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18129
From: pamela, [DNS_Address]
Subject: How Los Angeles is Restoring its Ancient River System into an Urban Gr
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How Los Angeles is Restoring its Ancient River System into an Urban Green Oasis (they began this in the late 80's, hope they keep it up) Los Angeles is the largest city in the state of California with a population of 3.8 million. The climate is classified as a Mediterranean, with hot dry summers and mild winters. Most rain occurs during the winter and early to mid spring. However, since the 2000s, the people in Los Angeles have been affected by ever increasing droughts. The longest recorded drought in California lasted 6 years between December 2011 and ending March 2017. As the demand for water increases and as droughts continue, California's water supply has been dropping to historically low levels. California's interconnected water system serves over 30 million people and irrigates over 2,300,000 of farmland. Through a complicated web of dams, aqueducts, and pipelines which moves the water across the state, drawing from 157 million acres of land spanning across eight states. It is said to be the world's largest and most productive water system, making California’s watersheds one of the most altered on earth, which in turn has had a detrimental effect on the natural environment. In the city of Los Angeles, groundwater represents close to one-tenth of the water supply and the majority of the city's water supply once flowed through the Los Angeles aqueduct. Now, over 50% flows through the Colorado river aqueduct, which can deliver 1 billion gallons of water per day to Southern California. 80% of the rainwater that Los Angeles receives runs out to the sea, mainly due to the impermeable surfaces of the cityscape, such as paved sidewalks and tarmac roads that allow water to rapidly drain into the flood control system, and eventually flows out into the ocean. Its estimated that around 25-30 billion gallons of stormwater from the Los Angeles river watershed is drained into the ocean each year. Los Angeles is geographically situated in a flood plain where the Los Angeles rivers flows and before the opening of the Los Angeles aqueduct, the river was the primary source of fresh water for the city. Due to rapid industrialization in the last century the Los Angeles river became heavily polluted from agricultural and urban runoff, which has had a negative impact on the health of the residents and the environment. However the city of Los Angeles have been turning this around in this video, we will show you how the local residents of LA city have been transforming the Los Angeles river, using natural based solutions to restore the watershed, improving the lives of hundred of thousands of people by increasing biodiversity and improving water security. Find out more through: Friends of the LA River |
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[18144] [18145] [18138] [18133] [18136] [18132] [18135] [18130] [18131]
18144
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: How Los Angeles is Restoring its Ancient River System into an...
URL: This activist bought 4.5 acres of the L.A. River just to have a stake in its revitalization
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Thanks for posting. This is one of LA's stellar moves! Steve Appleton was one of my most memorable profs at art school..very creative, smart & a really nice guy. He made me love building things. 2019 This activist bought 4.5 acres of the L.A. River just to have a stake in its revitalization An official with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers once told Steven Appleton that there were no more frogs in Frogtown. It was the kind of offhanded comment that made Appleton — as close as there is to a steward of Frogtown’s amphibians — wish for a cudgel to wake up feckless bureaucrats. Now, the Elysian Valley artist has obtained that cudgel. With $15,000 from an anonymous donor, Appleton, who leads wading expeditions for frog-listening and kayaks for river tours, has purchased a piece of the Los Angeles River. It’s about 4.5 acres that straddles the curve through Frogtown where the bottom of the concrete channel has broken up and nature has burst forth, allowing polliwogs to swim. It’s part of a $1.4 billion project by the Army Corps and city of Los Angeles to develop a 100-acre, river-themed park on the former rail switching yard north of the river. Appleton hopes his status as owner will amplify his voice — and possibly his ability to obstruct — when officials launch infrastructure projects that disregard his vision for the river. His current gripe is a pedestrian bridge being built just above the parcel he owns. He was on board until a last-minute design change called for a pier in the center of the channel. A section of the river has been blocked off with a dam and graded during construction. “The whole point of this restoration is the river,” Appleton said. “The river itself right now is the least attended aspect of it.” A drilling rig near the property of Steven Appleton, who runs a kayak rental business in the Los Angeles River and has bought a parcel of private land that straddles the river in the Frogtown neighborhood. A drilling rig near the property of Steven Appleton, who runs a kayak rental business in the Los Angeles River and has bought a parcel of private land that straddles the river in the Frogtown neighborhood.