Los Angeles River. Part 3

the los angeles river flowing through that water villages in on fusion of ferdinand been followed by steep concrete banks but there's no agreement on the bottom so we'll start out of the earthly downstream race along they get more birds to their slender pills in the water a motley gang abducted hundreds of domestic and wild greens floats alongside graffiti a track jelly back large friends of the los angeles river leads walking towards me this whole area that didn't sit there and say the high water table so we would stick that more want more of the la river to look like this is not better especially by getting rid of some of the country the concrete speed storm water out to the ocean so it won't flood surrounding areas us army corps of engineers to analyze the river in the mid twentieth century and now he's thirty five to

fifty five miles in from the city and bring it down to the ocean with a significant loss of a matter fact that's normal or pass an approximately the same amount of water is comes down the colorado river the elevation change from the mountains to the ocean is about the same as you'd find in the entire course of the mississippi river indeed at times the river flows faster than the traffic and the congested freeways that shadow it that makes the river dangerous when it's raining and present a challenge for greening the river flows that are too fast will rip out vegetation that's planted inversely door and stettler says more vegetation in the channel would slow down the flow change the dynamics of the channel was closed specifically along the concrete where that increase the arab world would interrupt the surface with vegetation get to increase the area creating that the concrete on the bottom they'd need to stabilize the walls and slow down the water to prevent the regime one solution is

more room for the river perhaps the new parks and old rail yards door and stagger stands the river from downtown naturally yard there's more green splattered on his fifties than in the river next to him la city engineer gary lee moore looks over design sketches for the river channel you don't necessarily have to remove the country which chemical look a lot more beautiful when you have lines in the greenery coming down that they do you can put some six inch dams along the bottom of the river to watch the bottom of a concrete that way on dry days at least it would look like a river consultants expect to use several different designs depending on the space available on the demands of the diagonal slabs of concrete to be replaced with landscape terraces and where the river judges parkland the banks might be reconfigured so water could meander through constructed habitat garry moore says the possibilities improve if you divert some storm water out of the channel and my mom actually increased with the channel the depth of the channel and so you look at store in the water upstream before it even gets in

the way as when you actually come to the river is you might want to dig down and put some additional asset by what are called walk score which is just big gigantic underground strong during the idea is to create a new design that serves multiple purposes unlike the old channel which was built solely for flood protection but what about the railroad tracks that line the river lewis mcadams of friends of the los angeles river the river's the prism of the railroads in the entire floor half miles of the river through downtown there's no way that you can even get next to the river and one of the things the firms or senator has been pushing very hard as a way to attract you to follow the great the port to build a grade of about them as part of the great city engineers inspecting how american river redesigned have coped with rails roads and industrial districts and they've hired landscape architect

bill weld famous for re envisioning several american rivers i think this is one of the toughest rivers to restore if i can use an enormously certainly in america and it's looked as kind of the example if it's successful of what can be done with the worst case scenario los angeles has yet to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars it would take to do anything substantial but officials say it's a long term project from the los angeles river will society all at nine point three kpcc