River Rebellion : Recreation vs. Wilderness Debate Centers on L.A. Channel

Dennis Schure, an expert white-water canoeist, is a missionary spreading word of an outdoor paradise in the heart of the city.

His pulpit is usually a canoe sluicing through one of the few scenic, natural-bottom stretches of the Los Angeles River.

“I’ve shown people a picture of me canoeing . . . through the Sepulveda Basin and asked them to tell me where it was taken, and the responses range from Florida to Alaska,” said Schure, who has worked on a mayoral task force analyzing the river’s future. “I tell them it’s right here.”

But now, staunch wildlife activists want to halt Schure’s outings, on which he is usually accompanied by a lawmaker or an opinion shaper, as well as the canoe classes he taught on the river two days last summer. They say that even though most of the river’s flow is treated sewage and runs past golf courses and playing fields, it sustains habitat for birds that should be protected from potentially disruptive human activities.

The controversy, which has been aired in various forums of environmentalists in recent weeks, is a rather unusual variant of the classic recreation vs. wilderness argument that sometimes divides outdoors lovers.

The recreation side of the debate generally holds that appropriately limited human access to pristine wilderness areas creates a constituency for their preservation. The wilderness side counters that any human presence degrades what makes such areas wild in thefirst place.

In this case, however, the areas of native and exotic vegetation that are the subject of debate are anything but pristine. Although about 180 species of birds, including ducks, grebes, herons and Canada geese feed and rest in the basin, it is adjacent to the San Diego Freeway and includes two golf courses, an area for flying model airplanes and various playing fields. Moreover, the basin is designed foremost for flood control and, during rains, fills up so that most vegetation is wiped out.

“It’s not very wild,” said Sandy Wohlgemuth, president of the Audubon Society’s Los Angeles chapter. “We’re trying . . . to keep this thing as wild as we can. It’s the best we have.”

Although the wildlife activists want the canoeing stopped, they are more worried about the precedent set by a one-year permit for the activity that the city Department of Recreation and Parks secured last November from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which leases the basin to the city.

Dick Ginevan, supervisor of San Fernando Valley parks, said the permit was requested so that canoeing could be taught in a 100-foot stretch of river just below the outfall pipe from the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant, which in summer months provides most of the river’s flowing water. It was there that Schure conducted his two one-day sessions last year, and five more were scheduled for this spring and summer.

But Ginevan said that in response to the environmentalists’ concerns, the department has re-evaluated the risks involved and the classes will be canceled, although trips for dignitaries can continue.

Still, the permit’s language is vague and environmental activist Jill Swift said she fears that it could lead to a “continuous flow of free-form activity on the river.”

“What we have done is taken this magnet for wildlife and said: ‘It’s really a lot better if man uses it,’ ” said Swift, a member of the ad hoc environmental group Coalition to Save the Sepulveda Basin.

Swift and other members of the group say canoeing is only one of many ways that human activity is allowed to take precedence over wildlife in the basin and that the permit was issued without a study of its impact. Moreover, they say, the public was not given an opportunity to comment.

One founder of the influential Friends of the Los Angeles River, Lewis MacAdams, sympathizes with part of the basin group’s argument. He said it demonstrates that citizens have not been given the chance to be involved in many decisions affecting the 2,000-acre basin, which is the largest piece of open space and the most popular recreational facility in the San Fernando Valley.

But he rejects the notion that the tours for dignitaries, which his group has sometimes conducted, or a few swift-water training classes each year hurt either habitat or wildlife. On the contrary, he said, “there’s nothing that Friends of the Los Angeles River has done that has had more political or media impact . . . in terms of getting people to think that there is a river in Los Angeles and getting them thinking about saving it.”

MacAdams said Schure and others from the river group took Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson, (D-Tarzana) and other policy-makers canoeing several years ago at a time when awareness of the mostly concrete drainage ditch’s potential was rising.

Since 1991, Beilenson has gotten $5.5 million in federal money appropriated for work in and around the basin; he also won approval for a $750,000 study of how the 57-mile-long river could be used for recreation. The Corps of Engineers later agreed to spend $250,000 of that amount for a more narrowly focused study.

Kimball Garrett is an ornithologist who is completing a study of birds and bird habitat in the entire Los Angeles River Basin, which includes the Tujunga Wash area and other tributaries.

He said Schure’s three or four river trips a year have “opened people’s eyes to the river.”

But, he said, “if you get canoeing or kayaking as a popular activity up and down the river, then wildlife will suffer.”

Society must decide, he said, whether recreation or wildlife is more important. “But one hopes that it doesn’t have to be an either-or decision and that we can have both,” Garrett said.

Schure agrees. He said he would prefer to canoe farther down the river, in the Griffith Park area that is controlled by Los Angeles County, but has been denied permission. And, he said, once everyone agrees that the river should be restored to a more natural state, the basin is probably the likeliest place to be set aside as wildlife habitat.

Until that happens, the canoe trips and swift-water safety sessions he still hopes to conduct remain potent symbols of how the Los Angeles River might one day function more like a river and less like a Gargantuan plumbing device.

Peter Ireland, head of the basin coalition and a vice president of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, remains unconvinced that the canoe trips are valuable.

“If they want to show how beautiful the river is to elected officials, I’ll be happy to personally lead a river walk to show them the sensitive scenic and significant habitat of the river in the Sepulveda Basin,” he said. “You don’t have to do that with a canoe. You can do it from several vantage points along the river that provide vivid and stunning vistas.”