Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
this is 99 percent invisible im Vivian lay sitting in forromanmars iflived in Los Angeles for givertake 8 years now and i wanted to take you to a place here in the city thats a little weird but also pretty special maybe its a different spot no we get in i feel like this is gonna be a lot of guessing check， its also kind of hard to get into luckily i had backup with me this street they were on as about as closesyou can get yeah record OK， i know that there is some way to get down there like an access tunnel point which i dont know what your appetite is forgeting into it reporting the storywithme this week is gallien Jacobs gillien is an actor， a director and of course， a fellow la resident yes！
and that elusive spot we are trying to get to was the la river there？
it is there is there guy what？
it？
what is the predominant emotion youfeeling right now ah， when you hear the word river you probably picture a majestic body of water flowing through a natural habitat well the la river looks nothing like that most people who see it probably must take it for a giant storm drain its a deep tropisoidle channel with steep concrete walls and a flat concrete bottom in the spot we were at the river banks were lined with railroad tracks。
industrial warehouses and commuter traffic the water part of it as in the thing that rivers are most known for having exists is just a tiny stream at the bottom of the concrete for most of the year i mean it is quite ugly！
very ugly right here， but it is kind of pretty in a weird way and theres waterflowing but its like algae the la river is a surreal place to be， which has made it a great location to have edg photo shoots or film movies youactuallyprobably seen it in the iconic scene from greaswere that t bertsdrag racethescopians downthedry riverbed or the scene from Terminator 2 were the T100 chasesjohnconnerinasemi truck yes！
Los Angeles is a modern city filled with concrete， but other major cities with rivers like Chicago。
London and Paris have managed more of the natural riverness those rivers feel untouched in comparison to the hyperengineered Los Angeles river Los Angeles was founded around this river but decades ago it was confindinconcrete so that forbetter or worse the city could become the sprawling Metropolis that it is today and all these years later， we are still grappling with the consequences of those actions！
beforethe river was incaseed in a narrow concreep passageway it wandered freely throughout the Los Angeles basin think of water everywhere there were regulates！
there were freshels you know， little streambeds that you had to leap across all over southern California uh all the way out to Beverly Hills they found these little water courses and is almost impossible to imagine that Los Angeles this is patmorrisonla timescalonist and author of the book riola。
she says that even before human intervention， theeleriver behaved in peculiarways after heavyrains。
the Elli river would swellfrom a trickle into a full blown river but with no fixed course， sometimes when the river flooded， it would cut new pathways， turning different parts of the la basin into a tapistry of wetlands in inlandsies。
it may rain for two or three months out of the year and what that rain does constitutes pretty much where the river decides to go if its not a very rainy season， the river will behave itself in its pretty you know small flat little bed but if theres a lot of rain。
its going to say well this looks like a good place to flood and this looks like a good place to overflow theriverswwaterschedwaslargerthantheisland of maui and all of this unteotherdwater had a huge impact on the entire ecosystem of Los Angeles people today look at la and think its a desert because its so dry but the climate is actually closer to the kind of Meditoranian whether youd see in say Spain or portual the river supported dance forest。
marshlens and enormous biodiversity so the river did not just affect the core or that it runs in it affectedthe whole landscape this is Matthew to team as tribal biologist for the Gabrielano band of mission Indian keet nation， two teams says that the keys built their lives around the water provided by the la river now the la river the ancient name for it is we note which means the life giver that pretty much explains it all in terms of the capacity of what this river provided even in its original natural state the la river was very boom or bust during the rainy season the river would flood wide swas of the la basin but during the dry season， which in la is most of the year most of the rushing surface water would shrink to a shallow stream many of our zoos and an many of our waterways are efemeral meaning there seasonal they only occur during high watervolume times despite these patterns of flooding and drout the river was more than enough to support the indigenous communities of the la basin that is until of course。
the arrival of European colonizers Los Angeles fell under the control of Spain then Mexico then finally！
the United States and to settlers from the east coast the la river which seemed both to wet and to dry was baffling Yankey rivers earned their keep Yangi rivers are rivers where you can float barges and move goods and commerce and people and work kind of lazy as river just sits around and doesnt do anything for nine months out of the year， so it was a very frustrating river for people who came with these industrial sensibilities to look at and to depend on when California gained statehood in 150。
the population of Los Angeles absolutely exploded the citygroup from just under two to one thousand people in only fifty years this growing population began depleting the river and its groundwater to the point that by the turn of the 20TH century， the la river was completely dry。
