Federal Approval Clears Way for Funding of Levee : Rivers: Congress can now allocate the first $12 million for Los Angeles River project. Agencies pledge to work with environmentalists on final design.

Still swirling in controversy over whether the Los Angeles River should look like a stream bed or a storm drain, federal officials Wednesday approved the start of a $312-million flood control project between South Gate and Long Beach.

But after 15 years of hydrologic engineering studies, officials promised to spend another 12 months working with environmentalists before they start pouring concrete to raise channel walls along a 13-mile stretch of the river.

Designed to protect an 82-square-mile area including low-lying communities of Compton, Lakewood and Pico Rivera, the levee project would boost walls by as much as eight feet. Bridges would also be raised.

Wednesday’s approval by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Office of Management and Budget clears the way for Congress to allocate the first $12 million for the levee-building project--which is expected to take seven years.

The federal government is expected to cover 75% of the project cost; a yearly county flood control assessment that totals about $40 per household will finance the rest.

Corps of Engineers project manager Brian Moore said his agency will start working on improvements to a 900-foot section of Compton Creek before turning its attention to the river. That will give a proposed task force of environmentalists and local and federal officials time to reach a final riverbank design.

The compromise calls for Los Angeles County officials and environmental groups such as Friends of the Los Angeles River and TreePeople to sit on the review panel. They would seek to include recreational and nature activities along with flood control facilities next to the river.

The design compromise was suggested by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who said she believes that the extra year of study can produce a project that will protect adjacent low-lying areas while enhancing the river.

Under the plan, the corps and county would split the cost of the year’s study. County officials have warned Boxer that they will not contribute unless the environmentalists withdraw a lawsuit they have filed in hopes of blocking the project--and promise not to sue again.

On Wednesday, environmentalists were pondering the offer.

“We’ve consistently advocated a multifaceted project that would [handle] flood control and offer alternatives uses too,” said Jan Chatten-Brown, a lawyer representing Friends of the Los Angeles River, TreePeople and Heal the Bay.

In designing the levee, the corps and the county’s Department of Public Works used a scale model of the river built at a lab in Vicksburg, Miss., to study water flow.

Chris Stone, river project manager for the county, said Wednesday that flood control experts were jarred when a 1980 storm deposited debris on top of present channel walls north of Long Beach.

More recently, the levee project took on urgency when the Federal Emergency Management Agency identified cities next to the river as a flood hazard zone--a move that could force property owners to buy flood insurance and to elevate all new buildings above flood heights.

But FEMA agreed to designate the area as a special zone and provide subsidized insurance rates as long as progress was being made on the levee project.