The San Gabriel River Clean Up at the Whittier Narrows Dam

Ah! It was a GREAT DAY! And, I am so happy we (Los Angeles County, US Army Corps of Engineers, the Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area, the Whittier Narrows Nature Center Associates, San Gabriel Mountains Regional Conservancy, the Whittier Narrows Audubon and the Urban and Environment Group at the Sierra Club) all came together to do this project! GREAT WORK FOLKS!!!! And MANY THANK YOUs to all the volunteers who came to make it a spectacular day including Ware Disposal Inc. who donated the dumpster! THANK YOU!

It only took us a year to get all the kinks out!!! But perhaps not so long the next time, yes?

Here are links for a paper with its supporting materials written to help other groups who want to do a project like this.... It is called

The October 30, 2010 San Gabriel River Clean Up at the Whittier Narrows Dam

The document is on Google Docs for anyone and all to peruse. Here are the photographs that go with the written document and an Exel file, which is small, that shows what was collected in the soils in the River near the clean up. Download it and notice that two of the large samples of soils, where the trash collects along the River, was comprised of 4% and 10% (small pellets and chunks of styrofoam) trash in the San Gabriel River!!! Also here is the USACE FONSI File and the USACE EA docs written so that we COULD clean up the trash in the River.

Just for fun here is the link to the TIME LAPSE video of our dumpster filling with bags of trash. And here is our intrepid bird expert, Ed Barajas showing what stuff goes over the Dam into prime birding areas of the San Gabriel River.

Gabrieleno Indians oppose Whittier Narrows water museum/meeting hall project — Los Angeles Times

In a widely reported development in the story of the controversial water museum proposed for the Whittier Narrows Natural Area, the Gabrieleno Band of Mission Indians announced their opposition to the project Thursday at the threatened wildlife sanctuary.

“It's one thing for a child to push a button and see a picture of nature. But there is nothing like walking along a trail here, seeing, smelling, hearing, and touching nature all around you.” — Lucy Pedregon, Gabrieleno Indian and educator.

Click here to read the story that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Friday. The story was also reported in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, on the architecture website la.curbed.com, and in numerous locations on the Internet and blogosphere.

The tribal representatives and others who spoke at the event all communicated the message that the project — a $22 million taxpayer-funded water museum and meeting hall called the San Gabriel River Discovery Center — would be inappropriate development for an important area of remaining open space and a historic center of Gabrieleno culture; would destroy rare habitat, plants and wildlife; and threatens to disturb ancestral remains and artifacts.

Members of the tribe, the original Native American inhabitants of the Los Angeles basin, questioned the rationale for the project and its cost in natural, historical and cultural resources.

“It's one thing for a child to push a button and see a picture of nature,” said Lucy Pedregon, a Gabrieleno and a media aide in the Hacienda-La Puente school district. “But there is nothing like walking along a trail here, seeing, smelling, hearing, and touching nature all around you.”

The Gabrielenos also offered an alternative vision for the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary and its nature center, including renovation of the existing facilities and inclusion of Native American history and artifacts, improvements to interpretive displays along nature trails, and a monthly volunteer program focused on sharing Native American culture with the community.

Renovation of existing interpretive centers or the adaptive reuse of other buildings has been successfully achieved at a number of locations in Southern California, including the National Park Service’s Scorpion Ranch Visitor Center on Santa Cruz Island, Los Angeles County’s Placerita Canyon Nature Center and Haramokngna cultural center high in the Angeles National Forest.

The Gabrieleno vision would use this sustainable, historically and environmentally focused approach to develop a rich cultural resource in the heart of urban east Los Angeles County.

Friends' petition invites community to add its voice to campaign to save Whittier Narrows Natural Area

We’ve started a petition to help the community tell officials that we want the Whittier Narrows Natural Area and Nature Center preserved today and for future generations, not sacrificed to make way for a government and water agency water museum and meeting hall.

To go to the petition, including its background information, or preamble, you can click here or click on the link below. You can also go directly to the signature page by clicking on the "Sign our Petition" counter at the right.

By signing today, you help to send a clear message that our tax dollars, our public lands and our children's access to firsthand experiences of nature are not to be sacrificed in a misguided attempt to build an unsustainable $22 million water agency marketing tool.

As part of the petition, we offer our vision for truly community-focused, fiscally responsible and environmentally appropriate improvements at our community’s wildlife sanctuary:

• Restoration of habitat and improvement of trails and interpretive displays
• Eco-friendly renovation of the nature center
• Historical landmark status for the entire Whittier Narrows Recreation Area, as recommended in a federal historic resources survey of Whittier Narrows.

