The sky is falling! This may be more than a "Chicken Little" saying if Los Angeles County flood control officials have their way, as they respond to the predicted impacts of the El Niño weather pattern on Southern California. Nobody wants or invites a flood, but SCOPE sees the County bureaucracy using flood danger "hype" as a way to justify destroying sensitive riparian habitat without adequate environmental review. El Niño is a periodic change in sea temperature and circulation in the Pacific Ocean, the occurrence of which usually brings more frequent (though not necessarily more intense) tropical storms to Southern California. The current response plan of the County is to bulldoze out all vegetation in every waterway, to maximize the room for the water.
The proposed plan will significantly remove riparian habitat, including that for rare, endangered, or threatened species, without any replacement habitat as a mitigation. One irony of the County's plan is that, by removing stabilizing vegetation from soft-bottomed channels, scour and sediment erosion will actually increase. Another is that, when they first approved such channels, the County could and should have designed for a certain amount of native vegetation, made the channels wider, and made provisions for maintenance only to remove non-native species. Under pressure from landowners to maximize development of adjacent lands, they did not.
So now we have a "Hobson's Choice" of "slash-and-burn" to eliminate sensitive habitat, or risk potential flooding. SCOPE's position at this time is: All removal of riparian habitat must be fully mitigated and reviewed. Flooding should be accepted where adjacent lands are vacant. Future channels and/or channel improvements must be designed to accommodate the presence of native vegetation, and have a maintenance plan to remove non-natives. If you agree, or have other ideas, write:
Richard Schuble
Army Corps of Engineers
911 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90017
We need your letters of support on this issue!
Upload and copyright© Dec 1997 by SCOPE