Three days in Seattle

Seattle is pioneering landscape solutions to stormwater pollution.

Time for a ‘moon shot’ effort over Los Angeles storm water

Passage of the proposed Los Angeles County Clean Water, Clean Beaches measure should usher in a sea change in which storm water best management practices are incorporated into all street work, not just watershed projects.

‘To catch a raindrop’

“The water that you’re looking at would all percolate into the ground if it weren’t paved," Mark Hanna, a Department of Water & Power engineer, told Judith Lewis Mernit during a rainstorm last winter. To read Lewis Mernit's story on the lost rains of Los Angeles, click on the image to be taken to the website of the new literary quarterly Slake, or look for Slake from independent booksellers.

A January storm sweeps across the northern Pacific on the jet stream and hits Southern California with prodigious amounts of rain, writes Judith Lewis Mernit in the premier issue of Slake. It brings wind, too: bursts up to eighty miles per hour lop the tops off palm trees, waterspouts swirl, and a small tornado lifts catamarans thirty feet in the air. Here in Sun Valley, in the northern reaches of the San Fernando Valley, hail clatters so loudly on the

Disaster denied

“Southern California foothill communities escaped potentially disastrous debris flows from fire-scarred mountains during last week’s storms because total rainfall was far less than expected, the U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday.”

Click here to keep reading the AP report in the San Francisco Chronicle about how Southern Californian foothill communities were lucky during the last rain, but how they are far from immune to deadly mudslides as the rainy season continues. Via Aquafornia.

Or, if you live in the foothills and you are still thinking about staying in your house the next time a big storm rolls through, click here to read the USGS  “Emergency Assessment of Postfire Debris-Flow Hazards for the 2009 Station Fire, San Gabriel Mountains, Southern California”


Stormy water

After the Los Angeles Board of Public Works delayed its decision on the Low Impact Development ordinance designed to curb the flow of contaminated stormwater into the Santa Monica and San Pedro Bays, city’s Bureau of Sanitation has announced a new community meeting to “provide input” into the proposed ordinance.  When: Tuesday, December 1, 2009, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm. Where: City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation Media Technical Center, 2714 Media Center Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90065. Who: Los Angeles homeowners, developers, environmental groups and all interested parties are encouraged to attend. Please direct questions and your RSVP to lastormwater@lacity.org. For upcoming LID-related  posts go to: Team Effort blog.

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    Emily Green by e-mail at emily.green [at] mac.com
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