With your help, we can prevent the terrible waste and failure that has plagued water museum projects, and project like them, from claiming the Whittier Narrows Natural Area as yet another victim. Please sign today, and please ask your friends, family and others to sign too.

Together we can save the Whittier Narrows Natural Area.

Find our petition at http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-whittier-narrows-natural-area.html

Troubled water museum project brings in 'main force' behind failed water museum project

The past is prologue, as the saying goes, and so news coming out of an agency struggling to build a $22 million publicly funded water museum proposed on the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary should have taxpayers and ratepayers very worried about how officials are handling millions of their dollars.

At the Oct. 18 meeting of the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority, board President Robert Apodaca announced that the agency has brought in former water official Phillip J. Pace to assist with fundraising for the project and said Pace would be working “behind the scenes."

The role that Pace played in another, now-failed water museum project was far more evident.

In a 2007 story on the troubles then plaguing the $26 million Center for Water Education, the Los Angeles Times called Pace the “main force” behind the project.

The paper reported that the board of directors of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California approved a $4.67 million bailout of the project, an amount that “was on top of $16 million in ratepayer money that the agency previously allocated to the Hemet-based Center for Water Education, which was on the verge of bankruptcy even before officially opening.”

The Press-Enterprise reported that the board “canceled the lease and took over the museum from the nonprofit foundation district directors had created to build and operate the facility.”

Pace, one of the district directors at the time, chaired the nonprofit foundation.

The project’s troubles also prompted California State Parks to warn the district that a $5 million grant might have to be repaid if it didn’t come up with a plan that fit the intent of the grant.

The Discovery Center Authority has applied to State Parks for a $7 million grant, reports the Los Angeles Times in a story on the impending retirement of the authority’s executive officer, Belinda V. Faustinos.

But Faustinos says that water bonds for recreation and habitat restoration, the source of such grants, are "slim picking these days."

Today, the district’s Hemet building houses its relocated Diamond Valley Lake Visitor Center, a charter school and an archeology museum. Not quite what ratepayers expect out of their water bills.

Now Pace brings what the authority board president calls his “great record of doing these types of things” to the trouble-plagued Whittier Narrows project.

Fundraising for the water museum and meeting hall has been stalled at less than $10 million for some years now. Last January, driven by financial worries, the authority reduced the construction price tag $5 million by reducing the project’s size. And five months later, Faustinos conceded that long-term operations funding was also an “issue.”

Authority board member Dan Arrighi called Pace “a good fit for us.”

Such words should strike terror into the hearts of taxpayers and ratepayers.

See also: Relocated water museum reopens as Diamond Valley Lake Visitor Center (Press-Enterprise PE.com website)

'$84K salary just don't pay the bills,' says RMC, Discovery Center chief, announces plans to retire

The timing is suspicious, to say the least.

Three months after the state Department of Finance issues a report and audit (link below) declaring that the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy "has not exercised adequate fiduciary oversight of bond funds," the conservancy's executive director announces her retirement.

Faustinos, who earns $84,000 annually, told the Times that retirement is "something I’ve been thinking about for a while because of salary cuts for state employees -– the checkbook doesn’t balance any more at the end of the month.”

The Los Angeles Times' Louis Sahagun broke the story (link below) of Belinda Faustinos' decision to retire on the paper's Greenspace blog today.

Faustinos, who earns $84,000 annually, told the Times that retirement is "something I’ve been thinking about for a while because of salary cuts for state employees -– the checkbook doesn’t balance any more at the end of the month.”

Yep -- $84,000 a year just doesn't go as far as it used to.

It's important to note of the recent audit that many of the problems it identified were first brought to light in an earlier 2006 audit but went uncorrected.

It reminds naturalareafan a whole lot of the story outgoing drug czar Ralph Landry tells the incoming czar in the movie Traffic:

"You know, when they forced Khruschev out, he sat down and wrote two letters to his successor.

"He said, 'When you get yourself into a situation you can't get out of, open the first letter, and you'll be safe. When you get yourself into another situation you can't get out of, open the second letter.'

"Well, soon enough, this guy found himself in a tight place, so he opened the first letter, which said: 'Blame everything on me.' So he blames the old man, it worked like a charm.

"He got himself into a second situation he couldn't get out of, he opened the second letter. It said: 'Sit down, and write two letters.'"

