Gas and food prices are up. This year's Writer’s Guild strike cost the region 2.5 billion dollars and the Screen Actors Guild strike may be about to strike. The foreclosure bust is here and threatens to worsen. It seems the only people in town with money these days are European and Asian visitors. The unemployment rate has creeped up to 6.2% and probably won't improve in 2009.  The largest job losses in 2008 will be found in construction (-10,000 jobs), finance & insurance (-5,000 jobs), and manufacturing (also a loss of 5,000 jobs). The biggest employment gains during 2008 will come in health services (+8,500 jobs), government (+6,000 jobs), and professional, scientific & technical services (+5,000 jobs). The employment situation should improve a tad in 2009, with an increase of 0.6% or +25,200 jobs.

...from Jack Kyser of the LAEDC (July 2008)

Here is a little video that pretty much sums up the 2008 LA River Expedition:

Enjoy!

Only in LA...

Having spent a lot of time in and around the L.A. River lately I would like to share this alternative commuting idea with you all - click on video image. Tired of high gas prices and traffic? Got a couple of hundred bucks for a kayak? Not afraid of Hepatitis?

I am four days out from my trip down the LA River and she's still stuck in my head - literally. I acquired a sinus infection and some GI stuff, but I'm on the mend. There is still much to learn from this trip, but I feel that I am getting somewhere. Angelenos need to begin their reclamation of the river. We all need to spend more time around it and make our presence known.  We need to take the river back first and then we need to ask for the powers that be to fix what they broke.

This comment chain from Eric Spilman's KTLA blog pretty much sums up how Angelenos (including me) see the LA River:

Eric, please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the "LA River" part of the sewer system? I'm not trying to sink your boat but maybe the city doesn't issue a permit because they know what's floating in the water's depths.The mouth of the river opens to the ocean near CSULB campus. I used to watch that beautiful river often and while birds swim unimpeded during certain times of the year, I never saw kayaks, canoes or paddle boats, which you'd readily find blocks away off 2nd Street. Posted by: jozielee | July 29, 2008 at 11:13 AM

i agree. we still need the flood control, but why can't we at least boat on the Glendale Narrows, which is a nice stretch w/ actual rapids that's part concrete (for flood safety) and part natural (for recreational purposes)? what's wrong with that as a compromise? Posted by: bon | July 31, 2008 at 09:24 AM

just noticed the previous comment above. actually, depending on where you are on the river, the water quality varies widely -- from "near drinking water" coming out of the Tillman Treatment Plant in the Valley to horribly skanky near Willow Street in Long Beach. Generally speaking though, where there's nature, there's better water quality. big surprise? Posted by: bon | July 31, 2008 at 09:28 AM

No Jozilee, the sewer system has its own separate infrastructure. The LA River is an actual river (and the main reason the pueblo was founded here) and was the city's primary water source until Mulholland's aqueduct started sucking Owens Valley dry and the Corps of Engineers turned a beautiful resource into a means to throw every drop of rainwater AWAY rather than maintain it here for drinking supply. A move that's starting to look pretty retarded as climate change and drought set in and the courts have begun restricting our ability to import water from NorCal and Colo.

Expedition media links:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2008/07/dear-feds---tur.html

http://laist.com/2008/07/26/kayaking_the_la_river_part_1.php
http://laist.com/2008/07/27/kayaking_the_la_river_part_2_east_v.php
http://laist.com/2008/07/28/kayaking_the_la_river_day_3_marsh_p.php
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2008/07/kayakers-to-pad.html
http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/la-river-really-floats-their-boats/19347/

 

This past weekend (July 25th to July 27th) I and a few other "hearty" souls kayaked down the entire LA River - a 52 mile trek. The trip was physically exhausting, but also pretty darn exhilirating. I felt like a true explorer discovering a part of Los Angeles that few are familiar with. There were plenty of "events" along the way including a run-in with the police and a couple of nasty spills. Fortunately we had a film permit and the officer who approached us was into kayaking so he let us continue on.

