Yet Another Plan Offered to Restore the Venice Canals

Nowadays, a gondolier pushing down the Venice Canals might have a hard time getting through the green muck.

The picturesque canals, built early in this century as part of one man’s dream to bring Italy’s Venice to Southern California, are in need of repair. Their concrete banks and sidewalks are crumbling, and the water is stagnant, made opaque by algae and other growths.

For more than 20 years, city plans to restore the canals have been repeatedly drawn up and then shot down. Most recently, a plan approved by the City Council in 1986 was shelved last year after federal and state officials said it threatened the canals’ wetland habitat, home to flora and fauna that should be preserved.

Now, the city is looking at a new plan, and some people warn that if this one is scrapped, the canal restoration could be put on hold indefinitely.

‘Erosion-Control Mats’

The latest plan, proposed by the California Coastal Conservancy, would line the canal walls with “erosion-control mats”: precast, interlocking concrete grids that are hooked together with steel or polyester cables and filled with dirt and native vegetation. The material, called Armorflex, is produced by Armortec, a Georgia-based company, and has been used in several projects in Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Northern California.

The six canals--Grand, Carroll, Linnie, Howland, Sherman and Eastern--are nestled between South Venice Boulevard and Washington Street. Connected by footbridges, some of which are wood, the 50-foot-wide waterways are home to dozens of ducks, geese and other birds. An eclectic collection of houses lines the canal shores.

The canals are the second phase of a larger canal project started in 1904 by Abbot Kinney, founder of Venice. Kinney even imported gondolas from Italy as he tried to re-create Venice on what was then a desolate marshland by the sea.

But the canals deteriorated quickly; most were filled in 1927, and the remaining waterways were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

In its proposal, the conservancy, a state agency whose mandate is to preserve open land near California’s coast, made additional recommendations that changed key features of the city’s earlier plan. Instead of nearly vertical sides, as the city had envisioned, the conservancy opted for sides sloped at a 20-degree angle.

Drainage Plan Rejected

The conservancy also advised against the city’s plan to drain the canals and apply quicklime to dry out the beds, measures that the agency said would be harmful to the canals’ plant and animal life.

City engineers generally accept the conservancy’s recommendations but with some “modifications,” according to city Bureau of Engineers environmentalist Neil Drucker.

Drucker said the city would like to see walls on a slightly steeper incline of about 30 degrees and was examining ways to allow for boats and possibly boat docks for canal residents. He said some phased draining might still be necessary.

The new restoration plan has the backing of City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, whose district includes Venice and the canals. Approval from the full council and the California Coastal Commission will be sought later. Galanter and other city officials have begun presenting the plan to neighborhood groups, which in the past have clashed over how the restoration of the canals should be designed and paid for. Issues of safety and wetland preservation added fuel to the debate.

Initial reaction to the new plan indicates the debate goes on.

“Our overall feeling is very positive. It’s what everybody wanted in the first place, and it’s about time,” said Helen Fallon, a member of the Venice Canals Resident Homeowners Assn., which fought the earlier plan.

“This will cost less and is a lot lower-key.”

Fallon said the new plan will be less harmful to the environment, less disruptive to the neighborhood and will be more in keeping with the historical flavor of the canal zone. The earlier plan, she said, was “too upscale” and was being promoted by people more interested in upping their property values than restoring the canals.

But Maxine Leral, a member of the Venice Canals Assn., which favored the city’s earlier plan, said she is disappointed. Too much time and work went into the earlier version to dismiss it so readily, she said.

Leral said she objected to the new proposal’s sloped walls. Because she and her family are boaters, she said, they wanted vertical walls so that boats could dock easily on the canal. And she questioned classifying the canals as a wetland.

“This is a highly urbanized area. We have dogs, cats and humans very close to the water,” Leral said. “We are ecologically minded too; we like the birds and ducks too. But we have a human element here that would like to go boating.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game last fall announced their opposition to the city’s earlier canal-restoration plan, saying it would likely destroy some wetland. The two agencies said the canals are used as a foraging habitat by the endangered California least tern, and the potentially endangered salt marsh skipper, a butterfly, is thought to use the canal vegetation to host its larvae.

However, the conservancy, in conducting an inventory of canal animal and plant life, concluded the canals’ value as a wetland was only “marginal.” It recommended increased tidal flushing, which would move more water in and out, to revitalize the habitat.

The conservancy’s plan also calls for increased planting of native wetland plants such as salt grass and pickleweed. The Armorflex mats would be filled with dirt and planted with those species, according to the plan.

Supporters of the new plan defend the need to preserve the canals as wetlands, however minimal the levels of natural wildlife might be.

“The issue is, in a state where wetlands are becoming more scarce every day, how much wetland can you afford to lose?” Galanter spokesman Rick Ruiz asked. “The answer, clearly, is none. The canals have been shown to be an environment for certain species, like the least tern. . . . And I think it is significant enough that it be saved.”

Ruiz said the new plan would be less expensive than the city’s earlier version, though a dollar figure was not immediately available.

In 1983, the city approved an assessment district in the canal area to pay for most of the $3.3-million restoration project. It was estimated that each of approximately 370 homeowners in the canal zone would pay $7,000 over 10 years.

If the new project is approved, homeowners will be assessed less, Ruiz said.

Ruiz minimized the potential opposition to the new plan.

“They (opponents) want (restoration) to happen more than they want to argue about the slope of the walls,” Ruiz said. “Everybody is anxious to get this done. They really want to see some action started out there. If they want to fight this (plan), they can delay this project forever.”