but los angelascity leaders had no intention of slowing the population growth because they wanted to become the dominant city in California so instead they found themselves a different water source in 1913。
a civil engineer named William Mulholland unveiled an acrodoc the diverted water from the Owens valley about two hundred and thirty three miles north and cyphined it down to la the aqueduct basically destroyed the livelyhood of farmers up north and set off a series of violent conflix called the California water wars sorry that last beat of la history was a bit of a spoiler if youve never seen the movie China town once the dusted settled and Los Angeles had its selfish shiny new imported water source angelinos pivoted from training the river to outright trashing it theydumped waste from factories dead animals from slaughterhouses and untreated sewage into the mostly dry river bed it was inconsequential as far as angelinos were concerned by then sadtomakeroomforthepeople in industries of a booming new city developers， built closer and closer to the dried upbanks of the river but of course。
the la river isnt just any kind of river and all of the shortside development backfired in a big way when these settlers came out here。
there small timeframe of knowinghow are land works they said eh， lets get closetotherivers you know， we dont get much water anyway， and then we have our floods！
remember the la river could be dry for a long stretches of time and this was especially true after settlers depleted the watershed， but it was only a matter of time before Los Angeles had another big raining season？
tomakematters worse the topography of Los Angeles couny was practically designed to flod the principle city of los angles sits in the bowl。
thats surrounded by the ocean and then by mountains in hills and all of the rains that come to those areas over the course of a winter have nowhere to go accept down and we are down thats where we are what makes the la rivers floodpath especially dangerous is just how quickly the water can move once it gets going！
the watershouldbegins high up in the Santa Susana mountains。
the San Gabriel mountains and the San Frandovali and drops to a very low altitude in the blink of an eye and becauseof the steep declined that water picks up incredible speed now the Mississippi river and the la river both drop about the same distance from sourceto mount thedifferenceisthemississippyriver takes 20 miles to get from wayupthere the way down there we do it in fifty miles 50 miles so its like the difference between a wheel， chair， Ramp， and a waterslide you know who and it all comes down and it brings it into this funnel， all of the tributaries of the Los Angeles river and so when it rains a lot， the water comes shooting down off of those hills like something crazy。
in 1944 the year after the Owens valleyacrobct opened la was hit with a major flood it causedso much damaged that there was a public outcry for the city to address its flooding problems but did the people of Los Angeles learn there lesson about building a right up to the banks of the flood prone river no， thats right gillien and twentyyears later in nineteen 34 it happened again only worse in the last week of December in nineteen 33 Los Angeles was slammed with a heavy winter storm in on new yearsday the banks of the la reverse swelled beyond their capacity and what he got three wrote a song about the great Los Angeles flood right he cloudburst it swept or we are home and a hundreds who should take an in that fatal new years flood this second flood gain national attention and prompted the federal government to step in in 1936 congress passed a law that gave the usarmy core of engineers authority over the la river to build floodcontrol measures it was a thirdflood just a couple of years later that would lead to the rivers downfall 1938 was the flood that essentially doomed the Los Angeles river to no longer be a natural river March second 8 is to this day the wedest day on record for Los Angeles and lead to the most devastating flood in the cityhistory incurrentday value the flood costs about one point 7 billion dollarsworth of damage and an estimated people were killed。
disaster and death they send on five southern California counies tons of water submerch thirty thousand square miles of popular beach and in the nine 38 flood the prop department of warnerbrothers was very badly damaged by the rising river waters one of the things that got carried away was a big plywood whale that had been used in a movie and so for that one minute there was a whale in the Los Angeles river even though was applywood moviewhale which sums up los Angela subbeautifully this thirdflod also brought the cities biggest event of the year to a stand still this was in March of nineteen 38 what happens in March are usually did the oskers they could not get to the oskers now were talking crisis three days they had to postpone the oskers because the movie starts were stranded！
that was the final straw Los Angeles had had enough we have to tame this killer river， this nightmare river those were the words you saw in the newspaper headlines at the time Los Angeles residents were tired of living under the constant threat of flood city leaders also hated the fact that the expanse of the rivers fled plane took precious real estate off the market sothecity decided to take its most drastic step yet it would carve out A51 milesetpathway and seal the river into place with concrete the rivers sole purpose would be a funnelstorm water out to see as quickly and efficiently as possible taking this enormous watershed and packing it into a narrow concrete channel was an incredibly ambitious plan， but the United States of the time was in the depths of the great depression and when the army core of engineers was tassed with this chanalization project iputs 17 people to work and so you had a massive government worksproject that was put underway where lawyers and dentist were out there working on paving the Los Angeles river over the next 21 years the army Corv engineers moved 20 million Kubeck yards of earth poured two million Kubeck yards of concrete and place nearly a hundred and fifty thousand pounds of Reenforce steel it remains the largest public works projectwest of the Mississippi this is Jenny priceorwriter and public artist the rivers trees were scraped away its green spaces ripped out its shortlines removed its curbs straightened by 1960 river had been completely transformed and then barricatedbehind chain link fencing they not only channelys the river！
