But Is It A *REAL* River?

Two hikers walk along the concrete banks of the Glendale Narrows, a eleven mile stretch of the LA River with a soft bottom

But is it a *real* river?” I was asked this by someone who came up to my table recently at a local event after they looked at my art and asked where the LA River was cause they had never heard of it.

This is one of my favorite conversations to have and why I love doing in person events.

The LA River, originally and still known as Paayme Paxaayt, is a river that (today) starts in Canoga Park where Bell Creek and Arroyo Calabasas come together from the Santa Susana Mountains and Simi Hills and start a 51 mile journey through a mostly concrete channel that lets out in Long Beach.

“But isn’t it just a flood channel?”

A night heron sits among the in-stream vegetation in the Glendale Narrows with houses on the hills behind.

The LA River existed well before Spanish arrival and was a crucial part of life here in the LA Basin. Our wild river was seasonal, fed with natural springs and groundwater it was like a creek in the dry months and followed a certain path, then wild and unpredictable in the rainy winter months, even where the river met the ocean would change, sometimes letting out in the Santa Monica Bay and sometimes in the San Pedro Bay.

The Army Corps of Engineers channelized the river in the 1930’s due to catastrophic floods that destroyed development encroaching onto historic floodplains. With development as the priority the decision was made to encase the river in concrete and move water as quickly as possible to the ocean (even as we were building other projects to bring water to LA from other places, causing great harm to faraway ecosystems as well).

According to the Corp, LA now had a flood channel, not a river. What harm can words do?

But this seemingly simple change of words meant less regulations for our local watersheds than a designated river would have.

In fact it wasn’t until 2010 that government agencies acknowledged our river as an “actual river” again declaring the entire river as “traditional, navigable waters” after an activist kayaker traversed the entire 51 miles! With this acknowledgment came more protections under the EPA’s Clean Waters Act and efforts to increase recognition, recreation, and restoration.

It’s no wonder so many don’t know LA has a river! What harm do you think the phrase flood control channel has caused?