Making Friends With The Los Angeles River
In the month of April, Los Angeles held one of America’s largest urban-river clean ups — the 28th annual Great L.A. River CleanUp. According to Friends of the Los Angeles River, “The Great L.A. River Clean Up isn’t just one of LA’s biggest green events. It isn’t just the biggest event on the LA River. This is the largest urban-river clean up in America.”
The event, which capitalizes on the eco-friendly energy of Earth Day, is sponsored by Friends of the Los Angeles River (FOLAR). This year, it attracted more than ten thousand volunteers who showed up with gloves and trash bags, prepared to contributed to the restoration of the river by picking up the trash.
FOLAR was started in 1986 by poet Lewis MacAdams with a modest aim of restoring some of the river’s natural state and reconnecting Angelenos with this underused natural resource, which by then had become mostly a channelized storm drain. Since then, FOLAR has grown to more than 100,000 members whose aim is the continuing restoration of the 51-mile river which runs from the San Fernando Valley to the Pacific Ocean in Long Beach.
Most people think of the L.A. River as the setting for scenes in such movies as Grease, The Dark Knight Rises, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Drive, Point Blank, All Quiet on the Western Front, and To Live and Die in LA and, more recently, music videos featuring Lady Gaga and Kristen Stewart. Once, though, it was a winding, natural river running through the heart of the Los Angeles basin, home to steelhead trout, frogs and other wildlife. FOLAR’s mission is to make the river a clean and beautiful resource for residents, fish and wildlife.
What makes this river clean up such a big event, is that it takes place on three Saturdays in the month of April. Each day is assigned to cleaning up different areas of the Los Angeles River. On April 15th, volunteers cleaned the upper river, including the Bette Davis Picnic Area, the Sepulveda Sports Complex and the Tujunga Wash at Haines Canyon Channel. On April 22nd, the clean up areas were: Arroyo Seco Confluence, Fletcher Driver and Bowtie Parcel, The Frog Spot, Los Feliz Boulevard, Marsh Park, Steelhead Park, and Sunnynook Footbridge. On the final day day of the cleanup, April 29th, volunteers scoured Compton Creek at Artesia Station, Compton Station at Del Amo Station, Golden Shore Marine Reserve, and Willow Street Estuary.
April 22nd is Earth Day, now in its 47th year of celebration. On Earth Day, an estimated 5,000 people of all ages came out and participated in the Los Angeles River clean up. There were families, friends, organizations, girl scouts, boy scout… all walks of life. It was wonderful to see people from all over the Greater Los Angeles area come together to celebrate Earth Day by pitching in to clean up the river. Six-year-olds could be seen holding big trash bags as their guardians filled the bags. Teenagers used large sticks to balance as they crossed the river current to retrieve islands of trash. Overall, everyone did their part.
At first hardly anyone was going into the water because it was filled with algae and trash, but an hour of the clean-up, people were thigh and hip deep into the water, plucking out trash and debris. You’d be amazed at what turns up in the river: pants, socks, shirt, food wrap, broken pipes, papers bottles… tires, it ends up in the river bed. By the end of of April, though, the areas along the Los Angeles River began to look cleaner, as an estimated 70 tons of trash was removed from the river during the cleanups.
Jazmyn Alvarado, a 19-year-old college student, says she participated in the clean up because she wanted to do something cool for Earth Day with her friends.
“I wanted to go out and contribute something on this special day. On all my social media platforms, I saw people posting photos of nature saying ‘Happy Earth Day’ and even used this as an excuse to post a selfie. I felt like people were missing the point. Posting on social media does promote awareness, but it is far more greater to actually get up and take action. This was my first time participating in something like this, and all I have to say is that is was great. It inspired me to want to do more for my community, because this is my home and I want it to remain beautiful.”
The reimaging of the Los Angeles River has grown from the initial sparks fired by FOLAR more than 30 years ago to a huge project involving many communities and constituencies. Currently, there are elaborate plans to continue revitalizing the river, including a nearly $1 trillion, 11-mile restoration of the river to its natural state from Griffith Park to downtown.
The Los Angeles River master plan includes bike and pedestrian trails as well as numerous parks parks and public spaces. In general, the idea is to take advantage the opportunity to turn the Los Angeles River into a “green” ribbon running right through the heart of Los Angeles. We’re getting close to FOLAR’s dream of a body of water that will be so clean, you’ll want to take a dip, paddle a kayak or cast a for fish. For more information about Friends of the Los Angeles River and how you can get involved, visit folar.org.
