What the LA DWP PROMISED to do with Silver Lake. Which they haven’t done.

Remember how I told you the LA DWP didn’t have email? Now they do! And I’ll give it to you at the end, along with a phone number, if you want to skip down there with your own important questions. Or complaints.

I called Joseph Ramallo, the person who signed the DWP public letter on their website, to find out why DWP had not even begun to clean up and refill the reservoirs, as they had promised. No return call in over a week. Called again, and a lady wouldn’t give me his email, nor H David Nahai’s, but gave me hers. No reply from her.

Silver Lake, just about dry as a bone. Groundwater seeps up each day. Aren’t you glad we don’t have any earthquake or fire right now where we might need an easy source of WATER?

(Yes, the lake beds still stink, thanks for asking.) So since I had to WAIT so long for this city utility to respond and be accountable, I did my own independent investigation. (Now, stop it! You knew I would!)

One of the places I emailed while WAITING for the LADWP to reply was the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council. I’m not a member, haven’t been to any of their community meetings, but I wanted to get their take on why the DWP was being so incredibly stubborn and slow, driving property values down as they go. I guess I wasn’t shocked, but I was surprised to find they knew far less than me. Someone in the council wrote a snotty response:

If you attended the DWP Silverlake meeting regarding all these issues last Feb. at Micheltorena School you would know all !

Then she added:

P.S. I know what they found in the bottom of the lake after it was drained ! Why worry about your property values just be happy you have a home.

Ooh, snap! Well!!! And now I will never be satisfied until I find out WHAT they found down there! But really, it was sad to find out the NC didn’t know anything at all about the draining except for the dwp company line. Hey, do Neighborhood Councils get paid? Just asking…

Well, no help there. So I dug deep, and eventually found a report buried in the DWP website, here, called the Silver Lake Reservoir Complex Storage Replacement Project Draft Environmental Impact Report. (well, it IS a city report!)

Report is dated 2005, pdf, 421 pages. Certainly worth reviewing, I’m just sayin’, take time while it downloads. And since it’s a pdf, I can’t cut and paste quotations, ugh. Apparently DWP knew way back then that there were potential problems with carcinogens forming. Yet they did nothing. (I read earlier that bromide forms from adding too much chlorine. Yet I found an article from the LA Times dated 1999, that said dwp was using LESS chlorine, and “Ivanhoe Reservoir, which adjoins Silver Lake, does not have algae problems because its water is constantly moving.” So no answer to the more or less chlorine question; perhaps it was just the luck of the draw.)

This big expensive study was done to meet new stringent state and federal regulations for open reservoirs, so it was done right. I’ll give you some of the highlights here, in case you have better things to do than read 421 pages of a utility report. (Actually I found it interesting, and fairly substantial. The report was done by the CH2M HILL company, an engineering consultant, including more than a dozen scientists, and 10 pages of references. So I’ll give it a thumbs up.)

Silver Lake will be moved.

The point of the plan is simply to divert drinking water from the open slk reservoir to a new, underground one at the Headworks area, near Forest Lawn/Burbank/Griffith Park. Headworks is undeveloped (wild, baby!) now, and is already owned by the dwp. This is the exact plan presented to us at the PROS cm meeting 2 years ago. I think it’s great.

After this, Ivanhoe and Silver Lake would be “non-operating”, meaning no drinking water, and they can be turned into beautiful natural lakes. (They are zoned as Open Space anyway, so no building!!) The report predicts the Silver Lake Reservoir could become a sorely needed little spot of emerging wetlands for Los Angeles, as it gets a little wilder!! And I freely admit that I got tears in my eyes at this part, although it might have been because I was so happy to have read most of the report by then.

All kinds of interesting info emerged:

• The flow-through for water (how much is used by consumers) now is amazing: one or 2 weeks for slk, and just one day for new water to come into Ivanhoe!
• The entrophic (natural accumulation of nutrient rich nitrogen and phosphorous in the water: ie, algae and aquatic insects) level is moderate in slk. Not gross, but also not like a clear mountain stream.  High flow-through rates and chlorine really helped!
• This report included reports from biologists, chemists, anthropologists!, engineers, geologists, and more. Pretty impressive. They included plans for everything: to mitigate any traffic or noise problems, to look for possible old civilizations, to be sure the ground was earthquake safe, etc.
• The plan was based on Best Management Practices. This same phrase came up at a meeting of the gp Master Plan this week, and so I looked up what it meant. According to the Bureau of Land Management: “BMPs protect wildlife and landscapes as we work to develop vitally needed domestic energy sources.”
• They did a study on wildlife currently in slk and also in the Headlands area. slk IS part of a Migratory Corridor. They didn’t list all of the animals I’ve seen in there, but listed a lot more in Headlands.
  
• I thought their bird report was cursory, and the poorest section of the report: they only found 5 or so kinds of birds. They said the invertebrates in the water (again, don’t look at me! I drink bottled water!) supported a few water fowl, as I suggested last month. And they found several healthy bat colonies, in the tunnels! And they said mosquito fish would appear when they stopped the chlorine. Like magic!
• They promised the workers would have environmental awareness training, with ongoing environmental monitoring (although it would be monitored by dp itself, so…). Also it wouldn’t be during bird breeding season (Feb 1 to Aug 31).
• While this work was being done, “Reservoirs would remain in place, and water levels would be maintained.” They would be lower, but kept at 18′ minimum.
  
• Work is to start in 2009.

Let me make it clear that although this report was APPROVED, NONE of this is happening now. The dp hasn’t even started, if they even plan to. NO Best Management Practices are being followed. Water is NOT being replaced, animals and birds are dying, and the heat has started. LA dwp, you SUCK.

Next up: Q & A as the dwp feebly answers my questions.

How to reach the LA dp:

(213) 367-1361 No busy signal! Real person answers.
email: joseph.ramallo@ladwp.com