(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times) One of the three designs unveiled earlier this year for the Taylor Yard River Park would form a large island, described as a wildlife refuge, near Appleton’s parcel. It’s a place, he says, where Artesian springs are part of the historical fabric. The river advocacy group Friends of the Los Angeles River has declared the Island Plan one of two worth considering. Appleton thinks so, too, but sees potential harm if the designers are not attuned to the area’s natural hydrology. “That’s where we find the most prolific frog breeding area in Frogtown because of the uplifting that makes little ponds in the islands,” he said. “Are people’s feet wet enough to know that?” Appleton is renowned for getting his feet wet. For more than a decade, he has been launching kayak expeditions just upstream from his newly acquired parcel. He has literally blazed water trails by moving broken chunks of concrete to eliminate obstacles to wading and kayaking. “What I would say about Steve is he is spending a significant number of hours not on the river, [but] in the river,” said Michael Atkins, communications director for Friends of the Los Angeles River. “The last time I saw him, I was on the banks at sunset. He started leading a kayak group around.” Atkins said he was surprised that any land in the river could be held privately, but had no qualms about Appleton being an owner. “Both his business and his heart are in it for ecological restoration,” Atkins said. The unlikely series of events that brought the parcel into Appleton’s hands began with a 2017 Times article that detailed several hundred properties in the river channel that were owned by individuals and companies. For reasons unknown, those properties were bypassed — and mostly forgotten by their owners — when the Los Angeles County Flood Control District acquired title to most of the river. Already the owner of a small slice of river channel that he uses to launch kayaks, Appleton said at the time that he set a high standard for those who own river land. “Instead of being a question of land value, it becomes a question of design and a benefit of the landowner and the public space,” he said. He immediately recognized the value of one parcel owned by William Meade, a Bakersfield man who told The Times that he inherited it from his father who bought it at a tax sale. “It’s a nice talking piece, but there was no value to it,” Meade said. “We tried to sell it for $4,000. I desperately tried. I got Realtors involved. Nobody wanted it.” Meade had stopped paying taxes on it and assumed the land had been sold at auction. It had been, in fact, put up for auction, but no one had made a bid, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County assessor said. The property remained in Meade’s name with a zero tax bill. Prompted by the article in The Times, Appleton contacted Meade, a former Highland Park resident, through a mutual friend. Meade was a willing seller, but it took until this year to close the deal. “It seemed he’d be a better caretaker for it than I would,” Meade said after the sale was concluded this year. “He’s got the kayak thing. He’s very invested in the L.A. River. He’s literally in the river all the time.” Appleton’s rights of ownership are not absolute. He can’t keep anyone from wading, boating or fishing in his section of the river. As a designated navigable waterway, it is open to all as a public trust doctrine right. But ownership does give him power that he’s planning to assert. His first priority is getting the Army Corps to stop using glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. The Corps uses the herbicide, which has been accused of causing cancer, in its campaign to eradicate invasive arundo grass. Untreated, the tall clumps might back up stormwater runoff and push floodwaters over the concrete channel. On a recent visit to his land, Appleton scowled at two orange-vested workers hacking at the vegetation with power tools. River advocates want the arundo controlled, too, but contend there are better ways of doing it. Appleton said it should be done by hand early in the season when it’s easy to pull by the roots. Appleton plans on leading volunteers onto his land to do just that. That’s what owning a piece of the river is really about, he said. “It’s like kids and families going out there in an organized way with docents and guides.” He bought it, he said, “to serve the idea of the public owning a piece of the river.” |
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[18145]
18145
From: pamela, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: How Los Angeles is Restoring its Ancient River System into an...
