The San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority (DCA) envisions a 25-mile service radius for the science museum it’s proposing to build on the Whittier Narrows Natural Area. That means most of the communities from the San Gabriel Mountains southwest to the Pacific Ocean—including all the communities in the vicinity of Whittier Narrows—would be served by two museums with large-scale exhibits focused on the exact same topic.
If you received the most recent issue of the Auto Club’s Westways magazine, you may have seen the brief piece on the Aquarium of the Pacific’s new exhibit and classroom, “Our Watersheds: Pathway to the Pacific.”
Robin Jones reports that in the exhibit, “water cascades from the canopy overhead onto a model of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel watersheds. Plants native to the watersheds fill the garden beds around the exhibit.” Jones continues, saying that “Our Watersheds” offers tips for home water conservation and discusses solutions to the water-supply problem.
The aquarium and the exhibit, which opened in November of last year, are tremendous regional and community resources. And if you extend a 25-mile service radius from the aquarium (as the DCA would for the discovery center), you see that Pico Rivera, South El Monte, Whittier and all the other communities around Whittier Narrows are already within the service range of a large, permanent watershed-focused museum exhibit. (See the accompanying graphic.)The aquarium’s president and CEO says the primary goal of the exhibit “is to motivate visitors to improve the quality of life for people and the environment by making sustainable choices for the future of our local watersheds.”
The Discovery Center Authority might want to consider the possibility that a redundant and massive science museum that requires the destruction of critical plant and wildlife habitat and robs the community of open space doesn't quite qualify as a sustainable choice.
The Discovery Center is another tax-for-plaques boondoggle, to be sure. The fact that it is redundant (to its STATED purpose, as opposed to being yet another Glory Be to We monument attributed to pinche honcho hypocrites who neither contribute their own money nor do a single hour of constructive physical labor on it or the infrastructures and help of living things it is purposed to display) should have ended the Big Whacking Museum notion immediately. If they really wanted to educate the public, they could make a nice trail between, say, the back of the Corps of Engineers' to significant parts of the channel and retention systems, with sturdy protected dioramas, mosaic murals, etc., on relevant subjects, and line it with safety and comfort amenities, while shelling out a bit more for docents, security, maintenance, field trip funds, etc. Much of this could be done by volunteers (who would increase as this became popular). Think of how successful memorial benches, plantings, fountains, etc., are elsewhere. THAT's where the plaques should be!
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