semented the river and pave the river but they Barry it right they dug the channel and put the river into it so its deep you are in this kind of caverness space trapping the river into a secure path meant that real estate developers could build properties like never before a lot of the la river basin was kind of wetlands that would flood seasonally southelli was wet west la was wet the valley？
was you know？
very very wet but thanks to the concrete channel all of those different corners of the city were now dry if you look at when those soberbs in westla？
in the valley， in the south la？
really mushroomed its right after that they concrete the la river the channelisation of the river was an extreme， even violent approach to flood control， butinawaytheconcreatedidwhatcity， leadersatthetimewantedittodo thecounysofar has not experienced a flood as devastating as the one in nineteen 3 十八 and with the river fassive into place Los Angeles was also able to urbanize at a breaknext feed now！
nearly one million people live within a mile of the river but when Los Angeles traded its natural river for real estate。
it got a lot more than it bargained for becausinthe process。
weve created a slew of other environmental and social problems youve taken a river youve shut it off from its river basin so water can flow into but not out of the river so the river no longer eplanises the soil with nutrients， the ocker first with water and the beaches with sand at the same time you have designed the infrastructure to get as muchwater as possible into the river as you can to drain all of the storm water into the storm serres into the tributaries into the river now to the Pacific Ocean so how does la manage its water takes all the water that gets for free from the sky， which we call rain right and designed its infrastructure to move all of that waters fastas possible out of the specific ocean， and then it spends like a billion dollars a year to import from watersheds all across the west significant ecological cost to all those water sheds itinsane it makes absolutely no sense by the time the project was completed in 1960。
most people thought of the la river as a floodcontrol channel generations of Angelinos grew up without ever realizing that we once had a powerful river and that it made this city possible my kids are teenagers now and you know you drive it around downtown la and you see the sign Los Angeles river this is Karssina Martina secretary for the Gabriel eno band of mission Indian Sketch nation and um last time we were downtown like mom theres a river。
i said well， when we get to it look over the edge and tell me what you see and there like theres， nothing there its just concrete。
i said yeah！
i said look at look at how wide that concrete ditches right imagine all that concrete gone and that was full of water at one point so you know my kids will never know what the la river look like you only imagine what was your？
what was your relationship at to the river growing up did you have one none none thats all i know as well！
its just the the concrete jungle of it all yeah after the la river was paveed it remarned mostly ignored for decades even though it ran straight through the heart of Los Angeles couny people forgot it was there for all intenson purposes the river was just another piece of infrastructure there was a proposal by a state assemblemen to use the river as a freeway during the dry season there was a proposal to paint the channel bleu it was difficult to see the river as anythingother than a punchline the word river seemed like a weird euphamism for this concrete ditch that people actively avoid but in the nineteen eighties 20 plus years after the la river was paveed something slowly began to change some people in Los Angeles started looking at the river a little differently they began to questionwhether the river had to be like this the first and loudest of these people was an artist named Louis Mcgatems he was oppoit and a performance artist in a perc piap and his first realizations about the la river came when he and his friends have been like smoking a little something something and went down to the river。
which was fenced off and got some wirecutters and went on in from that moment on mcatoms was determined to be an advocate for the la river in 1986。
he found an organization called friends of the Los Angeles river， which was made up of other artists in architects they made it their mission to get Angelinos and policymakers to start thinking and caring about their river again the way that we move order through the Los Angeles region is enormously insane and enormously screen up。
but as screed up as it is， the only river still the central order of the major waterscheden is never seas to be that eventually。
the la river went from being a Niche artistic project to a mainstream one other groups in individuals started asking questions like what if we were stored some of the natural habitat along its concrete banks what if the river could be part of a solution to our constant trout？