While there are some bucolic portions of the river, it is for the most part a sewer. Storm drains dump into the river and the majority of the water comes from waste treatment plants. There is surprisingly a fair number of folks who fish the river - they must have strong immune systems - and quite a few of homeless who bathe in the river. I saw the best of nature and the worst of mankind during the journey. 

The purpose of the trip was to highlight the state of the river and to give people the sense that the river belongs to them. There are many folks who have quietly working to raise consciousness about the river for many years. One of those people is Joe Linton. Joe wrote a fantastic book, "Down by the Los Angeles River," that every Angeleno should own.

You can check it out on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Down-Los-Angeles-River-Official/dp/0899973914/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217291162&sr=8-1

Tom Andrews, photographer for www.lalist.com took some fantastic photos over three days and those can be seen here:

http://laist.com/2008/07/28/kayaking_the_la_river_day_3_marsh_p.php

Tom took the picture of me above.

More posting about this important issue to come...........

LA RIVER EXPEDITION 2008
 
Come join us this weekend, July 25 to July 27, as we take an environmental stand by taking a journey down the LA River. The objectives of the expedition are to raise consciousness about the river’s revitalization efforts, to raise money in support of river-related environmental organizations, to study ways to make access to the river as healthy and safe as possible, and to raise the bar for clean water and grand urban visions that will empower and protect local and national waterways for ourselves and for future generations. 
 
The County and the Army Corps have essentially denied permits to access the LA River in kayaks for the purpose of this exploratory LA River Expedition — largely for “safety reasons.” Although the Corps acknowledges that the river is navigable, they will not allow boats on it; although LA County allegedly supports master plans for the river’s revitalization, they will not allow people in or near the riverbed.
 
The Expedition takes the stance that public trust law in California contains certain inalienable rights of access to the waters of the U.S., and that these time-honored, common sense laws supercede all bureaucratic misgivings, justifications and obfuscations regarding the denial of our request.
 
Meet us Friday, July 25 at 3:00 pm at the LA River Headwaters on the overpass @ Owensmouth in Canoga Park for this most important and fun-spirited event.

The LA River access issue raised by Surviving LA and La La Times continues to be a topic of much debate. Here is another LA Times article about it:

Keeping Western waterways clean

The L.A. River deserves protection under the Clean Water Act. Will the feds step up?

Over the course of almost 40 years, the Clean Water Act -- which compels landowners to secure permits from the Environmental Protection Agency before dredging or discharging pollutants into "waters of the United States" -- has become the cornerstone of our water-quality law, helping states and local governments make development decisions that keep the country's watersheds healthy.

Here in Southern California, the Clean Water Act limits the sewage and industrial waste that flow into streams, rivers and, ultimately, the ocean. It protects washes and other seasonal waters from being bulldozed over, helping to maintain habitat for birds and other wildlife. But today, just as elaborate plans for a long-awaited Los Angeles River restoration have begun moving forward, the river and its already stressed watershed could lose some of the law's protections.

Lay the blame on legalese, courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 2006 rulingin Rapanos vs. U.S., Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that the term "waters of the United States," to which the Clean Water Act still applies, should be interpreted more narrowly as "navigable waters" and wetlands with a "significant nexus" to them.

It was left to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which shares enforcement responsibilities for the act with the EPA, to figure out how to define those and other muddy terms, and it chose to do so, critics say, literally and narrowly. By the corps' definitions, according to a memo released June 4, only two short stretches of the Los Angeles River are "traditionally navigable": 2 miles in the Sepulveda Basin and 1.75 miles in Long Beach.

No one knows, just yet, what the consequences will be for Los Angeles -- the river or the watershed -- because the corps has not yet determined whether specific waters are or aren't covered by the act. Once that process begins, the corps says, the entire Los Angeles River should remain protected because it meets the definition of "relatively permanent." People won't be able to start dumping into the waterway with impunity. The corps says that it maintains its commitment to restoring the river, and that it will be open to reevaluating the "navigability" of the currently "non-navigable" stretches.

