When Sacatela Storm Drain No. 3 was thought of as an improvement
September 9, 2023 § 2 Comments
Thank you to Tom McMahon for sharing this history of Sacatela Creek found in Stanford’s Barry Lawrence Ruderman Map Collection. The accompanying article and photos shows how the filling in of this land enabled dense development to occur in low lying Koreatown and Rampart Village.
I added some color to the map in the article to make the shape of the waterway easier to read.
When I read sources from early and mid 1900s, it always strikes me how clearly those who live in the LA Basin understood the direct relationship between development and flooding. It seemed to be an ordinary observation that building pavement and houses over open land changes innocent winter rains into a raging flood waters. When rains fall onto vegetated landscapes, some water is absorbed into the soil, and any movement of water over the landscape is slowed by vegetation and the terrain itself. The water that soaks into the soil moves slowly underground, making its way toward the aquifer or to daylight itself in a local water body, whether that is a stream, river, or marshy area. Removing native vegetation to cover land with paving causes rainwater to so much more quickly over urban landscapes. In a developed landscape dominated by concrete and asphalt surfaces, it doesn’t take much rain to suddenly transform sleepy streams into menacing flood waters. Unfortunately for us, the consensus solution in the early 1900s, was to fix the problem by routing streams into underground pipes.
When I read the above statement I am struck that there could have been a very different solution proposed. I keep wishing the statement had a different ending, such as: “Every street paved and every house built increases water run-off which in turn increases hazard. So let’s increase the value of the entire district by limiting further paving, and replanting our undeveloped lands with native vegetation.”
It doesn’t seem outlandish that someone might have proposed such a solution. After all, this is the same generation that pressured the federal government to protect the Angeles National Forest as our first national forest. Activists sought to protect our watershed resources by preventing the logging and grazing which devegetate the landscape, which they observed decreases local water supply in the San Gabriel Valley.
A petition to protect the San Gabriel watershed by protecting the mountains states, “Water, will be preserved in the mountains, the snow water saved as it melted, the waters protected from pollution by the large droves of cattle and sheep, disastrous floods will be prevented in winter, and the valleys below furnished with water in the irrigation season.” Note that the protection of the mountains was seen as directly connected to the reliability of water supply in the basin below.
The deep understanding of a causal effect between deforestation/paving and reduction of local water supply is lacking from much of the current conversation about water supply in the Los Angeles basin. I continue to be amazed that importing/purchasing water from ecosystems hundreds of miles away to ‘bank’ in our dams and aquifers is still taken for granted as the default solution to increasing local water supply. It is as if making a connection between our local water supply and increasing the amount of water that soaks into the ground on vegetated land is, as they say, ‘rocket science.’ This is water cycle 101, what they teach in elementary school with diagrams. Yet Southern California seems to separate this academic knowledge from practical application in managing our own local water supply.
As a general principle, increasing the amount of water that soaks into the ground beneath vegetated landscapes also reduces the degree and severity of flooding, while replenishing the moisture in the ground that supplies perennial streams with water throughout the year, and replenishing aquifers.
Returning to the topic of Sacatela Storm Drain No. 3, the vivid descriptions in the article that argue for the “vital necessity” of building the storm drain, also happen to offer an intriguing picture of the pre-stormdrain landscape, full of undevelopable land: “an area chopped up with ravines, sloughs and valleys.” At this juncture in history, if only someone had suggested to levy a special assessment district to purchase those lands to revegetate as a green/blue belt for public benefit!
At the same time the pictures of the gullies (‘arroyos’) in the article show that the stream degradation was already advanced, in a landscape that had already largely been denuded of vegetation. The surrounding development introduced large areas of impermeable surfaces to the landscape, which means that the erosive power of flood waters would be concentrated on these remaining undeveloped low lands. Gullies deepened into hazardous ravines. One could say that even before the entire waterway was encased in concrete, Sacatela Creek’s watershed had already been severely compromised, and the stream bed itself had already been reduced to the function of a storm drain. It will be our generation’s challenge to see how to balance the fact that we enjoy living in a dense city, with whether we are willing to devote resources toward restoring parts of our local water cycle so that we can all benefit from reliable local water supply, as well as healthy waterways. The water cycle is simple. The solution certainly should not have to be seen as rocket science.
L.A. Creek Freak 
Great job unearthing the map. Control of water has been very important to the huge land holders, real estate empires, and politicians who have controlled most of the major press for decades, including the Los Angeles Times. What the public is never told is that filling in this river and building on it may someday, under flood conditions, cause many unnecessary deaths and massive property loss. And if history is a guide, there is never any consequence to those who did this. The dead bodies are classed as victims of a “natural disaster.” Los Angeles is full of these types of development crimes, including building high rises on earthquake faults, condos on old oil fields (Playa Vista), housing in riverbeds, faulty Dams, etc. There’s a lot of Developers and past government officials who have blood on their hands, and much more coming.
Check out “Poisoned Paradise” series on http://www.SouthlandNewsBureau.com, history of Ballona Creek and LA River going back to Spanish Land Grant days, Marina del Rey, Playa Vista, etc. Food for thought.