Advocates promote the other L.A. River

As Los Angeles gears up for a historic makeover of its namesake river, the grand plans aren’t flowing south.

The much-trumpeted $2-billion blueprint for revitalizing the Los Angeles River ends at the city line, omitting the last 19 miles of the river as it cuts through some of Southern California’s poorest, most crowded communities.

So Long Beach and at least five small industrial cities desperate for parkland are going solo along the “Lower 40%,” designing fledgling efforts to turn their slices of concrete waterway into greener shores.

Although this stretch of the river can make the upper 60% seem as refined as the banks of the Seine in a Seurat painting, there are signs downstream that change is on the way.

From Cudahy to San Pedro Bay, a few idealistic planners are crafting projects. The most ambitious is at the river’s mouth in Long Beach, where a far-reaching plan would line concrete banks with parks, trees and trails.

Smaller communities are also paying attention to a river ignored for decades. “We know we can’t take the L.A. River back to what it was,” said Paul Adams, South Gate parks director. “But a lot of cities are coming together, developing plans for the greening of the river.”

The river is squeezed from Vernon south to the sea amid factories, warehouses and the truck-clogged 710 Freeway. Concrete-lined banks are strewn with trash and lined with battered chain-link fence and rusted railroad tracks. Its bridges are blanketed with graffiti.

“As stark as it looks in Canoga Park, it’s worse down in South Gate,” said Larry Smith, executive director of the nonprofit North East Trees Inc., which has aided riverfront park projects.

The mostly Latino and black residents have no access to the water along much of the lower river. Although it widens dramatically as it moves south, truckers and commuters ensnarled in traffic enjoy the best views, but only when they can peer over concrete balustrades.

The 710 Freeway long ago supplanted the river as the spine of the county’s southeastern communities.

The most visible hints of nature are the scraggly weeds growing in cracks in the river’s concrete flooring, algae lining the water’s edge and shorebirds hovering in search of food.

“It’s the forgotten part of the Los Angeles River, and nary a mention in the L.A. River revitalization plan,” said lawyer Tim Grabiel at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Long Beach, for instance, just unveiled a far-reaching vision called RiverLink to create more greenery along the river in the city’s northern and western sections, which average one acre of parkland per 1,000 residents. On the wealthier Eastside, the ratio is nearly 17 acres per 1,000 residents.

In Paramount, where parkland is even scarcer, Ralph C. Dills Park is being expanded along the river. City recreation official Dave Johnson hopes to add new trails as well as sycamores and other native plants such as pitcher sage, woolly blue curls and California barberry.

Several people strolling Saturday morning in Dill Park said they would welcome more greenery. Darlene Sanchez, 28, of Paramount, pushing her 10-month-old son, Nathan, in a stroller, said that she goes to the park daily, drawn by the birds and the open river view.

Ramon Martinez, 44, of Compton crosses the river to Paramount to walk along the water three or four times a week.

“I like to see the other people walking, and the birds. And the river,” he said.

Despite the river’s popularity, the hurdles to restoring it are enormous.

The “Lower 40” flows through 11 cities without Los Angeles’ political and economic clout. Most lack large city hall staffs to write proposals and apply for money for river projects

The river runs through the territories of three Los Angeles County supervisors and a crazy quilt of state legislative and congressional districts, making cooperation even harder. The county developed a modest river plan in 1996, and Supervisor Gloria Molina has aided cities with their projects, but no single agency is advocating for the lower river.

The Friends of the Los Angeles River and like-minded groups are focused on the upper river.

To the south, environmental activists are more concerned with reducing air pollution from freeways and rail yards and monitoring the controversial expansion of the 710 Freeway.

The project could have a chilling effect on river greening efforts, because some freeway plans would move traffic lanes to the river’s edge.

The river will never be fully restored without a rebirth of its lower reaches, some civic leaders acknowledge.

“We have this huge length of the river between Long Beach and Los Angeles,” said Lewis MacAdams, a founder of the river restoration movement and chairman of the board of Friends of the Los Angeles River.

