When Lt. Gen. Bob Flowers wrote in last year’s White Paper, “We will be open and responsive in working with all interested parties…,” he was talking about Carvel Bass and Deanie Kennedy. And about Cindia Perez and Louis Murillo..

When Gen. Flowers wrote that the Corps would “reach out to stakeholders early and actively listen to the concerns on all sides of issues…,” he was referring to Susan Tianen, Katy Parks and Pamela Conrad. And to Addy Licea and Mario Ruiz.

When Gen. Flowers declared in a video speech, “It is imperative not to avoid our critics—people should know you by name, as a person…,” he was setting the stage for a special District initiative in mid-July. All five of the above District team members played a crucial role in putting the commanding general’s words into action, and so did the four aforementioned San Fernando High School students, along with six of their classmates.

An edgy episode that could have degenerated into bitter and nonproductive name-calling and blame-gaming instead became a forum for reasoned analysis. Light, not heat, was shed. Adversaries, while maybe not becoming amigos, worked together to forge possible solutions. And at the core of it all was the Corps—team members listening, observing and, when asked, providing the hard data and empirical evidence to help the 30 or so participants make their decisions. Said Patricia Davenport, field deputy for Councilwoman Wendy Gruel: “The Corps is the Corps, the army, engineers. This is 180 degrees from that.”

The scene: Hansen Dam.

For decades the dam was a District delight, protecting hundreds of thousands of residents and their desert-like alluvial plain from any recurrence of the disastrous 1938 flood. A 1943 flood, for example, was controlled by the dam and probably, according Anthony Turhollow’s history of the District, “saved many lives and made possible the uninterrupted operation of war plants in the area.” By 1953, Hansen Dam was one of the 10 most popular recreation area in America.

In recent years, however, the dam and its rec facilities have become lighting rods for controversy and criticism. Although the City of Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Dept. leases the land from the Corps and operates the facilities, the public has targeted the Corps. “Every so often community activists are called upon to clarify for otherwise confused bureaucrats the realities of a situation that is causing problems,” L.A. Times columnist Al Martinez wrote in July. “The Army Corps of Engineers blundered into a citizens’ army fully equipped to take it on.”

Back in the day, the Corps might have hunkered down, battened the bureaucratic hatches and waited for the storm of protest to blow itself out. But this isn’t your grandfather’s Corps. Instead, District team members literally walked into the problem area, carrying trash bags for litter, binoculars for bird-watching and open minds for listening to the folks on the trail--and later around the tables--with them.

Catalyst for the precedent-shattering, all-day affair was Project GRAD LA (*Graduation Really Achieves Dreams”), a nonprofit which strongly encourages students to go to college and awards merit scholarships to high school graduates. This spring, 10 San Fernando High Project GRAD scholars focused their collective wills and skills on Hansen Dam.

Their research included clambering down the east bank of the artificial lake behind the dam, bottling water samples and testing them for impurities. They examined funding and jurisdiction issues, learned who their elected officials were, inspected the lake, dam and its basin. Their conclusions were presented in a series of 24 specific recommendations aimed at raising public awareness and education, changing the dam’s environment and preserving the dam for future generations.

With the students’ report as a blueprint, the District’s environmental team members went to work. Sponsors from Project GRAD LA, Pacoima Beautiful and the L.A. Unified School District Volunteer Center arranged a birding walk through the dam’s lush basin habitat, a tour of the area’s current and planned rec activities, lunch and several hours of meetings at Sunland Recreation Center. Besides Corps members and city officials, delegates from a dozen community groups attended. So did some water quality experts and representatives from various elected officials offices.

And, of course, there were the students--sophomores, juniors and seniors: Freddy Castornea, Alma Gaona, Addy Licea, Louis Murillo, Cindia Perez, Mario Ruiz and Carina Rodrigues. Denise Del Cid, Francisco Garcia and Nancy Larios were unable to attend. Science teacher Lourdes Quevedo and counselor Juan Mendoza accompanied the students.

As the Thursday morning haze thins, the sleepy teenagers stumble off their minibus, joining Audubon Society guides, community activists, residents and District team members. Led by the avian society’s Steve Sosensky, the group spends more than two hours walking and watching the wonders of Hansen’s natural habitat. In an Edenic willow woodland grove, Carvel Bass quietly points out that “all the Corps dams have willow forests, and they’ll have rare birds.” Indeed, the Bell’s Vireo, whose distinctive seven-count call comes from only eight pair of birds in the dam basin, is on the Endangered Species list.

Referring to a recent rock-throwing incident among horse-riders and picnickers, Councilwoman Gruel’s rep Montgomery tells the students: “This kind of confrontation of people who come in and use this dam is becoming a very dangerous situation.”

Later, walking along the narrow trial, senior Luis Murillo says the Hansen Dam project is the first one he’s been involved with in high school. “We researched the lake in the spring,” the 103-pound wrestler explains. “My family has had picnics out here for a long time.”

At the now-infamous lake—or as some at the Corps insist on calling it, the “borrow pit”—Dennis Kroeplin of the Foothill Trails District Neighborhood Council, debates Bass about Corps-sponsored dumping that residents say defaced the landscape and damaged the habitat. “The good news is that nature will revegetate in a year what you see here,” Bass says, loud enough for the students to hear him. More quietly, Kroeplin, a former city wildlife official, replies, “In spite of efforts to destroy this area, Mother Nature has reclaimed it.”

The last two hours of the morning session are led by Gary Bond, facilities director at the dam for the Recreation and Parks Dept. He and Bass show the 30-acre site where soccer and softball fields are being built. Then the group troops along to the Tujunga Wash creek, which feeds into the lake; a snowy egret silently watches them from one leg. After a quarter-mile hike, the group lines the spring-fed pond where cormorants, ducks and a green heron splash. “This water comes from underground and feeds everything down below,” says pith-helmeted Fritz Bonner, with the Equestrian Trails International Corral 10.

Back on the student bus, Bass pinpoints the central issue at Hansen Dam: “The Corps’ (dam) basins are basically wide open and they work well—until there are conflicts.” Adds Mary Benson, a lifelong resident now with the Valley View Vaulters, and often an outspoken critic of the Corps: “…and there are a lot of conflicts—and it’s not your fault.”

Now that’s progress…

Even more progress was made in the afternoon session at Sunland Rec Center. After a sandwich-and-apple lunch, participants revolved into three groups at three tables, with Corps team members and students filling the metal folding chairs. Group I talked about increasing public awareness and education about the dam. Susan Tianen, safety officer, repeatedly made useful remarks to the students, such as: “The property is federal property leased to the city, and that is a plus-plus situation; you can pretty much use whatever (sign) design the community wants.”

At Table II, Katy Parks and University of Missouri intern Pamela Conrad joined 11 others in discussing how to change the dam’s environment. Pamela persuaded her colleagues about the priority of safety at the site: “If it’s not safe, you’re not going to want to go down in the habitat,” she said. Soon “Safety” joins four other items on the group’s agenda.

Table III profited from Deanie Kennedy’s long experience in the Corps, including several years in Honduras.. She mentioned the option, for example, of trying to get the dam designated on the National Registry of Historic Places, “making possible a certain level of protection.”

At the end of the discussions, Laverne Potter, one of the school district’s volunteer officials, summed up the day: “This is a pilot program—how students and the community can work together to accomplish something positive, communicating instead of fighting.”

Before they headed back to class, the Project GRAD scholars invited everybody in the old gym to the next meeting of their Wildlife Steering Committee.

Gen. Flowers would applaud.