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Nice. I try to post positive stuff going on not just the negative. Don't see much good going on except here and there. Good you had him for a teacher. |
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18138
From: chatillon, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Thank you both, Pamela and Jeff.(NT)
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18133
From: Jeff/Lake Almanor,CA, [DNS_Address]
Subject: It's been a while, but here's a story of an Ancient River System
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To Southern California I posted to Don and Petra. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [Previous Message] [Next Message] Date: March 11, 2014 at 19:03:54 From: Jeff/Lake Almanor,CA Subject: For Petra, Don and all. Lassen to Tijuana underground river Hi Petra, this is something I posted 10 years ago, but lost it in one of my moves. I spent all day re-typing it for you with my two finger typing skills. Hope you and all enjoy. It is from a book about Ancient Rivers. So It's not my writing, just typing. __________________ There are several stories that I have heard over the years about mysterious lakes, underground rumblings and the like that may be of interest here. It is also possible that many of these far flung instances may have a common connection. One of these strange happenings we shall look into is the mysterious Helen Lake. This lake is located in Lassen Park, not far from the North gate. Lassen Park abounds with beautiful scenery, silvery crystal lakes with back drops of dark, volcanic lava. It is slightly reminiscent of a bright moonlight night presented in broad daylight. The overall black and white effect of lava, lakes and distant snow capped peaks cast one in a setting of mystery; a visitor half expects the unusual to unfold before his very eyes as part of the show. Mount Lassen, itself, is but a mere bubble of lave near the center of the remaining caldera of it's now long dead mother… Mount Tahema. A few hot springs and geysers are still active within the remains of this giant of mountains to give a hint of a possible revival. Brokeoff Mountain, situated just within the south boundary of the park, is a minor mystery in itself. Brokeoff is a sister cinder cone to Mount Lassen, only smaller. ( I, Jeff, believe Brokeoff is a flank remnant of ancestral Mount Tehema which towered more then 1,000 feet higher then Lassen Peak. ) This Mountain is literally broken in half; hence the name. The upper half of this pyramidal hill has been sheared off at an angle and it has slid, intact, to the canyon's bottom below… but the most mysterious of all Lassen's oddities is Helen Lake. Helen Lake, crystal clear during the summer… frozen over in the winter, has the appearance of pure innocence, but it's clear water is filled with mystery. This mysterious lake lies within sight of the main paved road through the park. It has a sparkling sand beach that extends at a slight incline from near the road to finally submerge beneath the absolutely placid surface of the lake itself. Lake Helen isn't very large as lakes go. It covers possibly five to ten acres. The opposite shore of this lake ends abruptly against a jagged, near vertical lava wall… a portion of old Mount Tahema. The deepest part of the lake lies near this rustic rocky shore. The cool, inviting water is a great temptation to swimmers, but no one swims. It is a beautiful fishing spot, but no one casts a line… there is not a single fish. In fact only the very bold, or foolish, ever venture near the lake at all; they say that park rangers admonish campers to stay clear. Indians of the area tell of a huge monster that makes Helen Lake it's home. An ancient Squaw claimed she was one of the first to see the great sea monster that lived in this lake and lived to tell about it. When she was but a child, she and two other indian children went to the lake to bathe. For some unknown reason this girl hung back and didn't enter the water with the other kids. She stood on the sandy shore watching the others splash, then squeal and laugh through the chilly spray. She was about to step in an join the fun when she saw this big animal rise up from the deep end of the lake, reach out with big clawed hands and drag the two tiny bathers into it's high, red mouth as if they wet a pair of mosquitoes. The big think then sank back quietly into its watery lair. Needles to say this frightened child didn't stick around there long and made fast moccasin tracks towards home. This girl's people didn't believe her story at first., but later, when other children swam out a ways to also disappear, the tribe placed Helen Lake out of bounds. Emerald, a tiny lake adjacent to Lake Helen, abounds with pan sized trout… Helen has not one. Numerous fish plantings have been made in this ideal fishing hole, but every fish has disappeared without a trace. In an attempt to solve this mysterious disappearance of trout, it is rumored that two professional divers were enlisted for the job. These two men, so the story goes, decked out in the latest diving equipment, swam out into the lake, dove, then apparently disappeared. They were never seen again. A few years ago ( book published 1985 ) two young, but well equipped and experienced divers, entered the lake to investigate this mystery on their own hook. These two young men did come back, but both swore they would never go in that lake again for any reason whatsoever. One of these men, Gary Hayes, then of Redding, told me this story and spoke of his own personal experience in this way: "We went out from the beach side… we didn't go out much over twenty yards. The water was not much over ten feet deep and was as clear as if it wasn't there at all. You could plainly see the clear white sand stretching on out towards the deep. The air along the surface of the water had something wrong with it. You could hardly breathe… it was as if the oxygen had been taken out. We tried to dive, but the diving weights we had on weren't heavy enough to take us down. We had on the amount of lead for fresh water. The water wasn't salty that I can remember, but in order to go down we eventually wound up putting on more weight then we normally used for salt water." "Once down on the bottom we began investigating two long scratch marks that we had formerly sighted in the outer wise smooth clean sand. Both of us assumed these scratches were made by the deep frozen ice of