The day’s activities began with a program kick-off involving: LA City Councilman Bill Rosendahl (District 11); California Coastal Commissioner Wendy Mitchell; Bureau of Sanitation Chief Operating Officer Traci Minamide; Malibu Foundation for Environmental Education Founder and Executive Director Michael Klubock; 5 Gyres board member Lisa Boyle; and Eco Hero Kids performing a song. Students proceeded to pick up trash on the beach before forming a large human mosaic.

Kids Ocean Day in Los Angeles is the culmination of a year-round school assembly program by the Malibu Foundation for Environmental Education to teach school kids about the adverse impacts of pollution to the ocean. According to Michael Klubock, Malibu Foundation for Environmental Education Executive Director and founder of Kids Ocean Day, “Our program is about raising awareness to facilitate behavioral change. Throughout the year, we taught the students that beneath the surface of the ocean, animals are eating plastic and getting tangled in nets and six-pack rings. Today, we took them to the beach for a clean-up to drive home the message, and have them participate in an aerial artwork to let them make a statement about their commitment to the environment. Through all these efforts, we are building a generation of informed agents of charge and champions to the ocean.”

Leading the charge in protecting the ocean is eighth grader Adam Mendoza of Monte Vista School in El Monte. Mendoza designed the kid holding the shell with the words “Listen” that was transformed by aerial artist John Quigley into a 3,500-person mosaic, comprised mostly of students from 36 Los Angeles area schools. The Los Angeles celebration of Kids Ocean Day is one of six in California, sponsored by the California Coastal Commission with more than 7,000 kids participating statewide.

Kids Ocean Day in Los Angeles was organized by the Malibu Foundation for Environmental Education, the California Coastal Commission, the City of Los Angeles, Keep Los Angeles Beautiful and Spectral Q.  Supporters include the Plastic Pollution Coalition and 5 Gyres.  The California Coastal Commission coordinates the program statewide and provides financial support from the Whale Tail License Plate Fund.

Photos courtesy of Kids Ocean Day and City of Los Angeles Department of Public Works.

By Joyce Amaro, 

This week the American Humane Association is celebrating Be Kind To Animals Week – a time created to encourage compassion towards animals. While it’s easy for us animal lovers to list the ways we’ll be kind to animals this week, (volunteer at a local animal shelter or consider adopting a rescue dog or cat), it may not be as easy to recognize that many of the daily activities related to our pets can have a huge impact – either positively or negatively – on the marine animals who live just off our coast.

Join me in making a pledge to be kind to ALL animals this week – and every week – by adopting these three simple pollution preventing pet practices:

1. Pick up after your dog every single time and dispose of the waste properly by placing it in your City-issued black bin. Never allow pet waste to flow into local storm drains or waterways. The bacterium in pet waste contaminates water, creating health and safety dangers for beach goers and marine life alike. Pet waste also adds excess nutrients to water bodies resulting in unwanted algae blooms. LA Stormwater provides pet owners with a free pet waste canister and bags that easily attaches to a dog’s leash, and receiving a free canister of dog waste bags is easy – all you have to do is request it.
2. Maintain your car and dispose of used automotive fluids properly by taking them to one of the City’s seven SAFE Centers. Pets can be poisoned if they ingest gas, oil or antifreeze that drips onto the pavement or is stored in open containers. And, if these chemicals flow into our local rivers, creeks and lakes, it creates a toxic soup that can kill marine animals.
3. When washing your pet, never allow pet products or wash water to flow into the street and be sure to bathe her on a permeable surface like grass. Bathing her indoors or at a professional groomer is even better. After all, doesn’t she deserve a day at the doggie spa?

Yes, this week will be filled with lots of kitty kisses and pooch smooches and maybe even a paw-dicure or two. But let’s not forget to be kind to our sea animals by preventing pollution. That’s how we can be kind to ALL animals! 

Photo courtesy of lowjumpingfrog.

