WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE, AND NOW A STOP TO THINK OF CORPS’ ROLE IN NEW SAN GABRIEL DISCOVERY CENTER

Belinda Faustinos, executive officer of the conservancy, praises the cooperative relationship

Years ago, L.A. District gave an easement to the L.A. County Dept. of Public Works to use the Zone 1 Ditch as part of the flood control program at Whittier Narrows/Rio Hondo Dam. The concrete channel detours water from the San Gabriel River to a “spreading ground” where it percolates back into the soil to replenish wells and other supply sources.

But now the ditch has a new name—“Lario”-- and will soon have a new face.

It’s all part of the multimillion-dollar San Gabriel River Discovery Center, a multi-agency project aimed at teaching the public about the invaluable value of water. Scheduled for construction in two to three years, the center will replace the present Whittier Narrows Nature Center.

For decades, L.A. County has leased most of some 400 acres along the San Gabriel River from the Corps for recreational and educational facilities. Now, with the backing of the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy and the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District, the county’s parks and rec department hopes to emphasize the crucial role of water for both man and nature.

“It will help the public a lot to understand water and flood management,” said Phyllis Trabold, an ecologist who’s the closest thing the District has to a park ranger. “When people see water running into a storm drain, now they can see where it goes.”

In 2000, after it was clear he wouldn’t win the California governorship, five-time congressman Tom Campbell was asked what the state’s three main future problems would be. Education and immigration were predictable puffball answers from most any politician. But then Campbell, now dean of the Haass School of Business at University of California/Berkeley and a longtime professor at Stanford Law School, added the third: “Water.”

When one of California’s most astute analysts pinpoints how critical water is as a resource, it’s clear that the Corps’ stakeholders should be able to learn more about it. A small but symbolic part of the educational effort is Zone 1 Ditch. The Rivers and Mountain Conservancy’s project manager, Jeff Yann, has coined the name “Lario” for the new-and-improved version of the trench. “It’s a combination of L.A. and ‘rio’ (Spanish for river),” he explained on a recent tour. “We’ll reconfigure it to make it look more like a natural stream—like the San Gabriel might have looked before it went into a channel.”

The Lario “will be a great place to show the importance of groundwater,” Yann said. He noted that during the mid-‘90s’ drought that affected much of the region, “we in the San Gabriel Valley weren’t on water rationing because we had the source here. This is how we’re going to get a lot of our water in the future.”

Also on the blueprint for the project at the junction of the San Gabriel and Rio Hondo Rivers are a new wetlands, complete with small island whose inhabitants will be protected from humans and predators; outdoor exhibits and nature trails; a reference library for research; a native plant garden and other displays. Construction for the new two-story Discovery Center is expected to begin in two to two-and-a-half years, with completion expected around 2006.

The preliminary $4 million to $5 million price-tag will come from state bond funding, private donations, money from the conservancy and the water district and corporate and other sources.

Centuries, even millennia, before the Corps dammed up the rivers, groundwater in the area created livable habitat for plants and animals. The Gabrieleno Indians found the alluvial basin ideal for their early villages, and it was also the first site of the San Gabriel Mission.

Today an estimated 300 species of birds flock in the sandy and silty plain, which is also home to numerous species of mammal, reptiles, amphibians and plants. It “could be called an island within a sea of concrete and metal,” reads a plaque at the start of a trail. “Although disrupted and altered by man, it is now set aside for study and use as a laboratory for living things.”

Project participants unanimously endorsed the Corps’ contributions to its development. “This project isn’t going to happen without the cooperation of the Corps,” Yann said. “They’ve been very appreciative, and we count on their support and continued commitment.”

Belinda Faustinos, executive officer of the conservancy, observed that “the Corps is central to the whole area. There’s no way we can move forward without the Corps’ support.” The center, she said, “will be at the heart of our rivers and at the heart of our community that desperately needs the open spaces and educational opportunities.”

Calling the project “an opportunity for us to literally put these rivers back on the map,” Kenneth Manning, vice president of the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District, said he was “working with the Corps very closely. We’re going to need land for parking and exhibits, which will end up on Corps land. They’ve been very cooperative.”

As they spoke, a red-tailed hawk watched from a power pylon, southern alligator lizards scampered among the arroyo willow and a snowy egret stood near Zone 1 Ditch.

Make that the Lario.