Water, water, everywhere
February 13, 2024
Welcome to the fifth issue of Report Forward by journalist Alissa Walker.
THE BIG REPORT
An infiltration pond on the campus of the Carthay School of Environmental Studies Magnet soaks up stormwater — but most of LA’s rain is funneled to the ocean. Photo by Miles Leicher
Another atmospheric river, another week of record-setting rainfall — and another chance to watch in utter disbelief as billions more gallons of water are flushed out to sea. Los Angeles County only captures a fraction of its stormwater — less than 20 percent — despite the fact that voters passed a transformative ballot measure to catch, clean, and consume more stormwater nearly six years ago. Measure W, a parcel tax on impermeable land like parking lots and driveways, now funds the county’s Safe Clean Water Program (SCWP) to the tune of $280 million each year. That money is, in turn, doled out as grants for projects that turn gray impervious surfaces to green permeable ones — effectively depaving LA’s near-ubiquitous hardscape. But despite a dependable flow of cash, progress has been more like a slow drip. In 2023, an update on the program revealed that only 30 acres had been converted into green space.
To see these figures during years when LA has watched historic levels of precipitation fall from the sky has been downright excruciating for Mark Gold, who, as the longtime president of Heal the Bay, had been sounding the alarm on watershed health for decades. But LA’s water might finally be heading in the right direction. Gold, who is now director of water scarcity solutions for NRDC, is one of the co-authors of Vision 2045, released in December of last year by Heal the Bay, NRDC, and LA Waterkeeper as a course-correction for funding SCWP projects that sets sweeping new targets for stormwater management, including a goal to capture nearly 100 billion gallons annually by 2045. “How do you make a document like this so it actually leads to change in the program while improving water supply and water quality and also improving communities?” says Gold. So now the real work begins: translating more of that money into tangible, day-to-day benefits for the county’s most marginalized residents, who are more likely to experience the dangers of impermeable surfaces like flooding, pollution, and extreme heat.
The crucial first step was getting everyone in the county on the same page. The Vision 2045 release was timed to coincide with the passage of the LA County Water Plan, approved by the Board of Supervisors in December with a goal to source 80 percent of LA’s water supply locally by 2045. “As climate change makes our imported water resources less reliable and more expensive, I would like to see the majority of our stormwater be diverted for beneficial reuse rather than washed out to the ocean where it pollutes our coast,” said Board Chair Lindsey Horvath when the plan passed. The extensive outreach process for the plan has aligned all 200 water agencies in the county behind this goal, which is now the same as the SCWP goal, says Gold. “We make it abundantly clear that the 80 percent of local water by 2045 target really guides everything else.”
By 2026, the Alondra Park Multi-Benefit Stormwater Capture Park in Lawndale will treat stormwater onsite and prevent pollutants from entering the nearby Dominguez Channel. Rendering via Los Angeles County Board of Public Works
Unlike the state’s climate funding, which has to be clawed back from cuts made every year during the budget process, the stream of Measure W revenue is reliable year to year. But last February, an LA Waterkeeper report first raised concerns about SCWP implementation, noting that after a strong start, the number and quality of grant proposals had declined. Gold says one of the reasons for this is fairly typical when passing infrastructure-funding mechanisms like Measure W: a slew of “shovel ready” projects planned by big agencies long before the measure went into effect quickly applied for and got the first round of funding. Consequently, many of the projects that have been funded are building or repairing traditional pieces of water infrastructure, some of which actually required more paving, like cisterns and catchment basins.
Water might be captured through these traditional projects, but they’re not necessarily the types of interventions so desperately needed to break up LA’s concrete landscape: nature trails, open space, wildlife habitats, biodiversity corridors, microforests, and most critically, new parks. LA is exceptionally park-deprived, ranking 80th out of 100 cities in an annual report by the Trust for Public Land, with “very high need” neighborhoods that have less than one acre of park per 1,000 residents, according to the county’s 2022 parks needs assessment. Which is why, the report notes, the “pay as you go” approach of the SCWP isn’t working. Vision 2045 calls not only for a financing system that can help plan bigger projects year-to-year, but also for better collaboration with two other countywide infrastructure revenue generators: Measure A, another parcel tax that funds new parks; and Measure M, a sales tax that funds new transit. Working more closely with Metro or the county’s Regional Park and Open Space District on projects that are implemented regionally could bring stormwater capture into the design of more public spaces.
Vision 2045 also sets another very concrete target (or, more specifically, an anti-concrete target): to replace 12,000 acres of paved surfaces with new green spaces by 2045. And the most obvious candidates for greening are LA County’s schoolyards, a majority of which are paved nearly entirely in asphalt, posing a tremendous public health risk to their students in a warming climate. As the second-largest landowner in the county, managing 6,387 acres, it would make sense for LAUSD to receive a bulk of Measure W’s funds. But so far, just 10 LAUSD proposals have been submitted for SCWP grants, only one was chosen for implementation, and it was later withdrawn. That discrepancy is noted in the Vision 2045 plan, which calls for LA County schools within disadvantaged communities — currently defined by the state as the number of students who would qualify for free meals (although now all California school meals are free) — to be greened by 2030, with all schools greened by 2045. LAUSD officials are working on a major campus greening initiative but estimate that it may cost as much as $4 billion. SCWP funding could help close that gap.
