Flood Control Channel

Re "Cleaning Up and Fessing Up," Feb. 5. I was disappointed and angered by your feel-good article on the two teenage girls who were rescued out of the flood control channel. Your pictures showed two smiling and unhurt girls surrounded by lots of smiling, happy rescue workers and newsmen. The quotes attributed to the two girls were sprinkled with lots of cute comments in "Valley speak" but nowhere did it mention how sorry they were for risking the lives of the helicopter pilot and the firemen.

In a summer wonderland of theme parks and sparkling beaches, city officials soon will be offering canoe and kayak trips along the upper reaches of the Los Angeles River. Tickets for the Los Angeles River adventure are expected to go on sale as early as July 8, and promoters are promising a ride like no other. The route through the San Fernando Valley's Sepulveda Basin flood control channel will take customers along a 3-mile stretch of river where the water is 10 to 15 feet deep and edged with willows, sycamores and slanted concrete walls a stone's throw from the 101 and 405 freeways.

Residents should avoid contact this week with water in a flood control channel along Channel Islands Boulevard between Patterson Road and the harbor. About 500 gallons of untreated sewage were released into the channel late last week after a main break, according to the Ventura County Environmental Health Division. The discharge did not reach the harbor and has been contained, officials said, but warning signs are expected to remain posted through today.

Seriously? You still don't know there's a river in L.A.? That there wouldn't even be a Los Angeles without the Los Angeles River? You haven't been paying attention. And you especially haven't been paying attention to the writer and poet Lewis MacAdams, or to FoLAR, Friends of the Los Angeles River, which he co-founded nearly 25 years ago when the river was pretty much a joke, a nullity, a 50-mile-long paved toilet of a drainage ditch. Decades ago, Los Angeles, just about the chintziest big city in the country when it comes to parks, sold out what could have been an "emerald necklace" of the river and its byways.

The San Diego River has always been a temperamental neighbor. Before construction of the existing flood-control channel that empties into the Pacific Ocean near Mission Bay, the San Diego River generally ran wherever it wanted during the rainy months. Until a flood-control channel was created in the late 1800s, the river often ran through to San Diego Bay. Planning experts now agree that it is unwise to allow heavy development in flood basins.

The body of an unidentified woman was found lying face down in an inch of water in a flood-control channel in Arleta on Saturday morning, Los Angeles police reported. Officers, receiving a phone tip about 8:30 a.m., went to the channel near the intersection of Arleta Avenue and Devonshire Street and discovered the woman's body, Detective Art Castro said. Police did not identify the caller. The woman, apparently Latino and in her 40s, had mouth cuts.

A 34-year-old man, who had led police on a high-speed chase that ended when he jumped into a flood control channel, apparently died of a combination of hypothermia and drug use, authorities said Sunday. Fountain Valley Police Lt. Robert Mosley said an autopsy Sunday showed that Richard John O'Gorman of Huntington Beach had two collapsed lungs, which might have resulted from a mix of heroin in his body and exposure to the cold water.

More than 15,000 gallons of raw sewage escaped from a sewer main Thursday, creating a monstrous stench and prompting work crews to build a dam in a nearby flood control channel after the effluent spilled into a storm drain. Despite the smell and possible health risk, no evacuations were ordered, officials at the scene said. Battalion Chief Allan R. White of the Westminster Fire Department said the sewage spill was discovered about 6 a.m.

Los Angeles city prosecutors Wednesday accused General Motors of illegally dumping nearly 17,000 gallons of chemically tainted waste water from its idle Van Nuys auto assembly plant into a flood control channel that flows into the Los Angeles River. General Motors executives could not be reached for comment. The three-count complaint by the city attorney's office alleges that the river was polluted after workers drained caustic waste from the plant's cooling towers Jan. 27.

In a summer wonderland of theme parks and sparkling beaches, city officials soon will be offering canoe and kayak trips along the upper reaches of the Los Angeles River. Tickets for the Los Angeles River adventure are expected to go on sale as early as July 8, and promoters are promising a ride like no other. The route through the San Fernando Valley's Sepulveda Basin flood control channel will take customers along a 3-mile stretch of river where the water is 10 to 15 feet deep and edged with willows, sycamores and slanted concrete walls a stone's throw from the 101 and 405 freeways.

