Flood Plain Awash in the Essence of West

With the announcement of a new development team for a proposed golf club near Sunland, the ironic question again emerges: Should the largest remaining portion of undisturbed native flood plain within the Los Angeles River watershed be destroyed?

Other than the threat to plant and animal species, two primary questions persist. These regard the control of flooding in the Tujunga Wash and if the L.A. City Council will choose to abandon a formally adopted alignment for a new highway through the site.

From the high plateau on the south, we can see out toward a dramatic mountain escarpment hovering over an extensive carpet of alluvial scrub, cut through by two riverine corridors that flow to opposite sides of the wash. Both are cobbled by a fine array of granite carried forward with every advance of flood waters out of Big Tujunga Canyon.

An epic flood in April 1825, the greatest in all the recorded history of Southern California, that which so devastated the lowland coastal plain, was spawned in and issued from this canyon.

The design formulation unveiled earlier this year by Cosmo World Corp. suggested that an existing stream be filled and covered to accommodate the new highway. The officially adopted alignment of this highway was set in the 1960s by city authorities; the route just so happens to bisect the developer’s site. Is it coincidental that the person retained to handle public relations for the project, Mark Armbruster, also is registered at City Hall as a private lobbyist, is a former aide to Councilman Joel Wachs and serves in Mayor Richard Riordan’s administration as head of the Environmental Affairs Commission?

To prevent damage from flooding, the most recent design proposes that the facility be constructed atop a great amount of imported soil so that flood waters would divert and concentrate within the main river channel along the north side. This raises the question of whether the existing Foothill Boulevard bridge spanning the channel would be able to accommodate such concentrated flood waters, particularly for an extended period.

Without the renewing effect of the river spreading across the flood plain, similar to the banks along the Colorado River downstream of Glen Canyon Dam, the ecology of the wash would then deteriorate.

Concern has been expressed by the Army Corps of Engineers that the main channel could shift to the south. Unfortunately, there has been no provision or accommodation by the developer to this eventuality.

Along the northern edge of the wash there runs the Sylmar fault, which broke the world record for magnitude of vertical seismic accelerations in February 1971. Repeated geologic uplift and river erosion long ago produced the extended line of bluffs that demarcates the fault.

New ornamental trees would be subject to ravaging 100 mph winds that howl from out of the great canyon. Herbicides and pesticides required to maintain the landscape would be a hazard to the local food chain, particularly amphibians.

There is more to be discovered here than granite, sage and slender-horned spineflower. During the earliest of morning hours, great white egrets leave the river to perch high up in pine and cedar within the hills forming the southern edge of the wash. Splintered remains of crayfish litter the yards under their roosts at dawn.

It is not rare in April for bears occasionally to emerge from the chaparral onto the long gravel moraines to feast on an abundance of gooseberries. Darkness brings the resonance of great horned owls as well as piercing cries from mighty-little screech owls. Raccoon and possum abound.

Encroached upon and threatened, this area of native terrain recalls for us a Western heritage reflected by the works of such early century writers as Mary Austin and John Steven McGroarty, as well as the extraordinary life of Charles Lummis--editor, indianologist, bibliophile and rara avis of all things Southwestern.

Farther down the wash, a mile to the west, there once existed Hahamogna, one among the region’s three largest settlements of the now-vanished Gabrieleno Indians. That site is now covered by the wide swath of the Foothill Freeway, hard by Orcas Avenue.

Forty years ago, the indefatigable Cora Corrigan began a long, successful effort to prevent gravel mining at the site of this proposed facility, thus preserving local air quality. The superlative atmosphere of the Sunland-Tujunga Valley had served since the turn of the century to attract thousands of asthmatics from across the nation.

This largest remaining portion of natural flood plain shouldn’t be destroyed for a resort for Pucci-clad mavens from Club Mirabella, those who would not otherwise set foot in the area.

Residents of the area ought to pay more attention to what really is at stake with this proposed development, acknowledge the great example set by Cora Corrigan and begin to exert more self-determination and appreciation of their natural realm.