winter, but after realizing the water up there had never been known to have been frozen to the depth that we were… we began to be skeptical. When my partner pointed out the fact that the two long grooves extended out of sight into the deep part of the lake, we were sure it was tie to get out of there and fast. A feeling of doom had been with us all along… now we were positively convinced that the old Indian lady was right… the lake did hold a monster." The only logical explanation to the mysterious disappearance of the Indian children, the fish and divers is that the lake is somehow connected with an underground river system. The lake would be flushed periodically by the system, The fish, being small, would probably go on down the river to the ocean. The children and divers could very well have been snared by jagged lava in the "flushing tube" and drowned. However, this does not explain away the other mysteries that were mentioned… the grooved sand, the heavy water, the lack of oxygen, the feeling of doom, the sighting of the monster. Could it be that this area is influenced by one of those so called and equally mysterious vortical actions of the unified gravity field… or possibly there really is a hungry monster at the bottom of the lake; a very hungry one indeed. The old Indian lady says she has been telling people this for years and they just call her crazy. In Fish Lake Valley, near Coalville, Nevada, there is a small lake that would be classed as a mere mud hole, but it too has it's mysterious actions. A Young Indian Squaw, as the Indians themselves tell it, was one day washing clothes at the edge of Fish Lake. She had her infant child next to her in a basket. Somehow the basket and it's human content fell into the lake; it sank very quickly. The drowned baby was never found. This story is not unusual at this point, people manage to get themselves drowned every day; what is unusual about it, is the basket… it was found several days later far to the north of it disappearance, floating in Pyramid Lake. There are miles of desert between these two lakes and no surface streams connecting them. I learned this story from a Paiute Indian named Scott. Scottie went on to reveal more information: "On Pyramid Lake, which is taboo to the Indians, non Indian and water skiers have disappeared without a trace. Government people have investigated this lake, I've been told, and found strong down currents in various places about the lake." Could it be that Pyramid, Fish and Helen Lakes are connected by a series of volcanic tubes, which, in turn, create underground rivers? There are several artesian water wells within the framework of these lakes which would suggest underground streams. An artesian well is a free flowing well, created by a natural internal pressure. As an underground stream follows the uncertain ups and downs of the subterranean caves and cracks, pressure is built up at various points. If a well is drilled at these pressure points, the water will come out of the ground on it's own accord; much like a natural spring, or closer at hand, like a broken water pipe. There are artesian wells in the Loyalton area, and others, now plugged and abandoned, south of Las vegas, Nevada. There is the known underground river under Kokoweef Peak, in the Ivanpah Mountains East of Baker, California, also another "Kokoweef" type between that mountain and Las Vegas. Other caves of this type have been reported along the Northeastern rim of Death Valley. There is what seems to be an underground cavern East of Ludlow also. An old timer of the area, Frank Weaver, told me that " trains running East of Ludlow along the desert, caused the earth to rumble as if it were hollow." Could there actually be a long underground river extending from the Mount Lassen area where the old gold rich Jura River disappears to end in the Soda Lake Sink; there to join the disappearing Mojave River, then flow southwest to create the "rip tides" on the Tijuana's Beach? If this is the case, the bedrock of this hidden stream would be lined with black sand and golden nuggets. Possibly Earl Dorr, with his golden discovery beneath Kokoweef Mountain, has pointed the way to this treasure; not to mention the value of this huge underground pipeline, if it were tapped and the water used in Southern California. |
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[18136]
18136
From: pamela, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: It's been a while, but here's a story of an Ancient River System
| Thanks for typing that up and also for sharing again. |
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18132
From: Jeff/Lake Almanor,CA, [DNS_Address]
Subject: The LA Aqueduct was the worst thing to happen
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to the Owens Valley. Once fertile farming land disappeared from Mono Lake, all the way down past Ridgecrest, CA. Almost drained Mono Lake, and did drain Owens Lake to this day. And for what? LA? The place is a Hellhole, armpit of America today. Remember, I grew up there, my kids still live there, and it disappoints and scares me. |
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18135
From: pamela, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: The LA Aqueduct was the worst thing to happen
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Thanks Jeff for your reply and input. Some of my kids still live and now their kids. Too hot, polluted, crowded, too much crime, too fast, etc. |
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18130
From: kay.so.or, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: How Los Angeles is Restoring its Ancient River System into an...
| thanks for posting that, am so glad to see that! I do remember that aqueduct when we lived down there in the 60's. It is so crazy that all that water has just gone out to the ocean when it should have had a natural way of supporting life and the areas. |
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[18131]
18131
From: pamela, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: How Los Angeles is Restoring its Ancient River System into an...
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I really like this youtube channel covering all the ways people are improving their water/eco systems instead of focusing all the negative about how others are tearing it down or that its a hopeless situation which the media is always blaring and nagging about. |
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