In November I told you about the Los Angeles County Department of Water & Power's plan to clean out silt from behind the Devil's Gate Dam.
Because the Draft Environmental Impact Report is so lacking in scientific study I didn't think things would get this far. But the DWP has not yet been sent back to the drawing table.
Here's the County's website for the project. A couple of interesting things to note:
The photo at the top of their website makes Hahamongna (the open space north of the dam) look like a big mud puddle, when right now it's full of green, gold and red foliage, scrub and habitat for the many species of animals who live there. This is the part of Hahamongna they want to denude, and leave that way permanently. (See the artist's rendition above.)
Public comments are due by January 6th. Yet although the County has held public meetings to talk about the plan, apparently no one in the immediate neighborhood of Hahamongna heard about those meetings. They're the ones whose property values are going to plummet because:
For 8 months of the year, 6 days a week, 12 hours a day for the next five years, trucks will be driving into the Hahamongna Basin to remove silt. That's one truck every 1.69 minutes. You might be able to dump a truck in less than two minutes, but you can't fill it that fast.
That means trucks, trucks and more trucks, backing up into the neighborhoods and waiting their turn while they spew diesel fumes, dust and noise. It may seem like this pollution will confine itself to the neighborhood but in reality it can't help but spread to all of us, not just the five schools near the dig site.
I think we can all agree that the silt has got to go. But there's no reason it has to go in five years, when it took ninety years to pile up.
Visit saveHahamongna.org to read about a better plan. For more information email gobalvin@gmail.com or call Christle Balvin at 626-449-8815.
You can also sign up at the Facebook event page.