“What is really needed is what we’ve been calling for, for a long time: a Los Angeles River Authority that has jurisdiction over the whole river,” he said. “Increasingly, I see evidence of people in political power acknowledging that.”

Some cities agree that an authority could aid their projects, although in South Gate, Adams cautions that smaller cities might be uneasy about larger cities exerting control.

For now, those cities must work largely on their own, with mixed results.

In crowded Maywood, sometimes called the most densely populated city in the West, officials strapped for suitable parkland chose a federal Superfund site fronting the river as the location of the new $10.2-million Maywood Riverfront Park.

The nearly complete park hasn’t opened. New playgrounds and picnic tables sit unused behind locked gates and tarp-covered fences.

Federal officials have not yet cleaned up some toxic chemicals that linger underground in the area of the seven-acre park. The staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says the park is safe and that all surface soil has been replaced.

Still, worried residents do not want their children playing on the bright red, blue and yellow swings and slides before all contamination is removed.

“There was this rush to get it built and get it up,” said mayor pro tem Felipe Aguirre, a community activist elected to the City Council, in part because of the park controversy. “But why would the city want to open up a park when the place has not been cleaned up yet?”

The story has traveled up and down the river, but it has not quashed the enthusiasm of people such as South Gate’s Adams.

He is emerging as one of the most active downstream river advocates.

On his own time, he studies the river. He has visited Oso Park in Los Angeles and the new Lashbrook Park on the Rio Hondo in El Monte.

Parks like these could prosper on the “Lower 40” with enough funds and in the right locations, he said.

South Gate Park teems with morning walkers and cyclists, he said, and many of them would welcome the chance to explore the river.

He toured a riverfront bike trail, past graffiti-adorned walls that are so high most passersby can’t see the river.

“This is not a bike path to be proud of,” Adams said. With a $250,000 state grant, he hopes to remove the graffiti and add landscaping. He envisions vines growing over the concrete walls and openings to give passersby glimpses of the river.

Adams is talking to park directors in neighboring cities, hoping to stir up interest in a coordinated approach.

Momentum appears to be building.

One of the staunchest supporters of the “Lower 40” is the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, created by the state in 1999 to preserve open space in eastern Los Angeles County. Since then, it has helped steer funds to several cities, and some are getting help from groups like North East Trees and the Trust for Public Land.

River advocates are fond of recalling that long-ago era when native steelhead trout could swim up the river to spawn.

“When I founded Friends of the Los Angeles River, one of my slogans was that when the steelhead run returns to the L.A. River, our work would be done,” MacAdams said last week. Unless the lower river is improved, “it’s going to be pretty hard for them to make it from the estuary up to Los Angeles.”

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Greening the ‘Lower 40’

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Several cities along the lower 40% of the Los Angeles River are crafting riverside plans.

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Here are a few:

1. Maywood: A pocket park with trees, drinking fountain and new gates. West bank, north of Slauson Avenue. $208,000. A nearly completed park with children’s playground, picnic tables, shelters on a federal Superfund site. West bank, south of Slauson. $10.2 million.

2. Cudahy: A pocket park with trees, benches and a water treatment project. Clara Street at River Road. $350,000.

3. South Gate: About $2 million has been earmarked for a river habitat restoration project. Additional plans call for improving the bike trail entrance near Southern Avenue on the west bank and enhancing Hollydale Park on the east bank.

4. Paramount: Dills Park on the east bank is growing from 10 acres to 12. Preliminary plans call for additional trails and native river plants.

5. Long Beach: County plans to convert Dominguez Gap flood basin to wetlands, trails and displays. $2.9 million.

6. Long Beach: Initial RiverLink plans include restoring wetlands on the east bank in the Wrigley area and adding bike trails, a park and a playground. A greenway on the east bank would link open parcels from Hill Street south to Pacific Coast Highway.

Sources: ESRI, TeleAtlas, Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, North East Trees Inc., Trust for Public Land, Los Angeles County, local cities.

Graphics reporting by Deborah Schoch