The LA Times Sunday edition featured a nice story on an important environmental restoration project at Machado Lake in Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park in Wilmington. The 231-acre park is a badly neglected piece of Los Angeles wedged in between Harbor College, a golf course, and a refinery. What the Times failed to mention, though, is the real catalyst for the $140 million project to clean up both the highly degraded Machado Lake and the Wilmington Drain, which carries runoff to the lake and ultimately to the LA Harbor. These water bodies are so polluted that they are listed as impaired under the Clean Water Act for eutrophication (algae caused by nutrient overloads in the water), toxic metals, and DDT and PCBs, banned organochlorines that still linger in this environment. The city of LA is required to clean up these polluted water bodies because of state and federal water quality requirements. And the project will the largest by far undertaken under Proposition O–the $500 million city water quality bond that passed with more than 76 percent of the vote in 2004.
The reason it has taken this long for restoration efforts to get underway is that the city Department of Public Works has been working very closely with local residents and environmental groups in LA. The LA Regional Water Quality Control Board has also been heavily engaged in project discussions and technical review of the cleanup and restoration plan. One environmental biologist and educator who deserves an enormous amount of credit for community efforts is Martin Byhower, a longtime teacher at the Chadwick School who is active in Audubon and other environmental groups. Another reason for the slow pace is that the city is trying to solve a very difficult environmental problem. Creating a healthy lake and creek system from water bodies with highly polluted water and sediments is extremely difficult.
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