an utterly sensible way to fix our urban water problems. I’m hoping
people get that from the story.