You’re the obsessively organic vegetable gardener who is crazy for compost and tenaciously turns your pile to create soil that looks more like chocolate cake than dirt. You’re the homeowner who’s rockin’ the rain barrels you recently added to your residence and telling anyone who will listen how low impact development elements like rain barrels will create a more sustainable LA. You’re the master mower, faithfully allowing your grass clippings, which provide vital nutrients, to remain on your front lawn and cringing every time you see a gardener raking up and disposing of precious yard clippings. . .

Oh, yes! You know who you are, and we want to hear how your green garden grows!

With spring (and your garden!) in full bloom, tell us about the “green” practices you use to create an ocean-friendly garden and/or yard. It’s simple. Feel free to boast about your ocean-friendly gardening practices in the comments section below by Friday, May 17, 2013 and you’ll be entered into a contest for a chance to win a $50 gift card to Armstrong Garden Center. Proudly tell us about how you use an integrated pest management system instead of pesticides . . . or how you leveled your lawn and planted a drought resistant landscape . . . or how you recently installed a rain garden in your front yard . . . you get the idea!

We’ll announce the winner on LA Stormwater’s Facebook page on Wednesday, May 22, 2013. We look forward to hearing from all you garden gurus and happy H2O harvesters! Good luck!

Thank you to Armstrong Garden Center for this promotion.

Photos courtesy of  mskaycjay and eVo photo.

> Get involved in a big way! Big Sunday weekend is May 3, 4 and 5 with volunteer opportunities happening all over Los Angeles. Big Sunday’s mission is to build community through community service and with more than 50,000 people volunteering last year, they’re well on their way to meeting that goal!

> Come by and say hi! LA Stormwater will have a booth at the Best Friends No Kill Los Angeles (NKLA) Super Adoption at the La Brea Tar Pits on May 4, passing out dog waste bags to the dog owners in attendance. Post a photo of yourself at the LA Stormwater booth on our Facebook page, and we’ll hook you up with a free LA Stormwater t-shirt or canvas bag!

> Even storm drains need a little love. Ready to adopt one? The folks at Adopt A Storm Drain Foundation provide not only opportunities to educate people about the negative impact pollution on our local waterways but the chance to get out and do something about it as well! They will be sponsoring three community clean ups in South Los Angeles and San Pedro on May 4, May 11 and May 18.

> Show Dockweiler Beach a little love, too! Malibu Foundation for Environmental Education’s 20th annual Kids Ocean Day takes place on May 16 at Dockweiler Beach. More than 3,000 Los Angeles-area students will take part in a beach clean-up and aerial art with a pollution prevention message. Visit Kids Ocean Day’s Facebook page to learn how you can volunteer!

> It’s time to make room for the river! The City and County of Los Angeles in partnership with local non-profit environmental organizations present a two-day conference entitled Make Room For the River: Los Angeles on May 16-17. Workshops will explore the role of the Los Angeles River in coming decades and examine ways to achieve multiple benefits for Angelenos and LA’s founding water body. 

> Un gran limpieza para un gran rio! Friends of the LA River’s annual La Gran Limpieza takes place on Saturday, May 18 from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. This year you’ll have 15 sites along the Los Angeles River from which to choose. Invite everyone you know to come out for a work-party down by the river.

> Truth! Nothin’ But Sand on this beach! Heal the Bay’s monthly Nothin’ But Sand beach clean-up takes place on May 18 at Will Rogers State Beach.

> Discover Recycling with LA Sanitation’s Dynamic Duo! LA Sanitation is showcasing its district yards with a series of open houses this spring. The West Valley District Yard will be open to the public on May 18 and will also feature a tire recycling collection event the same day.

> Closing out the month, Pacoima Beautiful presents their end of the year clean up on May 25. For more information, please call Imelda Padilla at (818) 899-2454.