But especially when a huge institution like LAUSD says it’s planning to green 30 percent of its schoolyards by 2035 on its own, the Vision 2045 goal to green 12,000 acres of impermeable surfaces by 2045 starts to seem like a literal drop in the bucket. “Why does this report ask for so much less, and farther into the future?” says Melanie Winter of The River Project. “Park needs and school greening is a fine place to begin, but are largely opportunistic low-hanging fruit and don't relate to or align with the reason we're looking to reduce hardscape. Parks and schools may give us a bit of patchwork. Methodically embedding living open spaces throughout the watershed — particularly along historic waterways — can do so much more.” Winter wants to see more nature-based solutions distributed throughout the county, from planting rain gardens to restoring urban creeks — a process known as “daylighting” — which have sprung to life in the past week in the form of flooded intersections, despite our best attempts to pave them out of existence.
The East Los Angeles Sustainable Medians Project turns the median of a residential street into a stormwater capture system that also adds shade, native plants, and walking trails. Photo by LA Waterkeeper
To that end, achieving Vision 2045’s goals will also require a systemwide overhaul in how public works departments function at the municipal level. Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, who worked to get Measure W approved while in former County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl’s office, introduced a motion earlier this month with several steps needed to bring LADWP’s operations and infrastructure in alignment with its many long-range climate goals, including sourcing 70 percent of its water locally by 2035. Making the city’s surfaces more spongy will also require much better interagency cooperation with the city’s Bureau of Engineering and Department of Sanitation, and even the Department of Transportation. So much of LA’s walking and biking infrastructure is built into the city’s network of grates and gutters. What does a new sidewalk or bike lane look like when the goal is to keep that water local instead of sending it down the nearest storm drain?
Angelenos have proven that we’re very water savvy. As a region we were able to dramatically curb our water use; now we use less than we did a few decades ago, despite our growing population. “We’ve made so much progress in the region in dry weather,” agrees Gold. Now, in the midst of back-to-back atmospheric river years, it’s time to bring the same attention to stormwater awareness. Even Angelenos who voted for Measure W don’t necessarily know that there are financial incentives for property owners who install stormwater interventions, in the same way local utilities offer rebates for replacing a lawn with drought-tolerant native plants. Part of that awareness means making green medians, curbside bioswales, and even simple tree plantings way more visible on every block so we can watch in real time as our cities soak up every inch. But we also need to be drawing up much more visionary plans to reconnect to our water — the types of projects that Gold says the region hasn’t executed in 50 years. “We have to have transformations like greener streets and greener schools, plus larger stormwater infiltration and capture projects,” he says. “We have to act together, more forcefully and purposely, and we’ll have more livable climate-resilient communities that benefit each and every one of us.”
Did you notice flooding in your neighborhood after the last storm? Researchers from UC Irvine and University of Miami are evaluating the benefits, costs, and tradeoffs of different approaches to manage flood risk in LA County. The first phase of the project focuses on countywide flood risk adaptation strategies — if you have thoughts about where stormwater should be captured near you, share your suggestions here.
PROGRESS REPORT
After California legalized street vending in 2018, Los Angeles adopted its own sidewalk vending program throughout the city — with the exception of eight designated no-vending zones. These included some of LA’s most-visited places: the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Dodger Stadium, and Venice Beach. In 2022, a coalition of vending advocates including Inclusive Action for the City, Community Power Collective, and East LA Community Corporation sued the city on behalf of vendors who were being excluded from these high economic opportunity areas. This spurred the council to take action, and, as of last week’s 15-0 vote, the city has finally eliminated its no-vending zones.
Vendors rallied at City Hall to demand an elimination of LA’s no-vending zones. Photo by Public Counsel
While this should be seen as a big step towards truly legalizing street vending, it still doesn’t change the fact that the city criminalized these vendors for years, in flagrant violation of state law. “The City has still not addressed the fact that enforcement of these unlawful regulations has resulted in hundreds of citations and thousands of dollars of fines issued to low income workers,” reads a joint statement from the plaintiffs. “Shockingly, even as the City acknowledges the unlawful nature of the regulations, the citations continue.” The trial begins this week.
LOCAL REPORT
Fatal overdoses have increased 1,000 percent in Skid Row since 2017, with fentanyl involved in about 70 percent of those deaths, according to a gripping In These Times report. Overdoses are also responsible for one-third of all unhoused deaths citywide, yet sweeps frequently result in the destruction of government-funded Narcan, which could prevent those overdoses.
2 LAPD helicopters are in the sky 20 hours a day, says the LA City Controller’s first-ever audit of the LAPD’s Air Support Division, which spends 61 percent of its airborne time on low-priority activities like ceremonial flyovers. This costs taxpayers about $50 million per year.
9 out of 10 LA voters think LA city ethics rules should be stronger, according to the final report of the LA Governance Reform Project, which makes recommendations to expand the ethics committee as well as giving the committee the power to place policy proposals on the ballot.
NATIONAL REPORT
JUST GIVE PEOPLE MONEY: Yet another study confirms that giving homeless people cash — in this case $750 per month in San Francisco — means they are more likely to get into stable housing.
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE: In 2023, police killed 1,232 people in the U.S., the highest number since the Mapping Police Violence nonprofit started tracking deaths a decade ago, according to a Guardian report.
RECORDING OFF: Body-worn cameras have become a major law-enforcement investment but a major ProPublica investigation says that the technology is more often used to obscure the transparency that has been promised.
FIELD REPORT
It’s election season! Ballots for LA County voters have arrived. If you’re in LA City Council districts 2, 4, 10, or 14 and need a refresher on candidate positions, check out the videos of LA Forward Institute’s non-partisan candidate forums. If you’ve already returned your ballot — well, look at you! — you can track it here. And if you or someone you know isn’t registered to vote, you can do that online until February 20 — here’s how — then after that you can still register in person at a voting center. Ballots are due Tuesday, March 5.
REPORT IN
Hi, Alissa Walker here — I’ll be compiling Report Forward every month. Please send reports, studies, white papers, and big policy wins to me at reports@laf.institute — and forward this to someone working to make LA a better place.
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