A gamble on the river pays off
Kayaking down the L.A. River cost Heather Wylie her job but helped save the waterway.
Hector Trobar
Los Angeles Times
07/16/2010
Heather Wylie was a key instigator of what must be the biggest, most important boating expedition ever undertaken on the Los Angeles River.
With two dozen others in kayaks and canoes, she braved the river's shallow waters, paddling past garbage trucks at the water's edge, homeless bathers and other unexpected riparian obstacles.
"I've never had so much fun on a boating trip," Wylie told me. "It was a new kind of adventure."
That adventure cost Wylie, then a 29-year-old government biologist, her job — and $60,000 salary — with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But it helped save the L.A. River.
Last week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled the Los Angeles River "traditional navigable waters," entitled to the protections of the Clean Water Act. It was a huge victory for the legions of activists who have worked for decades to protect the river from developers and polluters.
Without Wylie and that law-defying boat trip, it might not have happened.
As proof that the river is indeed navigable, the EPA cited in its official report the July 2008 Los Angeles River expedition organized by Wylie, George Wolfe and others.
"The federal government is saying this is a real river," said Joe Linton, a writer and activist who was also on the expedition. "I say that every day. But it's good to be backed up by officialdom. It gives the river a certain legitimacy."
The Los Angeles River has always been a real river. The city was founded on its banks and today — in spite of its concrete walls — it's still the natural object at the center of L.A.'s existence.
Unfortunately, for much of our history, we haven't treated our mother river with much respect. We've funneled most of its 51 miles into a big concrete channel and used it as a sewer.
Thankfully, L.A. also has many stubborn people willing to fight for it — from influential groups such as the Friends of the Los Angeles River to lone scientists like Heather Wylie.
Wylie arrived at the Corps of Engineers as a civilian employee in 2004. She was then a very young and idealistic environmental scientist.
Raised in Michigan, she had fallen in love with nature on visits to her grandmother Doris in Grosse Ile, south of Detroit. Doris helped rehabilitate wounded wildlife, including eagles and deer.
"I grew up in the creeks and wetlands," she told me. "I'd catch frogs and snakes. But I always had a three-day rule. After three days, I had to put them back."
At the Corps of Engineers' Ventura field office, Wylie was one of the many civilian employees charged with determining whether development projects would harm protected waterways.
Her first big clash with her bosses, she said, was over a planned 10-acre development in San Luis Obispo, part of which would have filled a vernal pool, a body of water that disappears in summer. After she recommended the developers alter their plans, her bosses took her off the project, she said.
"They would have eventually pushed me out of the corps," Wylie told me. "But I wanted to stay until I did something really good."
So when she learned the corps was preparing to adopt new regulations that would have stripped much of the L.A. River watershed of Clean Water Act protections, she leaked those plans to some of the nation's top environmental law firms.
When she figured out the importance of "navigability" to the L.A. River's future, she scoured the Internet until she found a video of George Wolfe and she tracked him down.
