PERSPECTIVE ON THE L.A. RIVER : Paving the Way to More Problems : What we need is watershed management to catch rainfall and better utilize what is now a storm drain.

Like an ill patient, the county of Los Angeles should get a second opinion before it goes into a very costly and dangerous operation.

In spending millions of dollars to pour more concrete on the walls of the Los Angeles River, we are missing an opportunity to achieve a much greater level of public safety.

The Los Angeles basin is one of the largest urban watersheds in the world, but there is no one government agency or utility managing it as such. Conversely, dozens of agencies attempt to solve problems such as flooding, water shortages, polluted beaches and air, crammed landfills and environmental inequity, all of which arise from addressing our ecosystem in an unintegrated manner.

These agencies work on different facets of the same issue with little coordination.

Nowhere in the current debate about the fate of the river--now essentially a concrete drainage channel running 52 miles from the mountains to the harbor--are officials addressing the core problem: that we’ve horribly mismanaged our city’s watershed.

Integrated watershed management provides an ambitious yet achievable approach that must be explored as either an alternative or a complement to raising the walls of the Los Angeles River. The good news is that some agencies and environmental groups are beginning to talk about the issue. For example, TreePeople has launched a demonstration project and study to show the economic and practical feasibility of this concept.

Watershed management recognizes and works with the living systems that already are--or were--in place in this environment. Much of the flooding and pollution we experience is caused by an overpaved city. A low-tech approach literally opens up the pavement wherever possible for the planting of native and drought-tolerant trees. Mulching with recycled green waste plays an important role in the model. This combination creates miniature living reservoirs, with trees catching the rain in their canopy and slowly releasing it into the sponge of absorbent mulch and soil. Here it is stored and used by plants and recharges the water table.

The next important element is the use of cisterns or tanks to hold the runoff from rooftops and paved surfaces on every feasible property. The stored water can be used safely for landscape irrigation, as it has been for centuries.

Thanks to new technologies, tanks can hold thousands of gallons without filling open space around buildings. They can be linked electronically with both flood control and storm-water managers to be utilized as a networked reservoir for flood and pollution control.

Costly? Inefficient? This system may actually save millions of dollars and create tens of thousands of new, sustainable jobs. According to sources in the water-supply community, our region will spend more than $20 billion in the next 10 years developing new water supply and waste-water treatment systems. TreePeople aims to demonstrate that an alternative, integrated approach will provide better flood control, save money and deliver the additional level of safety created by more jobs and a healthier environment.

The savings would be substantial: lowered costs of purchasing water, avoided costs of transporting and landfilling green waste (35% of L.A.’s garbage), reduced penalties and cleanup of storm water and lowered energy consumption and air pollution resulting from the shade provided by additional canopy. New business and job opportunities would arise from retrofitting and managing every property as part of the watershed: planting trees, tending the mulch, manufacturing, installing and servicing the network of cisterns.

The challenge of this approach is that it requires the ongoing participation of an informed public. And that’s where partnership with the community comes in. Grass-roots and environmental organizations like TreePeople have paved new ground, working with the city to help it design and run its new recycling and storm-water programs. This has resulted in more successful programs with greater benefits for local communities.

The days of single-purpose solutions to complex problems are over. Let’s end the syndrome of Band-aid approaches that pass on greater and even more costly problems to the next generation. By doing so, we can take an unsightly storm drain and turn it back into a safe place of recreation and beauty.