what if the river became a place that people wanted to visit rather than avoid what if we built some dam parks。
mcatoms and other river adfickets believed that before anythingphysical could happen Angelinos had to change the way they were thinking and speaking about the la river if we wanted people to stop treating the river like a flood control channel we had to stop calling it a flood control channel theres a famous story where Louis was at some meeting and whenever someone from the counter。
the course， said uh flycontrol change， said river its like fly control channel river flag control channel river yeah！
its the power of of words right power of um， owning words and owning the river as a river this is candistickins Russell president and ceo of friends of the Los Angeles river thats the nature verses built and i think thats the thing that changes in peoples mind when they talk about it as a river。
itsomething that deserves to be here as opposed of a control channel or they just build that to that we get solves some problems after years in years of grassroots activism by the early 2 thousands the river to be honest still looked like a concrete monstrocity。
but things were actually getting better a few pocket parks said sprung up along the river and it help that years earlier， a water reclamation plan opened upstream， which meant that the river actually always had at least some water in it it was by no means the daniu you still probably couldnt pay people to get into the water， but it was an improvement but in 206。
right in the middle of the Los Angeles reversed come back a supreme court decision pulled the emergency break on all of that positive momentum they imperiled the wetlands in the la river basin。
it was a casecalled rapanos vs the United States！
and it challenged protections granted by the cleanwater act the cleanwater act states that its a legal to discharge any plugin into quota navigable waters whatthiscaseinparticular argued was that wetlands and efemeral rivers like the la river didnt count as quotnavigable waters because they drying out for a lot of the year it basically came down to can you float a boat on it yes or no if not you can dump pollutioninto it？
the upstring focus conservative upstring focus finally get what theyve been wanting for a long time right， which is that they wanted to dclassify most wetlands um as being protected under the clean water act sure enough in 2008。
the army core of engineers who had jurassiction over a lot of the river ruled the of the fifty one miles of river less than 4 were navigable and therefore worthy of protection this decision was essentially。
granting permission to pollutors and developers to treat the river like crap again taking away as cleanwater protections it was basically accepting that the la river would never be more than a flood control channel settingback decades of forward thinking momentum achieved by environmentalists if this decision had happened thirty years earlier。
perhaps nobody in Los Angeles would have putup a fight but after decades of activism， the la river finally had some advocates and one unexpected ally hi hi my name is hotherwily i worked for the army core of engineers i left is a whistle blower i were at the time Heather wily who declined in interview for the story was working as a biologist within the army core of engineers and my agency， the army core engineers decided to take it upon themselves and when she learned that her organization was about to strip。
the la river of its cleanwater protections she got to work wily leaked the information to a number of top environmental lawyers as well as the houseoversight committee at the same time she was also furiously researching to find any proof that the river actually was traditional navigable， which led her to a YouTube video called Georges la river commute its a short comedy video that was posted on YouTube you see a goteed guy in a suit trapped in his car in standstill la traffic at a frustration he gets out of his car hopsynacyack and raft down the la river all set to the music of green river by ccr we were coming at it from a just a well isnthis goofy is in this funny herese it la traffic of course， everybody relies to that and heres this guy who manages to get off the freeway and get the boat and thats just seem like a quant essential la situation this is georgewolf the georgeof georgesla river commute he and friend had post the video for fun thinking that just a handful of people would see it but when heatherwily clicked on that YouTube link。
she realized that this could be the way to prove the la river was in fact navigable so she called up George immediately and it took Heather sort of hashing some of the stuff out in a very uh it kind of manic way over the phone she like oh yeah oh i saw the southern video of you on the river and you have to get out there what are you doing？
you gotta get the news you get it you have to get this covered in and we need to see people in boats on the river and like who who are you again after determining that she was not in fact an army core spy George signed on the help he would play one part in widlease plan to save the rivers clean water protections in her mind she was like oh here these voters about will be one part of the whole strategy and she was already reaching out to her congressman and then hes gonna approach it from its whole other very large political angle and how that works this is Ramport i dont know your guy in a caya im my guy in about you know we tend to be simpler simpler folk georgeassembledgroup of a couple dozen ciackers。
including wily for a threedaykayacingtripdown all 51 miles of the river they scheduled the trip for the dead of summer when the water runs at its lowest， just approve that even under the harshest conditions it was possible and in July of 208。
