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, ..... '" ,., ,..... .. ". A ~ / Los ANGELES RIVER Perhaps the most challenging restoration project in the state is the Los Angeles River, A series of flood-control projects begun as early as 1862 had led by 1970 to channelization in concrete of nearly all of the river's 51-mile length from its head- waters near Encino in the San Fernando Valley to its discharge point at Long Beach, Today the river looks more like an abandoned, sunken highway in many places than the free-flowing waterway that played a vital role in the founding of Los Angeles in 1781 and helped shape its later development. Before Spanish explorers established EI Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles next to the river in what is now downtown Los Angeles, American Indians had maintained numerous villages along the river for centuries. Fed by underground sources that reached the surface near present- day Encino and storm runoff from mountains flanking the San Fernando Valley, the river followed a fairly stable channel until it entered the flat coastal plain just south of downtown Los Angeles, where the channel became shallower, wider, and less predictable, During disastrous floods in the 1880s, 1914, 1934, and 1938, the river inundated up to 10 percent of Los Angeles County's 4,083-square-mile area, After the 1914 flood, city and county officials began the first serious flood-control projects, The work eventually was taken over by the U,S, Army Corps of Engineers, which built huge concrete channels over all but a few miles of the river's course. Aside from periodic storm water surges, ~=- -- -= -::: -= ~ "'I ....--:. ,=,"- ~_..:; ,Co ~ ~- .' - . .. ~ ~-.'- _ ,r-. - "> _-::-~~~-r_..... ~- :.. - .~"~' ;,;~~- ~-;~. '.'!' _. .--' - ~--.....:~.:... ~ ~'7~~ '" J__ ~ .~ s,* <<. iii';""" ~ - Gii ~-'_~L~--' ~ i' .., If! 'j,;:-.. ~ ~~. the river's flow today consists mainly of treated industrial and municipal wastewater and controlled releases from dams and diversion structures built on tributaries, The flood-control measures have largely succeeded in minimizing inundation of the heavily populated areas of southwestern Los Angeles, but they also trans- formed what was once a free-flowing river that supported a rich habitat into what some observ- ers have called an open sewer, But the channelization of the Los Angeles River hasn't discouraged conservation groups and some government agencies from trying to restore at least parts of the river as parks and wildlife habitat. Groups such as The Trust for Public Land and government agencies such as the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy have spear- headed selective restoration projects to convert unused, abandoned or undeveloped land along the river to other uses such as urban parks or wildlife habitat. Although modest steps have been taken, propo- nents of more ambitious restoration projects for the Los Angeles River have sometimes feuded with supporters of expanded flood control. Friends of the Los Angeles River has proposed removing concrete channels in some areas to promote more natural flow, recharge groundwater basins and enlarge the river's channel to increase its water-carrying capacity, Concerned about the costs of flood damage, county officials have not been willing to go so far as to remove 1I00d-control structures. 19