Supervisors OK Plan to Raise Walls of L.A. River

A $312-million plan to control potential flooding by raising concrete walls along the lower reaches of the Los Angeles River and its key tributaries won approval Tuesday from the county Board of Supervisors.

But before the concrete is poured and the walls are raised, the supervisors signaled their desire to have a new task force of key players, from local officials to environmentalists, meet and evaluate other options.

After more than 2 1/2 hours of discussion, the supervisors voted 4 to 1 to certify as adequate a controversial environmental impact report on the project that will cover much of the southeast area of the county.

For nearly 10 years, the county Public Works Department and the Army Corps of Engineers have been working on an ambitious plan to tame a potential 100-year flood along the lower part of the river and key tributaries, Compton Creek and the Rio Hondo Channel. The walls would be raised four feet in sections that run through 10 cities, including Long Beach, Carson, Lakewood, Downey and Pico Rivera.

Federal studies have shown that such a flood could cause more than $2 billion in property damage and inundate an 82-square-mile area that is home to more than 500,000 people.

Fearful that any further delays could threaten federal funding and force homeowners and businesses in the river’s flood plain to buy flood insurance, the supervisors agreed to move forward with the seven- to nine-year project. The county Flood Control District would pay an estimated $108 million of the cost.

Supervisors Deane Dana, Gloria Molina and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, whose districts include portions of the project area, all expressed a sense of urgency about proceeding with the plan.

“I hate it,” Molina said. “I don’t like it, but I have no choice.”

At the same time, a majority of the board expressed an interest in examining options other than merely expanding the walls of the mostly concrete-lined river, which winds from the San Fernando Valley through downtown Los Angeles to the ocean at Long Beach.

“We’re going to build a channel to the 21st century,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, urging his colleagues to press for overall watershed management plans for the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers.

The environmental group Friends of the Los Angeles River has proposed more upstream storage and removing some of the existing concrete and letting flood waters spread through natural vegetation that would slow the water and absorb some of it. Not only would that control floods, the group contends, but it would provide recreational opportunities.

Jan Chatten-Brown, an attorney for a coalition of environmental groups, praised the supervisors’ willingness to consider other ways of preventing massive flooding, saying they had kept alive the possibility of creating a more appealing river parkway.

“The victory is going to be how the task force works,” Chatten-Brown said as she rushed off to a meeting with county officials to consider the makeup of the task force.

But Marc Ryavec of the environmental group American Oceans Campaign was less hopeful about the prospects for fundamentally altering the flood control project. “I am nowhere near as sanguine about what we will ultimately see emerge from this process,” he said.

Throughout the long afternoon of discussion, Molina urged representatives of environmental groups to find a way to reach some consensus with the advocates of the project.

The issue was before the supervisors again because environmentalists challenged the adequacy of the environmental impact report in court.

Pushing for swift approval were representatives of the 10 cities affected by the project.

“The L.A. River is a catastrophe waiting to happen,” said Downey City Councilwoman Diane Boggs.

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Flood Protection

The Board of Supervisors approved a $312-million plan Tuesday to control a potentially devastating flood by raising concrete walls along the lower Los Angeles River and its tributaries, Compton Creek and the Rio Hondo Channel. But environmentallly sensitive alternatives will also be reviewed by a newly constituted task force.

Sources: FEMA, L.A. County Dept. of Public Works, Army Corps of Engineers