High Speed Rail NOT Drought Friendly in LA

VOICES-(Re CityWatch article ‘Another Reason to Love California High Speed Rail’) In Los Angeles at least, High Speed Rail has the potential to be the EXACT OPPOSITE of drought-friendly, if any of the Angeles National Forest routes that are being considered are selected.

All of the proposed "E" routes go through Little Tujunga Canyon and Upper Pacoima Canyon. Dewatering of Little Tujunga  and Gold Creek - vital contributors to the Tujunga Watershed and the San Fernando Ground Water Basin - will occur if High Speed Rail is allowed to go through the Angeles National Forest.

The San Fernando Ground Water Basin is the largest location of locally-sourced drinking water for the City of Los Angeles.

Huge systems like the Little Tujunga and Pacoima Cyn water sources cannot be simply excised by High Speed Rail from the Tujunga watershed. Watersheds like the Tujunga Watershed are synergistic systems where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. They share water sources in intricate ways with the surrounding canyons. The water we have now in the San Fernando groundwater Basin is the result of that synergistic watershed system feeding this basin for thousands of years, if not longer. To simply amputate entire subsystems in this watershed and expect no impact is careless and short-sighted. In fact, it is the opposite of a Best Practice.

As the leader in conservation and reclamation planning, Los Angeles should be demanding that these HSR routes be withdrawn right now. Other municipalities and corporate entities have done so with previous planned routes for reasons that are far less integral to the fundamental survival of everyone in the City and the State as water, and they have been successful.

To shortsightedly not protect current water sources for whatever reason – maybe due to a lack of foresight or due to local, small-issue political choices – is pretty much exactly how Los Angeles historically got itself into the crippling water situation we have here now.

Read more about this here. 

(Kristin Sabo is an LA parks advocate, an occasional CityWatch contributor, and blogs at griffithparkwayist.blogspot.com) 

-cw

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 28

Pub: Apr 3, 2015

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