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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Labels: lariver, los angeles river, rain storm, river, storm, watershed
Great image of the Coastal Plain, the Los Angeles basin ringed by transverse ranges to the north: San Gabriel Mts, Santa Monica Mts and Santa Susanna Mts. 
click map to image enlarge there is great detail here. 
