The bridge at Broadway over the Los Angeles River - Jan 26th 2008

The storm continues down stream just before China Town as
Broadway crosses the Los Angeles River:

Downtown viewed from Broadway Bridge. Jan 26th 2008

Looking south from the Broadway bridge
there is plenty of good brown water flowing,
carrying the silt from the hills.

"It's Not a Cornfield" but now it's a State Park in the process of
development - as viewed from the Broadway Bridge looking toward China Town.

Los Angeles River at Atwater Flowing Under Los Feliz Blvd

ATWATER and a "SOFT BOTTOM"

This was the view on Jan 26th, 2008 of the Los Angeles River as it
flows under Los Feliz Blvd. and runs parallel to the 5 Freeway at Atwater just east of Griffith Park and Riverside Drive.

These were all taken on Saturday, Jan 26th 2008Griffith Park is in the background and the Bikers Bridge
that crosses Los Feliz Blvd.

"Soft bottom" portion of the Los Angeles River starts here.

View just south of Los Feliz Blvd. shown above
standing at "Yoga Park" on the east side of the Los Angeles River
and looking south toward downtown.

Big Tujunga Wash at Foothill Blvd - Sunland area

Big Tujunga Wash - a "braided river"


View looking up the braided river bed - North and East toward the San Gabriel Mountains.

Bridge crossing Foothill Blvd facing toward Sunland - is in the midst of
construction / destruction.

South side of the bridge has been torn up.

Graffiti under the bridge, where the face anticipates the destruction of this
beautiful bridge or something else.

Jan 26, 2008: Storm water runs off of the San Gabriel Mountains through the Big Tujunga Wash (shown here) to the Hansen Dam and then eventually to the Los Angeles River. This "wash" is a braided river on an alluvial fan. It is called a "wash" because it has very low water flow except in the rainy season November - March so it is not considered a "river" because of its lack of flow in the dry part of the year.

Los Angeles River / Pasadena Arroyo Seco: THE CONFLUENCE (where two rivers meet)

Location as seen from Google Earth in a dry time:

Some of my special river places were "water full" on Sunday the 27th of Jan. 2008
#1 The channelized Arroyo Seco "river" coming down from Pasadena.

(arroyo means creek or draw, seco means dry)

We see here its swollen water flow just before the

Arroyo Seco joins the Los Angeles River.

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This is THE CONFLUENCE, where on August 2nd 1769
Captain Gaspar de Portola and Father Juan Crespi

along with a group of 63-67 men, entered what is now Los Angeles

through Elysian Park. It was the presence of water here that made

this a viable place for the Spanish King to establish a colony and

the nearby missions of San Fernando and San Gabriel.

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The Los Angeles Fire Department's Swift Water Rescue Team

pulled a car out of the Arroyo Seco, up stream from this site earlier in the day

at Avenue 43 and the Pasadena Freeway

in Lincoln Heights/Solano Canyon. See picture # 3 for the officer

who led the rescue. Here is the link to the full story with photos:
http://lafd.blogspot.com/2008/01/two-rescued-when-car-plunges-off.html

Picture #1a
The Arroyo Seco flowing down from Pasadena and the San Gabriel Mountains joins with the Los Angeles River here on the other side of the bridge (two views: above and below)

Picture #1b.

The Los Angeles River just a few yards before the Arroyo Seco "river" joins it.

#2 Two views of the "access road" to the Los Angeles River just
before The Confluence with the Arroyo Seco "river" shown above.

Arroyo Seco Art

Graffiti Art that was painted in October 2007 when the Arroyo Seco was dry.
Now partially inundated with river water.

Picture # 3 The LAFD's Swift Water Rescue Team officer speaks to

Professor Jenny Price's USC river tour class.

See more pics and details here: http://lafd.blogspot.com/2008/01/two-rescued-when-car-plunges-off.html

Tujunga Dam and Reservoir

Top Image - Tujunga Dam on Jan 27th 2008 - viewed from the east.

Bottom Image - Tujunga Dam circa 2005 - at capacity with water releasing.
View from the south west. I would love to find the place that this picture is taken from.
Could it be a helicopter ?

On Big Tujunga Canyon Road police blocked the road to casual drivers on Sunday ( Jan 27th) during the storm. Obsessed in pursuit of my hydrology project, I was able to convince the officer to give me an hour to take pictures up stream. There were only minor debris flows on the road and a good water volume in the Tujunga "river" aka Tujunga Wash, behind the Tujunga Dam and in the Reservoir. The dam is in the midst of a seismic retrofit that just started in 2007. So its master does not want it to fill fully: the County Water Master released water during the storm before it could fill more than 75 %. The top image and compares to the Dam at full capacity in an image from 2005 that I snagged from the Mountain Conservancy at: http://www.mrca.ca.gov/pdf/attachment930_Attachment%201.pdf

Los Angeles River & Tujunga Wash

Los Angeles River enters the harbor at Long Beach - MAP

Los Angeles River enters the harbor at Long Beach

The Water Wars - Are you just going to let "them" do what they want to do with the Water?

I am interested in the water wars in California and ultimately around the world. I want to understand how water - as a component of our urban energy and material flows - is coming into and out of our region, and is being directed and miss directed by human "management". What impact does that so called "management" have on the land and other forms of life - now and in the future in this region? Will "we" create sustainable life or some quick paced toxic death and from who's point of view?

I am in the process of constructing a detailed and comprehensive understanding of these issues, through my study of Urban Ecology at Antioch University, Los Angeles. I am living in the question: "what does a sustainable Los Angeles Region look like?" I'm trying to remain cognisant of the need to consider multiple layers of material and social "reality" from multiple viewpoints over time, to even get close to an answer to that question. It is so crazily complex - how to wrap one's head around it ? How does this city even survive - with its chaos of colliding concerns? The energy of creative collision?

We all need water. I believe that now there is a call for: Citizen Hydrologists. We are wanted by Mother Earth as a defense against the continuing monetization of the world's water supplies. We - as humans - are way "down the river" in our passive acceptance of water resource exploitation by corporate interests and power elites. Water exploitation and covert control of water is seminal in the founding decades of Los Angeles. OK so this is a rant but...

Water knowledge is Water power. I want to know more. Who among us can visualize and understand the complexity of water flows in Southern California, as water moves over and under "our" land, through natural and man-made infrastructure? Yet, Sacramento and our Governor talk about spending billions on new water works, expecting us to assume and trust that they understand. I don't.

Can you hear the big sucking sound as we draw off the water from watersheds that lay thousands of miles from our own and try to obtain more? Can you hear the sucking of green backs from every household's coffers destined to pay for water infrastructures that may not work? We - the greater LA area - are the monster at the base of the tube drawing the sustenance that rightfully belongs to others into ourselves... or are we ? Do we give something back for all of that? How can we think about water - in deep and meaningful ways - ways that will create a beautiful life for those creatures - human and non that live here in the future?

This is not about politics - but about Ecological Mega Cities - political beasts by nature.
Metropolis - polis - the people - the politicians - the power to control resources, who does it and based on what knowledge.?




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Los Angeles River and San Gabriel River from Mountains to Ocean - The greater Los Angeles River Basin ______CLICK ON IMAGE FOR GREAT DETAIL