Plan to Dredge Canal on Hold

A judge has extended an order halting work on a project to drain and deepen the 95-year-old Grand Canal in Venice, a victory for environmentalists who want to keep the sloshy crab habitat in a semi-natural state.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Robertson II said the California Coastal Commission, which granted the city a permit to dredge and upgrade the lagoon, did not consider more environmentally friendly alternatives.

The ruling, issued Monday, confirms an earlier temporary injunction that kept Los Angeles officials from making the canal more like the nearby Venice Canals with their concrete floors and city-maintained waterways.

The Wetlands Action Network sparred with city officials and the Coastal Commission over whether the beautification project would be more detrimental to fiddler crabs and green herons than it was worth.

“We’d rather have nothing than what improvements they were going to do,” said Marcia Hanscom, executive director of the Wetlands Action Network, which sued to block the dredging. “This is the only part of the Ballona Wetlands that has not been drilled for oil or diked off. It does need some restoration work, but it is in good enough shape not to just dig it up and wall it off.”

The judge urged the two sides to meet and discuss whether the city can alter the plan to the group’s satisfaction. Jan Chatten-Brown, attorney for the network, said she will ask that the city abandon nearly all of its plan, except a canal cleanup and installing storm drains to filter debris.

“Even though the Grand Canal may not be all that attractive to an uninformed layperson, it is exactly what the animals need,” Chatten-Brown said. “What the city proposed would have largely destroyed that habitat.”

The Wetlands Action Network, along with co-plaintiffs the Sierra Club, the Coalition to Save the Marina and the Ballona Wetlands Trust, may have backers to replace city funding if Los Angeles abandons the project, Hanscom said.

The city has planned since at least 1993 to make the Grand Canal, south of Washington Boulevard and just north of the Marina del Rey channel, more like the Venice Canals north of Washington Boulevard. Those canals, which date to 1907, have been modified over the years.

Residents in and around Marina del Rey paid a $10,000 tax per lot last fall to fund the disputed upgrade, and the work of deepening the waterway, landscaping its banks and adding to sidewalks was supposed to be completed last month.

City officials contested the temporary injunction handed down in January and Monday’s decision, said Leah Wyman, a spokeswoman for Councilwoman Ruth Galanter.

“We feel it’s the wrong judgment, and the project should go on,” Wyman said. City officials will consider whether to submit a new proposal to the coastal panel.

Commission chief counsel Ralph Faust said that body may appeal the ruling, but that the city must decide on a course of action first.

Tony Busching, who lives on Grand Canal Court in a home facing the canal, said the judge’s ruling contradicts what homeowners want.

“What we have now is an area with a bunch of broken pipes and broken cement that is never cared for,” said Busching, who has already received a refund of his tax payment. “That’s just awful. I’d rather give the city the money to put up nice shores so it will be a decent, clean canal.”