For thousands of years before Spanish colonization began in 1769, dozens of tribal villages inhabited and cultivated the LA Basin. Among these tribes were the Tongva, whose land is partially occupied by Occidental College.
According to LAist, the LA River begins in the western San Fernando Valley, flows through Burbank and Glendale, along Griffith Park and Elysian Park, through Downtown LA and 17 cities until ending its 51-mile journey at the Pacific Ocean in Long Beach.
In certain sections of the river, such as near Elysian Valley (also known as Frogtown, named for its frogs) there is a shallow, albeit flowing, steady stream — in others, a sweeping flow or a barren concrete basin.
Having previously sustained LA for 150 years as a major waterway, the LA River was constrained to a concrete channel in the 1930s in response to a series of floods that destroyed thousands of homes, killed hundreds of people and flooded one-third of the city. Before being channeled, it was to be a robust water source full of floodplains and wetlands.
According to the LA River Master Plan, the result was the displacement of a quarter-million people in LA County, reinforcement of segregation through the creation of ethnic and racial “enclaves,” as well as poor air quality and a general lack of green space for communities that live near the river.
There are various ways LA residents interact with the river, whether it’s kayaking, crossing over one of its many newly built bridges or riding alongside its 8-mile bike path.
James Grayson (senior) said he has been to the river a couple of times to bike, though he describes it as not much of a river.
“I think [I associate] most of the nature in LA with greenery, and there’s not a lot of green-colored things around the LA River,” Grayson said. “It’s a lot of gray.”
River Restoration
Friends of the LA River (FOLAR) is an organization that dedicates itself to river restoration and education. Saturday Oct. 5, various volunteers gathered together at Bull Creek — one of four sites of the 34th Annual Great LA River Cleanup — to clean up trash and debris for four hours.
Sar Artoonian, a participant in the event, said that it is important to remember that the river used to be a main water source.
“If you think about LA before all of the development, there were these great rivers that were steered for hundreds of years by the indigenous people,” Artoonian said. “[Restoration] is connecting us back to the life force of our city — water.”
While Artoonian said most people don’t see the river as a real river, they said they hoped the cleanup at least created some introspection and that people would be more considerate of their waste.
“Just even bringing people back to the source of life which is the water that sustained communities for so long — there’s something in that,” Artoonian said.
Another volunteer at the cleanup, Dale Griner, said it is good to get waste out of the river before the rainy season begins.
“A lot of trash gets buried in the dirt that washes through every year,” Griner said. “There’s layers and layers and layers and layers of trash and dirt.”
Tommy Quick (junior) said that he has driven by the river, but never physically seen it in person.
“It’s not very pleasant to look at,” Quick said.
Quick, whose home state is Maryland, said that while the Chesapeake Bay is not the cleanest body of water, it still seems cleaner than the LA River.
“You usually don’t want to swim in [the Chesapeake Bay], but there is greenery,” he said. “It’s not concrete underneath.”
Community Impacts
FOLAR Environmental Educator Dan Matt said that it is important for people to realize that the displacement of marginalized peoples by the concretization of the river is not a thing of the past, but still affects marginalized peoples today.
“There are still native and indigenous people here,” Matt said. “The Tongva specifically are not federally recognized by the US government, so they don’t get the benefits and help that a lot of the other tribes do.”
Matt said that FOLAR aims to build the capacity for community students and future leaders to advocate for nature, climate and equity on the LA River.
“We’ve been able to advise a lot of projects where developers come in and want to do something crazy,” Matt said. “We’re like ‘Alright, well how many native plants are there going to be? How are we going to impact the river?’ We make sure that wild development doesn’t happen.”
Matt said that while channeling the river has prevented flooding, which was its original purpose, it has also created other climate problems.
“Right now, the concrete just makes our city a lot hotter,” Matt said.
Matt said that he and his team envision a verdant LA River that supports vulnerable communities and climate adaptation.
Currently, the 225-acre Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve is the only designated wildlife area along the river within the city and is one of three areas of the river with a soft bottom rather than concrete.
Assistant Professor of Urban & Environmental Policy (UEP) Karla Peña said that it is important to consider the LA River not only in terms of its biodiversity, but also to consider who the river impacts the most.
“It’s become a safe haven for a lot of folks that are unhoused,” Peña said.
Peña said the UEP department decided to take their students to the river this year, because it is a great teaching point on how to better incorporate community input into urban planning. She said that these kinds of field trips are largely owed to support from the Center for Community Based Learning, which takes students out of the classroom to see how things play out in the real world.
In the first part of her 2006 article “Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in LA,” environmental justice advocate Jenny Price wrote that challenging the idea of nature as a romanticized wilderness begins with focusing on familiar natural spaces, such as the river.
“The saga of the concrete LA River plays out as every brand of nature story,” Price wrote. “First, a ‘what nature means’ tale: Angelenos reimagined the river as nonexistent and banished it from their collective imagination of history and place.”
LA native and attorney Rémy de La Peza said she works with FOLAR and other groups that focus on the intersection between affordable housing, land use, politics, urban planning and social justice.
“Community is so much more than just a home, it’s about parks, open space, nature,” de La Peza said.
She said that efforts to build around the LA River are an example of green gentrification — when investment in green space is not mindful of its impacts and actually inspires gentrification.
Recently, the Frogtown Flea Crawl has received pushback from the local Latino community as it reflects a greater trend of gentrification.
“The flea market was a process by which some people feel like they’re being displaced or excluded from their own community,” Peña said.
With initiatives like FOLAR and efforts to restore the river today, de La Peza said the river is already much better than it was when she was growing up.
“Growing up, the LA River was a joke,” she said. “It’s already so much better now than it was back then.”
De La Peza said that river restoration is a holistic project that requires an interdisciplinary, collaborative effort between environmental science, policy and law.
“There are not a lot of historic green places in LA,” de La Peza said. “[The LA River] is not something of the past, it is something of the current day.”
Yanori Ferguson contributed to the reporting of this article.
Contact Michelle Teh teh@oxy.edu