News from Watershed Managment - Ballona Creek Watershed |
There's a lot going on these days in the Ballona Creek watershed. Where is the Ballona Creek watershed, you ask? Covering a 127-square-mile area, the Ballona Creek Watershed extends from the Santa Monica Mountains on the north, the Harbor Freeway (110) on the east, and the Baldwin Hills on the south. It includes large portions of the Cities of Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Culver City, Los Angeles, and West Hollywood.
A significant item currently on Watershed Management Division's project list is the Ballona Creek Watershed Task Force. Back in the summer of 2000, Public Works teamed up with the City of L.A., the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, and a local non-profit called Ballona Creek Renaissance to head up a stakeholder-led group called the Ballona Creek Watershed Task Force (BCWTF). This task force includes government agencies, affected cities, non-profit groups, and citizens working together to improve the environment in the Ballona Creek watershed.
With the County as the lead, the BCWTF applied for and was awarded a $200,000 Prop 13 grant from the State Water Resources Control Board in May 2001. By August of 2002 this grant money was used toward a watershed-based management plan for Ballona Creek. This plan will provide local government agencies, as well as private or non-profit organizations, opportunities to improve water quality and restore habitat area within the Ballona Creek Watershed.
After coming up with specific criteria for what we wanted out of the plan, the BCWTF selected and hired a consulting team to aid in the plan's development. The first task is to create a GIS (Geographical Information System) based map of the watershed. A GIS map is a computerized, interactive map which identifies and gives detailed information on areas you select. In this case the watershed's characteristics (boundaries, land uses, existing wildlife habitats, sources of pollution, etc.) will be collected and made available in our GIS map. The map will make locating problem areas for pollution and those locations best suited for clean up and prevention much easier, and help us create projects to address these issues.
Using selection criteria agreed upon by the stakeholders, we will make comparisons of how well each project meets BCWTF goals. We will then select eight of those projects which will then be prioritized and researched in detail. The consultant team will come up with cost estimates and potential sponsors for each project. These detailed investigations and plans will be included in the final management plan.
Next we will develop an ongoing, community-based watershed monitoring program to define existing conditions and to track the progress we'll make. This will be modeled after existing monitoring programs around the country. It will involve water quality and habitat monitoring efforts already in place in Ballona Creek. It will identify areas currently not being monitored as well as places where more than one group is already monitoring (to avoid redundancy). We will then provide an outline for the new monitoring program that will be included in the final plan.
This management plan will provide Public Works with specific projects that we can implement to improve the quality of life for everyone involved. Not only that, the projects will help in complying with water quality standards set by the federal and state governments, called TMDL's (Total Maximum Daily Loads) for different forms of pollution. The management plan is scheduled for completion in June 2004.
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