Meanwhile, local river enthusiasts are rushing to collect photos and videos of friends and relatives paddling on the river in canoes and kayaks.
Their goal is to prove that yes, indeed, just like the Mississippi and the Potomac, Los Angeles' river is worthy of navigation -- maybe not by cargo ships, but at least by canoes.
Web of tributaries
The drama got its start not on the river but in a far-flung web of tributaries in the Santa Susana Mountains north of Chatsworth.
There, rancher Wayne Fishback hoped to fill some seemingly dry stream beds to build a road and prevent erosion on his sweeping mountain property above Brown Canyon Wash, a tributary of the Los Angeles River. He asked for guidance from the Corps of Engineers, which regulates parts of the Clean Water Act.
Fishback's request landed on the desk of Aaron Allen, chief of the Corps' North Coast office in Ventura, who holds a UCLA doctorate in fluvial geomorphology, or how streams shape the land.
Ten years ago, Allen's job would have been easier. In those days, federal clean-water laws typically covered the seasonal streams, marshes and pools common in the arid West.
All that changed with the 2006 Supreme Court decision in which Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the Clean Water Act would apply to a water body if it had a "significant nexus" with "traditional navigable waters."
So Allen's review ballooned into a full-scale review of the Los Angeles River. He concluded that only 1.75 miles of the river upstream from the ocean is navigable.
The remaining 49-mile stretch -- which cuts north through southern Los Angeles County and then west into the San Fernando Valley -- did not meet the legal test of being navigable, he wrote.
"Presently, the occasional use of kayaks and/or canoes on other reaches of the river are sporadic and do not support any associated commerce," Allen wrote in the March 20 memorandum. Nor could he find evidence of historical navigation.
"Finally, the capacity to provide navigation at some point in the future is highly doubtful given the river's configuration, hydrology and fundamental use as a flood control channel."
Memo leaked
For Fishback, that was good news: His land lies so far upstream from the PCH bridge that he probably can fill four of his streams without navigating the time-consuming permit process.
But when the Corps memorandum was leaked to river advocates in April, the uproar ensued.