A woman apparently committed suicide Monday by driving her car into a flood control channel in Buena Park, police said. Police responded to the crash near Artesia Boulevard and Regio Avenue about 6:20 a.m., said Buena Park Police Lt. Robin Sells. A witness said the woman drove through a chain-link fence and into the channel, Sells said. She was alone in the car and no other injuries were reported, Sells said. Evidence at the scene showed that the woman, who has not been identified, was trying to kill herself in the crash, police said.

On the surface, the 30-year battle to save the Bolsa Chica wetlands in Huntington Beach from development appears to be near an end. Herons and stilts, brown pelicans and snails are abundant. Construction crews are working -- not on homes, but on a contoured tidal basin and inlet that will let the ocean flow into the wetland. And a developer's long-ago plan for thousands of homes and private marinas in the marshland has withered to just 349 houses on a mesa far from the water.

Firefighters rescued a 17-year-old boy who was swept more than a mile downstream Saturday when he took a shortcut across a rain-swollen wash in Pacoima. Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said the boy was hospitalized in fair condition. He was leaving a swap meet about 8:30 a.m. when he waded across a wash near the 500 block of Glenoaks Boulevard. "He was very fortunate to be saved and fortunate that someone was there to call 911," Humphrey said.

Flood control workers discovered the body of a man as they were clearing debris from a channel Monday, police said. Victor Albarran, 24, of Anaheim, was found about noon near Magnolia and Orangethorpe avenues. Fullerton Police Sgt. Joe Valley said it was possible Albarran was swept into the channel during last week's heavy rain. The channel runs from Fullerton to Buena Park. Valley said it did not appear foul play was involved.

Residents should avoid contact this week with water in a flood control channel along Channel Islands Boulevard between Patterson Road and the harbor. About 500 gallons of untreated sewage were released into the channel late last week after a main break, according to the Ventura County Environmental Health Division. The discharge did not reach the harbor and has been contained, officials said, but warning signs are expected to remain posted through today.

Firefighters rescued a worker injured Wednesday after he and the bulldozer he was driving fell into a flood control channel, authorities said. Shortly before 8 a.m., the unidentified 40-year-old man from San Bernardino fell about 15 feet into Bull Creek, a flood control channel near Roscoe and Balboa boulevards, said Brian Humphrey, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department. The concrete-lined waterway was mostly dry at the time.

Bertha Velasquez had a bad feeling when her 16-year-old daughter told her she was going out to the beach with friends Sunday night. "I told her not to go, not to go," Velasquez said. "And she said: 'Trust me, trust me. Nothing is going to happen.' Then she left, and she never came back."

Two Santa Ana residents were seriously injured early Friday morning when one of them lost control of the car they were in and the vehicle landed in a flood control channel. Russell A. King, 21, and his passenger, Fermin M. Rios, 41, were northbound on Interstate 5 at about 70 m.p.h. near Irvine, the California Highway Patrol said, when King lost control and the car veered out of the No. 2 lane and struck a center divider wall.

A young man was near death Saturday after apparently plunging head first off a narrow pipe into a dry concrete flood control channel, police said. Salvador Martinez, 22, of Buena Park apparently tried to cross the channel near Kingman Avenue and Franklin Street by shimmying across the water pipe late Friday. He slipped, fell and lay unconscious in the channel until Saturday afternoon, when someone called police to say they had seen a body.

Re "Cleaning Up and Fessing Up," Feb. 5. I was disappointed and angered by your feel-good article on the two teenage girls who were rescued out of the flood control channel. Your pictures showed two smiling and unhurt girls surrounded by lots of smiling, happy rescue workers and newsmen. The quotes attributed to the two girls were sprinkled with lots of cute comments in "Valley speak" but nowhere did it mention how sorry they were for risking the lives of the helicopter pilot and the firemen.