LOS ANGELES-The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said work had begun on a week-long project at the Los Angeles River to inspect damage in the river's channel north of the Riverside Drive Bridge.

Corps maintenance crews will build two temporary levees in the channel to divert water around an area where they have found breaks in the concrete liner on the river's bottom. Diverting the water will allow inspections by Corps experts, who will then draft a repair plan to ensure continued use of the channel. No repairs will be made immediately, and the temporary levees will be removed after the inspections.

While work is underway, a bicycle path at the top of the west levee will remain accessible to the public.

One of the levees will be constructed of the same concrete material used in Caltrans barriers, and the other will be made of material taken from a dry sandbar with palm trees a quarter-mile upstream from the project. The inspection will require clearing less than a half acre of vegetation from the soft-bottom part of the river channel.

Before beginning the project, the Corps prepared a federally mandated environmental document for it and coordinated its plans with the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The Los Angeles River is the main part of the Los Angeles County Drainage Area (LACDA) system, which provides flood protection to millions of residents and thousands of businesses in Los Angeles County.