The roaring Arroyo Seco Parkway passes overhead, with the river’s span further divided by a cluster of bridges and laced with power grid transmission lines. On a recent March morning, at the confluence of the Los Angeles River and a stream called the Arroyo Seco, a group of scientists peer into a lifeless-looking culvert that appears a very unlikely candidate for a future trout stream. Anglers would congregate at spots like Steelhead Park, now near Dodgers Stadium, hoping to catch these iridescent sportfish that can grow up to three feet long. As recently as the early 1900s, steelhead in the tens of thousands would make the run from the Pacific Ocean upstream through the Los Angeles River to its mountain headwaters. Like salmon, steelhead are anadromous fish that live in the ocean and return to rivers and streams to spawn. One of the most prominent pilot projects in the billion-dollar effort is the Los Angeles River Fish Passage and Habitat Structures Design Project, which aims to allow fish-especially steelhead-to move freely through the river once again. These days, the much-reduced river supports only the hardiest of species, most of them non-native, such as sunfish and carp.īut now, following decades of public frustration about the river’s poor condition, the city-in coordination with the state and federal agencies-has mobilized to restore the waterway and its habitats. Pressure quickly built on both the city and the federal government to take drastic action to contain the river.Īlthough this radical transformation protected human life and property, it also diminished a diverse riparian ecosystem that hosted spawning grounds for various aquatic species, including the southern California steelhead trout, which is now federally endangered. The river was left in a relatively natural state until 1938, when a disastrous flood breached its banks, killing 115 people and destroying 5,000 homes. Hemmed in by towering concrete floodwalls, the urban river courses nearly 49 miles through Los Angeles County, from its headwaters in the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains to its mouth in Long Beach. And yet it is the largest paved waterway in the world, best known as the filming site for car scenes in movies such as Grease and Terminator 2. Los AngelesFlowing a few inches deep following a recent rain, the Los Angeles River looks more like a vast flooded interstate highway rather than any river found in nature.
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