A street in Sun Valley, where flooding once occurred, and polluted rain water carried toxic waste, garbage and chemicals down to the Ocean, has been rebuilt to incorporate green landscaping, flood control, and solar power lighting. Courtesy of Tree People, the Metropolitan Water District and the LA County Department of Public Works.
Category: Environment
Woodley Avenue Near Roscoe.
West of the 405, the vista opens up.
The skies are big and the mountains vast.
This is the land of beer and jets, trucks and steel; gasoline, fire and the burning sun.
This is the Van Nuys Airport, the Flyaway, the Anheuser-Busch Plant, many warehouses, and an enormous sod farm.
Here men and women are working, a necessary condition.
And the horizon of the San Fernando Valley, the blue skies and the straight wide streets, the planes taking off, the delivery trucks speeding across Van Nuys, and a commuter train blowing its horn; this is work and we are in need of work and we live and work; and hope that work returns to our nation as it did in times past.
Pedestrian Friendly LA?
From Project for Public Spaces:
“L.A. County has begun to rewrite the “DNA” of its streets with a new Model Streets Manual that will set guidelines to support improved safety, livability and active transportation options.
This effort was supported through a grant from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, through its RENEW initiative. RENEW stands for “Renewing Environments for Nutrition, Exercise and Wellness.” It’s inspiring to see a health-focused organization embrace a leadership role in Placemaking by broadening the scope of its concern to include planning for the built environment.
There is a growing understanding that streets configured to support an active lifestyle can lead to positive community health outcomes.
As Streetsblog reports, team lead Ryan Snyder of Ryan Snyder Associates has said the manual is like “the DNA of our streets, and it defines everything from where to place bike lanes to how wide a roundabout should be.”
Malibu Near Trancas
The Rains.
The rain.
Coming down in sheets, in cycles, ad nauseum.
Sheets of soaking wet weather slicing across the Valley.
I drove down to Studio City.
By the time I got to Whitsett and Magnolia it was dry.
I parked near Fulton and the LA River and shot some photos.
I went to Peet’s Coffee and met some friends.
I ordered a double espresso..
Then the sky darkened and the palms along Ventura blew and the rains came.
The rain abated and I ran to my car and drove home.
At my home computer, I sat and waited for the next cycle of storm to begin.
Then my mother called from the Marina and said she saw a fabulous rainbow.
Plastic Bag Ban for California?
A statewide bill, authored by Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica, could make California the first state in the US to ban plastic bags in grocery, drug and many convenience stores.
On this blog, back in February, I took a trip over to Woodley Park and walked along the LA River where I found a sea of plastic bags hanging on trees, floating along the river bank, and covering the ground.
One of the most prominent bag labels belonged to the Ranch Market, an Asian supermarket with a local store on Sepulveda and Victory. On many shopping trips there, I have been shocked at the amount of plastic bags that are used by the store. If a shopper buys six items, the store will often use six bags to package the goods.
Of course, a ban on plastic bags is opposed by oil companies, Republicans and anybody connected to the petroleum and plastic industries. In the San Jose Mercury News, this quote: “The governor has signaled he’s interested in signing a bill like this,” said Tim Shestek of the American Chemistry Council, a coalition of plastic manufacturers and corporations including Chevron, Dow and ExxonMobil. “So our focus right now is on the Senate and hoping common sense prevails and the bill does not reach the governor.”
The council estimates the ban will threaten 1,000 state manufacturing jobs due to decreased demand. And Shestek said grocery costs will grow “because people are going to have to pay for grocery bags they currently receive for free.”
The council’s ad campaign — dubbed “Stop the Bag Police!” — features a baton-wielding officer and warns the bill “is equivalent to an estimated $1 billion tax increase.””
But any common sense person who sees the environmental damage of plastic bags, would understand that there must be a better and more environmentally safe way to wrap a carton of eggs, a can of deodorant, and a pound of ground beef.
Here in Van Nuys 
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