The Board of Supervisors will hold a public meeting at 9:30 AM on Tuesday, November 7, to consider whether to allow the LA County Flood Control District to proceed with the Devil’s Gate Dam Sediment Removal Project. The wrong decision will have major negative impacts on Hahamongna Watershed Park.
GUEST OPINION
Bas Van Schooten, PAS member, sharing a nature lesson with a YWCA Girls Empowerment participant (Photo – Kym Buzdygon).
The Arroyo Seco Foundation and the Pasadena Audubon Society filed a lawsuit in 2014 in an effort to stop the massive destruction of Hahamongna Watershed Park, a treasured natural area with biodiversity and a crucial habitat for a wide variety of birds and animals in the region.
By Kym Buzdygon*
Of particular concern is the rare riparian and alluvial scrub habitat found in Hahamongna that is in decline across the state and which serves as nesting habitat for the federally listed Least Bell’s Vireo.
In March of this year, the Court found that the Flood Control District’s environmental documentation was inadequate, stayed the Project and ordered revisions to the Project’s environmental documentation. The County is representing that their current plan of the removal of 2.4 million cubic yards of sediment in five years using over 400 diesel trucks per day to transport the sediment from the basin is necessary to protect downstream structures and communities. Several local community groups, local governments, and residents surrounding the Hahamongna basis strongly disagree.
The final result of the County’s plan is to create a 55-foot-deep, bare, steep-sided permanent pit near the dam. The trucks will still emit significant amounts of diesel pollution on a route that impacts 18 schools. The County seems committed to using an outdated mining and trucking approach to sediment removal.
Crosstown pipeline
Although some concessions have been offered to original critics of the project (allegedly cleaner diesel engines, slightly better habitat mitigation), the project is still highly destructive to Hahamongna. In addition, the County announced in July, that it plans to impound storm runoff behind Devil’s Gate Dam each rainy season. It will then pump that water through a planned new crosstown pipeline to Eaton Canyon, where the water will be percolated through spreading basins into the Raymond Aquifer groundwater supply.
After community objections to tearing up streets, the pipeline was put on hold but not killed. It’s still lurking out there. This pipeline project means that the county designed a sediment removal project larger than needed for flood control, in order to serve this water banking and pipeline.
Dessi Sieburth, with more members of the YWCA camp at Hahamongna Watershed Park (Photo – Beatrix Schwarz).
A reservoir, not a park?
The County will treat all of Hahamongna primarily as a reservoir, not a park. Most of the basin will be flooded in winter and scraped to bare dirt in fall. The current rich habitat will be destroyed, harming the birds and other wildlife that depend on it. Areas of Hahamongna that are regularly used by equestrians, hikers, runners, and the Tom Sawyer campers will become degraded or inaccessible.
Less destruction, less harm
In contrast, the City of Pasadena supports a plan that reduces sediment in a way that is less destructive and less harmful to neighborhoods that surround Hahamongna. Sediment has accumulated behind Devil’s Gate Dam over the last twenty years with very little action by the county to remove it. In that time, there have been no significant impacts to downstream communities despite significant weather events.
The Arroyo Seco Foundation and the Pasadena Audubon Society acknowledge the need to reduce the sediment in the basin; we just don’t agree with the County’s pattern of inaction followed by panic and extreme measures.
The Board of Supervisors Public Meeting Time and Date Tuesday, November 7 9:30 AM Location County Hall of Administration 500 W. Temple St. Los Angeles, CA 90012
*Mark Hunter, Conservation Chair for Pasadena Audubon, and Carolyn Murphy, Publicity Chair for Pasadena Audubon, both contributed to this article. Kym Buzdygon is the Program Manager at Pasadena Audubon Society.
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