Still, real threats remain to Clean Water Act protection for the dozens of ephemeral waterways that feed into the Los Angeles River, which may or may not be deemed to share a significant nexus with the traditionally navigable portions of it. Environmentalists and local officials worry that without assurances of the federal protection that has kept these waterways (relatively) clean for more than a generation, people will be free to develop without oversight, and water quality and habitats will degrade bit by bit.

One thing is clear: This is no way to manage one of the most important environmental protections in American law.

Even though their streams and swales are often dry, Western watersheds are integrated systems. Paving over an isolated canyon here and another there can divert waters or create runoff that makes its way to a distant ocean, disrupting wildlife and public health. Making decisions piecemeal -- hoping that the EPA will step in to question permit applications as they surface -- is woefully inefficient at best and insidious at worst. In a desperate effort to get the corps to change its mind about the Los Angeles River's "traditional navigability" and guarantee protection for isolated waters, a few activists have started kayaking down the concrete channels. That this appears to be the most meaningful way citizens can register their concern for the watershed is absurd.

There are better strategies to keep the Clean Water Act strong in the arid West, where waters are more likely to resemble puddles than the mighty Mississippi (the kind of river, incidentally, that lawmakers had in mind when they used terms such as "navigability"):

* The EPA could step up its involvement in making determinations of navigability. While traditionally the agency has deferred to the corps on such matters, lawyers at the Natural Resources Defense Council and other advocacy groups have argued that the EPA has the power to challenge corps decisions. If EPA officials choose not to raise a challenge, they must commit now to carefully reviewing the flood of permit applications that is sure to rise in the coming months. Local governments too must plan to pick up the slack and come up with their own regulations if federal protections are removed.

* Ideally, Congress should rewrite the Clean Water Act in plainer English. Fortunately, the House has already started the process with HR 2421, the Clean Water Restoration Act. Introduced last year by Reps. James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.), John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) and Vernon J. Ehlers (R-Mich.), the bill would replace the term "navigable waters of the United States" with "waters of the United States," restoring the broader, more inclusive pre-Rapanos understanding of the act's jurisdiction. Staff on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which Oberstar chairs, are fielding suggestions for amendments to the bill, which has 174 co-sponsors in the House. We urge the committee to finish its work and get this bill onto the floor as soon as possible, and we call on the California delegation to support it.

All interested parties must collaborate to ensure that, as the corps promises, the restoration of the Los Angeles River will proceed and Western watersheds will remain healthy. Anything less, the Rapanos decision notwithstanding, would be a miscarriage of justice.

A lot of Angelenos don’t drink tap water and drink bottled water instead, but bottled water sold in the U.S. is not necessarily cleaner or safer than most tap water, according to a four-year scientific study by NRDC. There has been an explosion in bottled water use in the United States over the past ten years driven in large measure by marketing designed to convince the public of bottled water's purity and safety, and capitalizing on public concern about tap water quality. The NRDC studied more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of bottled water. While most of the tested waters were found to be of high quality, some brands were contaminated: about one-third of the waters tested contained levels of contamination including synthetic organic chemicals, bacteria, and arsenic. A key finding of the study was that bottled water regulations are inadequate to assure consumers of either purity or safety, although both the federal government and the states have bottled water safety programs. At the national level, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for bottled water safety, but the FDA's rules completely exempt waters that are packaged and sold within the same state, which account for between 60 and 70 percent of all bottled water sold in the United States (roughly one out of five states don't regulate these waters either). The FDA also exempts carbonated water and seltzer, and fewer than half of the states require carbonated waters to meet their own bottled water standards. Even when bottled waters are covered by the FDA's rules, they are subject to less rigorous testing and purity standards than those which apply to city tap water. For example, bottled water is required to be tested less frequently than city tap water for bacteria and chemical contaminants. In addition, bottled water rules allow for some contamination by E. coli or fecal coliform (which indicate possible contamination with fecal matter), contrary to tap water rules, which prohibit any confirmed contamination with these bacteria. Similarly, there are no requirements for bottled water to be disinfected or tested for parasites such as cryptosporidium or giardia, unlike the rules for big city tap water systems that use surface water sources. Some bottled water then may present a health threat to people with weakened immune systems, such as the frail elderly, some infants, transplant or cancer patients, or people with HIV/AIDS.

