The local Corps officials who wrote the March 20 draft decision say they strictly followed guidelines developed after the Supreme Court decision.
"When we looked at the L.A. River, we did not find evidence of navigation" beyond the Pacific Coast Highway bridge in Long Beach, two miles north of the ocean, said Aaron Allen, the regulator who wrote the draft decision.
He stressed that the decision does not weaken any federal laws that protect the water in the river, which is fed in part by reclaimed water from sewage treatment plants. He agreed that seasonal streams far up in the watershed, however, could have less protection.
But in the face of critics' concerns, the Corps has withdrawn the navigable river decision pending further study. The results of that review are expected within days.
Col. Thomas Magness, commander of the Corps office that oversees part of the Southwest, emphasized that the Corps is working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on a final decision.
He promised, "it's going to be something we can all understand and defend." He said it was "purely speculative" to conclude that designating the Los Angeles River as nonnavigable would lead to more lax development standards over streams. "I would not begin to throw in the towel and submit to that conclusion."
Any proposal to fill in or build over streams will still be reviewed on a case-by-case basis "on its own merits," he said.
Yet the Los Angeles River case is attracting interest in Washington and elsewhere in part because it's among the first in the nation after the Supreme Court decision.
"The implications of these decisions could be quite large," said David Smith, chief of wetlands regulation at the EPA southwest region, who has met twice with Corps officials while trying to change their decision.
Los Angeles River defenders such as Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and Nancy Sutley, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's top environmental deputy, have written letters to federal officials, criticizing the river ruling.
"If the Corps of Engineers applies a similar approach to other rivers, protections against water pollution that are now taken for granted could be seriously eroded throughout the nation," Waxman wrote in a letter to the EPA. He said the draft decision could undercut Clean Water Act rules governing waste discharges, dredging, oil spill prevention and water quality standards in much of the Los Angeles River basin.