> Get wild for a while! Once the hard work is done, take a day to enjoy the When They Were Wild: Recapturing California’s Wildflower Heritage art exhibit at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. This exhibit, which is a collaborative project between the Theodore Payne Foundation, the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and the Huntington Library, includes some 200 art items that interpret the unique diversity of native California flora from its wild origins to its current popularity. 

Don’t forget that you can check out all of the month’s events at our online calendar, and if you have an event that you’d like us to feature, drop us a line in the comments section below.

Photo courtesy of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District.

LA Stormwater: Tell us how Water LA got started. What was the impetus for this project?

Melanie Winter: Water LA is an outgrowth of our work developing the Tujunga/Pacoima Watershed Plan.The Plan includes dozens of projects – large and small – that are now being implemented across the east San Fernando Valley in partnership with the City, County and State. One of those projects is transforming a ¾-mile concrete median on Woodman Avenue into a landscaped swale that captures rainwater runoff from 126 acres and infiltrates it to the groundwater basin.  Since that project includes monitoring stations, we saw it as the perfect opportunity to gather data on the benefits of “urban acupuncture.”

LA’s recent low impact development ordinance, while a positive step, only applies to new developments and major retrofits, which constitute a very, very small fraction of the total land area of the City. That leaves every other parcel of land continuing to create runoff.  Green Streets are also terrific and should be implemented broadly, especially in areas where they can provide the most benefits, but the City can’t do 5,000 green streets – I doubt they’ll do 100 in my lifetime. The Elmer Avenue project is beautiful and it’s providing useful data, but people see it and think ‘OK, when is the City going to come do that in my neighborhood?’ We wanted to empower everyone in Los Angeles to accomplish projects on their own properties simply, legally, creatively. Think of it as voluntary low impact development (LID).

LA Stormwater: Tell us more about “urban acupuncture.” What does that mean?

Melanie Winter:  Urban acupuncture distributes a lot of small projects throughout a region to make a huge impact. Residents are eager to find ways to engage meaningfully and locally in response to big issues like water resources and climate change. Water LA is about giving them tools to create small projects that add up to big results when implemented widely by residents and their neighbors. 

Water LA’s motto is ‘Capture, Conserve, Reuse.’ Each project we teach accomplishes at least one of these. With the onset of climate uncertainty and the attendant effects on water resources, the need to aggressively facilitate sustainable local water resources grows daily. We believe that it takes all hands on deck, and residents should be given the tools to contribute.

LA Stormwater: What are Water LA’s main objectives and goals and what do you hope to achieve?

Melanie Winter:  This phase of Water LA works on several levels. Our first objective is to make the practice of urban acupuncture accessible, and to get people interested and excited about it. We’re providing hands-on workshops, creating user-friendly homeowner how-to’s and demonstrating that you can do these things while maintaining your own aesthetic, and saving money on your water bill.   

We’re generating data to show that smaller is better. We’ve seen research to support this in other parts of the world with similar climates. We can use the data to help LA Sanitation & LA DWP make informed decisions about future homeowner incentives. If one green street costs x and gets y, what if x can get you y cubed when invested in urban acupuncture? We have no doubt that homeowners with incentives can move faster and cover a larger area of land than Street Services can. We need to be moving smart and fast.

We’re also working with Building & Safety to identify and safely revise codes on the books that are unsustainable, and to reduce – and where possible eliminate – permit requirements and fees, or at a minimum to streamline the process so it’s not so daunting. One of our early successes was reducing by 90% both the greywater permit fee and the time it takes to get a system approved. We ultimately want to make it all accessible online.

Different folks have been working on various aspects of this for a while but partly because of that the information out there is fragmented and inconsistent. We’re working to bring everyone together – non-profits and City agencies alike – to support a one-stop online destination for residents to go and get the best guidance. Make it easy to remember, easy to find. “Water LA” is about as simple as it gets. We’re thrilled that LADWP has adopted our ‘Capture, Conserve, Reuse’ motto.