Drinking tap water is a better solution, but it isn't perfect. Here is the LA report from NRDC: 

http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/uscities/pdf/la.pdf

Tap water, however, can be improved through the use of filters:

http://www.webmd.com/news/20070409/many-tap-water-filters-work-well

Surviving LA is deeply committed to improving the life of the LA River. Our efforts have led to discussions and legal battles over the navigability of the river. Much work needs to be done to make this river makeover a reality. Join the Pacific American Volunteer Association’s 9th Los Angeles River Community Cleanup with partners Heal the Bay, Anahuak, NAACP, L.A. City Councilman Eric Gacetti and Urban Semillas this Saturday, June 14. Show up ealy for an 8:45am welcome by L.A. City Councilman Eric Garcetti.

For more info go to:

http://www.healthebay.org/assets/pdfdocs/events/2008-06-14_LARiverCleanup_Flyer.pdf

Listen to a discussion about our river efforts on Which Way, LA?:

http://www.kcrw.com/news/programs/ww/ww080611navigating_the_law_a

Okay. Gas prices are crazy and this type of crazy probably isn't going away. There are many cars now that get good mileage, but if you are stuck with a gas guzzler then here are some things you can do to improve your fuel efficiency:

Keep your vehicle well maintained

A car in poor running condition will use more gas than one that has been tuned up. A dirty air filter can reduce gas mileage up to 20% and spark plugs in poor condition can reduce gas mileage up to 12%.

Keep tires properly inflated

Underinflated tires aren’t just dangerous — they devour fuel economy by as much as 25%!  Overinflated tires aren’t efficient, either. Also keep your tires balanced and in alignment.

Alter your commute time

If possible, schedule your trips and errands for times when traffic is lighter. If your company allows it, try coming in earlier or later in order to avoid rush hour.

Optimize your travel

Consolidate trips: If you know you have to buy groceries, take your clothes to the dry cleaner at the same time, and then drop little Johnny at soccer practice. Combine multiple trips into one.

Lighten your load

Carry only the bare neccessities — don’t haul things in your trunk. For every extra 250 pounds your engine hauls, the car loses about one mile per gallon in fuel economy.

Reduce drag

About half of your vehicle’s energy is expended overcoming air resistance. (The other half is expended in acceleration.) Reduce your car’s workload — remove anything that might cause drag: luggage racks, bike racks, ski racks, etc,

Drive at a constant moderate speed

Edmunds.com found that the best way to improve fuel efficiency was to accelerate slowly and to brake over a longer distance. Aside from purchasing a new vehicle, this is the single most effective step you can take to reduce your costs. According to fueleconomy.gov: “As a rule of thumb, you can assume that each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.20 per gallon for gas.”

Don’t idle

Turn off your engine if you’ll be idling for more than thirty seconds. Starting your vehicle does use a burst of fuel, but not as much as allowing the engine to idle too long.

Anticipate stop signs and lights

Plan ahead. The less you have to stop, the better your gas mileage. Make it a game to catch all of the green lights. Laugh at the other guy as he sprints from red to red.

Keep your cool

Most people claim that it makes more sense to use air conditioning on the highway, and to roll down the windows in city traffic. It’s commonly claimed that either method is going to reduce your fuel economy by about 10%. But according to research performed by found, there’s no real difference between driving with the windows down or using the air conditioner. Consumer Reports obtained similar results:

Drive less!!!

Walk. Ride your bike. Take public transit. Carpool. Combine errands. It’s obvious, but easy to forget: the less you drive, the less you’ll spend on gas.