River Restoration is least expensive Santa Monica Bay Cleanup plan; L.A. City plans hearings on their plan for water pollution

Thursday, August 10, 2006

This is Scenario three, which creates connected parks and wetlands throughout L.A. County to help clean up our beaches and rivers.

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L.A. COUNTY'S STUDY SHOWS RIVER RESTORATION IS THE LEAST EXPENSIVE AND MOST COST-EFFECTIVE WAY TO CLEAN UP SANTA MONICA BAY

A great study has just come out of the L.A County Public Works Department (August 2, 2006) that analyzes three scenarios
for cleaning up the County's polluted runoff that now fouls our beaches.

The results are: natural river restoration is the least expensive and has the most benefits!

Scenario three is strictly river restoration with treatment wetlands and parks along the rivers, a plan
which we support, and which could include the remaining 200 acres of unpaved private land at the
Playa Vista development site in the Ballona Creek floodplain.

Scenario one is similar to the plan L.A. City has been pushing as part of their TMDL and integrated resources
plan with small mechanized runoff treatment plants throughout the city and minimal land purchases.

Scenario two is a hybrid of #1 and river restoration concepts with large basins and treatment wetlands
scattered throughout the county, but not along the major waterways, and would require a lot of land
acquisition.

The results are that scenario 1 costs $47 billion and has $7.5 billion in benefits; scenario 2 costs $53
billion and has $8.1 billion in benefits.

Scenario 3, however, only costs $27 billion and has $12.5 billion in benefits. The experts have now
spoken: river restoration and natural treatment of urban runoff is not only the best plan, it's also
least expensive.


The full report is available at

http://ladpw.org/wmd/irwmp/docs/August%202,%202006%20Workshop%20Materials/IRWMP%20Workshop%20Presentation.pdf

To See the three plans:

And to learn more, go to http://lawaterplan.org and click on the "Documents" tab at the top of the page.