LA Stormwater:  As you work with residents who are interested in harvesting rainwater, what surprises you the most about the folks who attend your workshops?

Melanie Winter:  One of the gratifying surprises about our Woodman neighborhood is that while we initially approached them with the idea of lowering their water bills, a lot of them had already stopped watering their lawns, or had poured concrete instead of maintaining green space. 
Yet given the opportunity to create rainwater capture space, they jumped right on board. Not necessarily because they’ll be saving irrigation water – they mostly don’t irrigate- but because they recognize the opportunity to recharge groundwater, reduce local flooding, clean up stormwater and create some habitat. The fact that our participants get very excited about making these changes is incredibly encouraging. Their willingness to pitch in on one another’s projects has been wonderful. Also, when a neighbor shows up with some homemade lemonade and snacks in the middle of a hands-on workshop, that’s a lovely surprise. 

LA Stormwater:  You’ve been working on improving LA’s water quality for going on two decades. What changes have you seen since you began working on this issue and what’s been the biggest challenge?

Melanie Winter:  The threat of regulatory fines got the City’s attention. There are more conversations across departments, and we’re starting to see more collaboration. But the silos and their inhibiting hierarchies still exist. The IRP got Sanitation to think about multi-beneficial projects, and start connecting water quality to water supply. And it helped demonstrate to DWP that the City was serious about considering stormwater as a resource. Maybe recognition of the challenges posed by climate change will be the thing that forces that us to get serious about connecting water resources to land use, and implementing adaptations that can make Los Angeles resilient in the 21st century.

The biggest challenge for us at The River Project may be that for the most part, agencies still talk about water, the river, and the city itself as distinct things. We’re working towards a living Los Angeles River, nourished by a healthy watershed. Water LA is about water quality and water supply, yes, but capturing stormwater reduces peak flows to the river, too. That’s key because that concrete lining our rivers and streams is reaching the end of its serviceable life and will have to be re-built or re-thought. So long as there are systems in place – be they building codes or channelized waterways – that serve to throw away our most precious resource, or planning and zoning codes that prohibit us from creating healthy communities, the system will remain out of balance and a sustainable future for the City will be difficult to realize.  We’re looking at the watershed as a functioning whole, and agencies are just not there yet. 

LA Stormwater:  So, what is LA doing well in the area of improving its water quality? And, adversely, what can we do better?

Melanie Winter:  The Integrated Resources Plan (or IRP) was a brilliantly facilitated stakeholder process that laid the foundation for the LID ordinance and the Green Streets program. It not only resulted in some great projects, but also helped move the needle in terms of thinking holistically about water. We’ve seen the beginnings of a discussion about the concept of ‘One Water’ – the notion that our water supply and our rainwater resources are actually related and should be managed as such.

LA has been tightly focused on technical strategies to meet Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) in order to avoid the financial penalties that result from violations of the Clean Water Act, but with that focus sometimes the broader picture is sacrificed. There’s a tendency to over-engineer things – a preference for machines that require maintenance rather than land-based measures that require stewardship. The latter have more benefits and are more cost effective, but the former is still more comfortable in practice. We have to start trusting in the value of ecosystem services.

I’d like to see another well-facilitated IRP – move the needle a bit further. This time, engaging some key players that weren’t central to the process the first time out – Planning, Building & Safety, Transportation.

LA Stormwater:  As far as the water issues facing LA, where would you like to see Los Angeles in another 20 years?

Melanie Winter:  By 2035 we could be close to flipping the ratios of imported and local supply through this urban acupuncture approach of capture, conserve, reuse. We will have building codes that support rather than inhibit parcel-based stormwater capture. Parkway swales, rain gardens, greywater systems, etc. will be the norm rather than the exception. I’d like to see fewer thirsty lawns, more native landscapes, more park space and several more miles of living rivers, creeks and streams.  Conservation levels could be the highest in the developed world. We could have a network of purple pipes, supplying recycled water to parks and industry. We should have finally taken action on cleaning up our groundwater. These things can easily be achieved if we individually and collectively make a shift to push water to the top of our priorities list. As Carl Sagan said “Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water. Don’t sit this one out. Do something.”