Then again, perhaps it is as easy to explain as annual salaries. One can imagine that, with the connections Faustinos has made, first at the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and now at the RMC, she has the potential to make far more money as a lobbiest than the $84,000 per year she's had to settle for as a government employee.

Links:

- Audit of San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy's Propositions 40 and 50 Bond Funds (PDF file)

- Conservancy official for L.A. and Orange Counties to retire (Los Angeles Times Greenspace blog)

Flooding? HERE? NO! Where do you live on this MAP?

This is a pieced together collection of maps all of which were created by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1986. It depicts what would happen if the Whittier Narrows Dam failed. The document is in a public library in New Mexico and I borrowed it and scanned the maps and then, put them together in Photoshop. The only alterations were to cut the edges to make a smoother connection between one map and another, and to size it so that I could put them all up on the web in one piece to get the - whole picture of such a disaster.

This is what would happen, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. if the Whittier Narrows Dam fails.... Remember, the Army Corps of Engineers made these maps and it is up to the CITIES around the Dam to not build RIGHT UNDER the Dam. It is also the responsibility of the Corps, the Los Angeles County, that Leases the land in and around the Dam, to not fill the DEBRIS BASIN -> which IS THE NATURAL AREA.... There should be enough room behind the Whittier Narrows Dam to hold ALL OF THE WATER FROM THE FOUR DAMS BEHIND THEM!!! -> Santa Fe Dam + Morris Dam, + the San Gabriel Dam + Cogswell Dam.

If there is STUFF in the Whitter Narrows Natural Area (the Debris Basin is like a reservoir for emergencies like flooding) like lots of Arundo donax or there are buildings (like a Discovery Center with a large parking lot) and the Debris Basin can't hold all the waters from the mountains if the other dams fail or if we have an extraordinary winter storm/s.... then a whole lot of people could loose their lives and property. If the Army Corps of Engineers and/or the Los Angeles County do not take care of the Dam/s - then they are not doing their jobs and we are all at risk.

Where do YOU live in relation to the flood waters????

But here are two close ups that I thought were interesting....

These two clips show that the flooding would first begin by filling up behind the dam and flooding the cities north of the Dam, if, for example, the Santa Fe Dam failed or if there was more water then usual - as in a Hundred Year Flood which could happen next year... or in ten years. Then, if the dam gave way - if the sand under the cement covered berms washed out (see the photos shot in spring of 2010 of the undermined Whittier Narrows

Dam, below) - then all of that water from the mountains and the storm drains from the cities that feed water into the San Gabriel River would gush out to the sea.

Now, let's talk about how well the Whittier Narrows Dam is holding up after all of these years.... It was completed in 1957. Dams have relatively short 'life' spans. The reliability of any dam is all about how the dam was built, what materials were used, what the conditions were/are (earthquakes, high sedimentation, flooding around the dam, piping, design problems, etc.) and how well it is kept up. Like anything, it needs periodic repairs. Has the Whittier Narrows Dam Been repaired? I have not found any references showing repairs or even maintenance. But, I can tell you that it needs repairs NOW!!!

These are the electrical towers (many stories tall) and lines which are near the existing Nature Center. (see Google Maps of Whittier Narrows Nature Center/Dam)

I keep mentioning that the Dam may NEED repairs - IT DOES~!

Do you see the crack with the trees growing out? I could crawl in the crack inside the dam - that is how big this crack is!

I took these pictures from inside and behind the dam this spring 2010. The Whittier Narrows Dam is nothing but sandy dirt and just plain sand piled up like a kid's fort with concrete poured on top. Inside this structure, what is supposed to be big enough to hold all the water from four dams upstream, or when if rains really hard and long, needs to be able to fill up with water. However, the water gets under the concrete and the sand, which is what the Dam is made from, and flushes out in a 'slushy' mud under the concrete 'tent' leaving an empty, hollow top and area that faces the holding area of the Dam. This undermining of the Dam's structure is called 'Piping'. The army Corps of Engineers knows ALL about this and wrote a very extensive paper on the possibility of the Whittier Narrows Dam Failure from piping.... Here is a PDF file of the study...

http://www.vulcanhammer.net/geotechnical/ETL-1110-2-561.pdf

or you can go to this one...

http://140.194.76.129/publications/eng-tech-ltrs/etl1110-2-561/a-g.pdf

or here...

http://140.194.76.129/publications/eng-tech-ltrs/etl1110-2-561/toc.html

Pleasant dreams....

This crack goes all around the Dam!

TRASH IS EVERYWHERE!

... including on TELEVISION!