Foes of Katz’s River Plan Give Alternatives

Environmentalists who want to resurrect the Los Angeles River as a natural waterway lashed back Saturday at Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), who last week unveiled drawings of his concept of turning it into an expressway surrounded by plant life and housing.

Participants in the River in the City conference used words such as “riparian habitat” and “ecosystem” to describe their vision for the nearly 60-mile river, most of which is now a concrete-lined flood-control channel that Katz described Thursday as “an urban dead zone.”

“Birds know it’s a river, ducks know it’s a river, even some people know it’s a river,” said Lewis MacAdams, a director of Friends of the Los Angeles River, which co-sponsored the conference at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum. “Just Richard Katz doesn’t know it’s a river.”

Announcing that the House Appropriations Committee has recommended a $700,000 study of river improvements, Mayor Tom Bradley admonished Katz to take the public pulse before he presses on. Katz had said Thursday that he will take drawings of his version of river revival to public meetings this summer.

“Anybody who thinks they’re going to do something with this river without that kind of input is just out of sync,” Bradley said.

Even the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whose vision for the river is to top its concrete walls with more concrete, has qualms about letting thousands of motorists drive in a floodway.

“It’s fraught with risk,” said engineer Jon G. Sweeten. “The idea of putting people in jeopardy is scary to the corps.”

A year ago Katz suggested opening the channel between the San Fernando Valley and Long Beach to trucks, buses, car pools and commuter rail, to ease congestion on the Ventura and Long Beach freeways. Renderings he exhibited Thursday depicted “a vibrant esplanade” where trees, shrubs and parks would form a greenbelt between the recessed freeway and at-grade houses and schools.

Mike Davis, who teaches urban theory at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, said his students and colleagues found those drawings amusing.

“One of the first things you learn in studying architecture is the most monstrous kind of design can be prettified,” Davis said. “But this is an absolutely fictitious picture. It just wouldn’t work in terms of light and noise and other things.”

State Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), whose alternative Los Angeles River Parkway bill is headed for the Assembly, said the Katz plan would not even significantly reduce traffic.

“It would just serve to increase our dependence” on vehicles, Torres said. “Once it’s constructed and completed, it’s going to be out of date.”

Instead, conference speakers outlined their own ambitious dreams--to tear out the concrete channel walls and replace them with rock-filled wire baskets, which can be topped with dirt and hold ground cover and other plantings; to replant native species like live oak, willows and wild grapes; to lure native birds like herons, egrets and black skimmers to nest there again.

“Wetlands respond well when we give them just a little bit of help,” said Christine Perala, a botanist. “Of course, they respond better if we don’t bulldoze them in the first place.”

Although neither Bradley nor Councilman John Ferraro, who represents the area, embraced all of the panelists’ opinions, they said the ideas would be considered when three short stretches of the river way are improved this year and when promised bike paths are installed.

“We in public office don’t always have the best ideas,” Ferraro said. “We get them from you people, then we take credit for them.”

A more formidable obstacle may be the Army Corps of Engineers, whose major concern is preventing floods. A study of the river channel completed this year by Sweeten found weaknesses in the system and indicated a need for 2- to 8-foot extensions of the concrete walls southwest of downtown.

“It doesn’t do a whole lot environmentally, I know,” Sweeten said. “But it’s the most effective use of federal funds to provide flood control.”

Inadvertently, Katz may have helped bolster the ranks of the 700-person-strong Friends of the River. Several people said Saturday that they had come to the conference to support an alternative to his proposal.

Kent Strother joined the Friends of the Los Angeles River shortly after Katz’s plan was publicized last year.

“That seemed like the force of hopelessness . . . demoting the environment instead of promoting it,” Strother said. “This was a more positive vision.”