Photos courtesy of Water LA.

LA Sanitation

Learn more about the value of recycling and creating a zero waste household…watch demonstrations of LA Sanitation’s many mighty machines…visit with LA Sanitation’s dynamic duo Mr. Recycle and sidekick Robo Blue as they jump into action to serve up fun, food and prizes for kids. 

Additionally, each of the open houses will feature a tire recycling collection event. Los Angeles residents can dispose of unwanted tires in exchange for free, and each person who brings in tires will receive a coupon for 15% off their next purchase of Bridgestone or Firestone tires.

Here are the dates that LA Sanitation’s open houses are happening:

Saturday, April 27 at the East Valley District Yard

Saturday, May 18 at the West Valley District Yard

Saturday, June 1 at the North Central District Yard

Saturday, June 8 at the South Los Angeles District Yard

Saturday, June 22 at the Harbor District Yard

Saturday, June 29 at the West Los Angeles District Yard

Mark your calendar and come out to discover more about recycling.

Photos courtesy of waltarrrrr and LA Sanitation.

The $14 million voter-approved Proposition O-funded project promises to improve the quality of stormwater runoff that flows into the coastal waters off Venice Beach. The partnership project between the cities of Los Angeles and Santa Monica also boasts LA’s largest stormwater storage tank, measuring 180 feet wide by 20 feet deep and holding a staggering 2.75 million gallons of water. Located underground, this massive tank will store water that will either be diverted to the City’s sanitary sewer system for treatment or filtered and used to irrigate Penmar’s golf course and the very baseball field beneath which it is stored.

“This Prop O stormwater project is an engineering masterpiece,” said Councilmember Rosendahl. “I applaud the City departments that collaborated on a system to clean stormwater runoff that flows into Santa Monica Bay, as well as store water for reuse. This project will show future generations that we care about the environment and the people who live here.” Throughout the construction of the project, Councilmember Rosendahl used his YouTube channel to show the project’s progress and remind viewers that this green project created 30 jobs.  

“This is a great symbol of a paradigm shift in the City of Los Angeles,” said Mark Gold, founder of Heal the Bay. “Not only does this tremendous project continue to clean up Santa Monica Bay and make it safe for swimmers to go to the beach without getting sick, it also captures runoff that should not be wasted.” 

Fran Diamond serves on Proposition O’s Citizen Oversight Advisory Committee and commented that this project tackles our water issues on two fronts. “We’re solving the problem of water supply as well as water quality. I’m thrilled that millions of gallons of stormwater will go to irrigate Penmar Park instead of flowing out to the bay and making people sick.”

The second phase of the project – the installation of the baseball field’s irrigation system – will begin later this year.

Photo courtesy of City of Los Angeles, Council District 11, Councilmember Bill Rosendahl.

The Penmar Water Quality Improvement Project reduces pollutant levels in stormwater runoff from the existing Rose Avenue storm drain by diverting dry and wet weather runoff into a massive 2.75 million gallon underground storage tank, which is located directly under a portion of the Penmar Recreation Center Park playing fields. Pumps will then move the polluted stormwater runoff into the sanitary sewer system where it will receive treatment at LA Sanitation’s Hyperion Wastewater Treatment Plant before being discharged into Santa Monica Bay. 

Here are the specifics regarding the grand opening event:

Date: Monday, April 15, 2013

Time: 11:00 a.m.

Location: Penmar Recreation Center, 1341 Lake Street, Venice, Los Angeles

Please see this flyer for additional information.

Please join us in celebrating the completion of this project that will protect the health and safety of Santa Monica Bay.

Photo courtesy of City of Los Angeles, Department of Public Works.