The Fight for the LA River
june 23, 2022
Entrance to the LA River at Maywood Riverfront Park.
On June 14, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted to approve the LA River Master Plan. Unfortunately, what was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to set a visionary course for the LA River to achieve ecological and community health and resilience instead resulted in a “plan” characterized by agencies and elected leaders doubling down on past mistakes—adding concrete, burying the river, and disconnecting indigenous and river communities from what should be the lifeblood of Los Angeles.
The Root of the Problem
For environmental and environmental justice advocates, community-based organizations, and Indigenous peoples, the LA River Master Plan Update (LARMPU or Master Plan)—the first such update since 1996—was a key opportunity to chart a visionary path to remove concrete and restore the river to ecological health, while ensuring community resilience and stabilization for adjacent frontline communities. The LARMPU team also opened the door to include diverse community input throughout the planning process, supposedly intending to incorporate community feedback meaningfully into the final Master Plan. Excited about this significant opportunity, LA Waterkeeper proudly served on the LARMPU Steering Committee, alongside other groups, organizations, and community members, to provide guidance and feedback on the river revitalization plan.
But what should have been a meaningful collaboration between the Master Plan team and Steering Committee members quickly took a turn. LA Waterkeeper and our partner organizations faithfully attended Steering Committee and subcommittee meetings and engaged in earnest dialogue with the LARMPU team over a period of 3 years, pushing for the Master Plan to—among other things—incorporate binding requirements for community stabilization, take a watershed approach to planning, and commit to a clear vision for the future of the river that prioritizes ecological restoration and climate resilience to drive future projects.
Unfortunately, our concerns were ignored. Every iteration of the Plan not only failed to incorporate the priorities and feedback raised by Steering Committee organizations but, more importantly, failed to treat the LA River as a natural and living river. The LARMPU team also failed to assess the viability of nature-based solutions to remove concrete and preserve flood control needs, which can be a feasible and less costly alternative to manage floods while offering multiple benefits to surrounding communities (as outlined in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s guidance on Building Community Resilience with Nature-Based Solutions and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ ARBOR Study for the LA River).
Arroyo Seco, a tributary of the Los Angeles River.
The final update to the Master Plan offers nothing measurable to ensure that future river projects are equitable. The Plan—if one can even call it a plan—is merely a menu of options for individual projects that could lead to wildly different results for the river, including encasing the river in concrete to build harmful and exorbitantly expensive platform parks. The Plan doubles down on the antiquated belief that concrete channels are necessary for flood control, without providing support for that conclusion. Rather than ensuring ecological and community health and resilience along the LA River, the Master Plan charts a path toward decades more of development and concrete engineering that would foreclose future restoration opportunities. In the end, the Plan suffers from a profound failure of imagination and vision, and the process seemingly had a predetermined result to make no real choices as a way to allow virtually anything to happen along the LA River. Anything other than concrete removal, that is.
The June 14 Board of County Supervisors Vote
Upon learning of the County's intent to approve the final Master Plan, LA Waterkeeper, together with other organizations that served on the Steering Committee and with support from other environmental and environmental justice groups and indigenous representatives, revoked permission for the County to use their names and logos in the final Plan. This was a drastic yet necessary action, as the Plan inaccurately represented that the LARMPU team engaged meaningfully with the Steering Committee and community members and incorporated any feedback into the Plan. In fact, in responding to public comments raised during the drafting process, the LARMPU team completely dismissed the many comments that non-profit, community-based, and tribal groups raised. Each version of the Plan seemed to get worse, with the LARMPU team increasingly combatting the notion that we can restore the river and simultaneously embracing massive concrete capping projects with detailed design guidelines.
Our decision to request that our names be removed from the Plan made waves throughout the County, with various news outlets (including the LA Times) reporting about our opposition. To drive in our point, our organizations jointly held a press conference at Riverfront Park in Maywood at the same time the Board of Supervisors were voting to approve the Plan:
To be clear, this step was not taken lightly. LA Waterkeeper—as is the case with many of the groups protesting the Plan’s adoption—has worked very closely with the County on a myriad of initiatives, including the Safe Clean Water Program, and the Safe, Clean Neighborhood Parks and Beaches Measure, and the County's first-ever OurCounty Sustainability Plan. But despite our best efforts to engage in the Master Plan process, with the result that our informed and constructive input was outright rejected, we felt we had no choice. Part of being a water watchdog is speaking truth to power—even with our friends and allies. Our LA River and its communities deserve no less.
While the Board ultimately voted to adopt the final Master Plan against our objections, our advocacy did lead to a small but impactful step toward implementing the Plan equitably. Upon hearing our concerns, Supervisor Kuehl included an accompanying motion—which passed unanimously—to require the County to develop guidance on how to implement the Master Plan for future projects, in consultation with organizations and community members and consistent with the County’s priorities under previously adopted Equitable Infrastructure and Climate Resilience motions. While not as robust as we would have liked, this implementation motion is a crucial first step forward to ensure that individual river projects address community needs and concerns, and builds on recent initiatives that are aligned with LA Waterkeeper’s priorities. We thank Supervisor Kuehl for her efforts in allowing us an opportunity to have our voices heard, and we are hopeful that the County might listen to us this time around.
What’s Next?
Water is Life/Agua es Vida posters.
There is no question that we are deeply disappointed in our public officials for moving forward with a visionless (and potentially harmful) Master Plan. The deficiencies in the process and final Plan represent the loss of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the river's future and adjacent communities to be healthier and more resilient. The Master Plan sets us on a path toward a grim outcome for the LA River over the next 25 years.
So much of LA Waterkeeper’s past effort around the LA River focused on trying to get the County to adopt a visionary Master Plan that sets a clear course for a healthy and resilient River and adjacent communities. Having been disappointed in those efforts, we are still assessing what is next for us, including any further response to the final Plan and the related Final Environmental Impact Report.
A few areas we are looking at include:
Ensuring the implementation motion meaningfully addresses our concerns with the Master Plan, including incorporating public feedback in a meaningful way, and setting clear priorities for ecological health and community stabilization and wellbeing (as aligned with prior equitable infrastructure and climate resilience initiatives).
Working with our many partners to continue raising awareness about the LA River, soliciting public feedback, and engaging local communities in pushing for a vision of a healthier River driven directly by community members.
Collaborating with our many partners to continue assessing viable nature-based solutions for ecological restoration that preserve critical flood control protections for adjacent communities. Since the Master Plan failed to undertake such a meaningful evaluation, groups like LA Waterkeeper, Friends of the LA River (FoLAR), and others have had to take on this role, which must now continue.
Exploring joint governance solutions for the LA River, which must include indigenous and community representation. If one thing became clear during the LARMPU process, it is that with so many cities and agencies having a say in the LA River and river projects, holistic planning will not happen without cohesive, unified governance that brings all parties together to chart a new course for the River.
Despite this lost opportunity, the fight for a holistic and healthy LA River is far from over. LA Waterkeeper and our coalition of partners will continue to take action to make this vision a reality.
Here is how you can help:
Stay up to date by visiting the LA River coalition’s new page. We will be sharing news and actions you can take to ensure the County prioritizes river health, equitable community access, and climate resilience as it implements the Master Plan!
Sign our petition to support our Statement of Principles. Join us as we call for the restoration of this urban waterway into a living River.