the fleet launched at the rivers headwaters at Conoga park high school amongst the concrete chain link fences and do not enter signs in inevitably the helicopter show up you know the helicopter sloop around and then before long uh you know a couple of uh policemen on footshow up not long into the trip the please stop the career van to see if they had permits to be on the river they didnt have one to caiac the river but as it turns out georgeswifetaio was filming a documentary about the whole river trip and they were actually able to present a film permit instead becauseitla iteasier to get a film permit to go on the la river than it is to get any other kind of permit to access the river so then they look it over and they were like what they have a film permit i dont know who are we to to stop them and so they carried on through the sandfornandovali around the movie studios throughdowntown la avoidingdiscarded refrigerators on shopping carts along the way they could see the soft bottom portions of the river were the concrete refused to take and trees and plants managed to find a way up despite the channelisation and yet you see the hope because you see the trees and the brush all pop up throughid you see majestic birds like the great white herence and the egrits and kingfishers and you know those red legged stoked birds and you see you know owls and Hawks and an amazing panorama of life going on so its and thats the thing that mixed elly river Deli river is weird just a position of stuff they watched as the walls of the river itself morfed as they headed south from narrow towering concrete walls to a wide open trapisoidal channel to that final open stretch out to Queensway Bay in Long Beach we could see the Queen Marey in the distance， which was kind of Ironic here we were in these little teeny， tiny boys there is Majstic ocean liner waitness at the very young it seem appropriate as a as an ending point。
after a roundofcelebratory pixes in the parkinglot， the group headed home georgion。
his team collected data and measurements during the trip and rode up their experience into a big report and we send it off to the epa and then didnt hear anything it took two years but in twenty ten。
the epa stepped in and overruled the army core of engineers declaringthat all 51 miles of the la river were navigable and therefore would keep all of its cleanwater act protections we were all just kind of like you know that last scene in the ways are just sing in brand new day and dancing in the street it felt like that we were just like whoo the only river genemical this is candastickins Russell again ceo of friends of the la river it was a buzz it kind of rippled through the office and everybody was just like oh my gosh this thing just happened it was a big deal it was a big deal because it meant that there are going to be some formal and very real protections for the river that were coming in the kayacking standhelp to restore the rivers environmental protections and renewed a lot of interest in it but river advocate say that there is still a lot to be done when it comes to revitalization the community surrounding the rivers been surveyed so many times theyve been asked what they want so many times and so little of that has come to ferition weve work to do we have serious work to do the river itself passes through 17 different cities as well as couny and federal jurisdiction。
it also impacts a number of different communities so there are a lot of conflicting ideas for how to make the river a better place for angelinos， or how to do it in a way that respects native ecology， or how to do it in a way that avoid screen gentrification？
or how to do it equitably its slowwork but although there has been disagreement on what revidalization should look like or how will get there there is one thing that all of these agencies and organizations and advocacy groups and individuals and kayakers can agree on the la river is a river im head out some paddles to you oh！
my gosh alright listener we are screen bling after George will help to establish the rivers navigability status he founded la river expeditions， which leads kayactours at certain spots of the la river since then the group is gotten around 15-20 people indibletes and out on the water less summer vivin and i were two of them！
which were very indoor people was a huge gamble can you say something for me one two！
one two one two one two im very afraid just kidding we met up at the suppolvid abase in which is one of the few natural sections of the river that was never concreated to be quite honest the launch site was not much to look at it was a wide open scraggly overflow zone a big concrete overpass was blocking part of the river view and parked along the banks were some shopping carts filled with scrap im on the river im wearing a helmet！
im observing i see a pipe a rusty pipe ahead！
but once we rounded the bend under the belly of that big concrete overpass you could see it its still a river full of life wow！
canading keys flying above and although city leaders try to Barry it its still here， theres fish here theres theres bunch a little fish here bunch a little baby guys you can get a small sense of what the la river once was an even though it represents so much of what we did wrong in Los Angeles it is also a reminder that we could still get it right！
beautiful flying eager yeah！
gorgess！
gorgeous！
gorgess！
gorgess！
after the breakcomes back to talk more about the la river stay with us！
so i am back with producer and friend of the showgillion Jacobs hello， friend！
hi friend！
how are you im good？
how are you doing？
im doing great um yeah， so we we like to use these codeas to chat about the things that we came across well you know reporting our stories but for whatever reason， they dont make it into the episode and today we actually wanted to talk about two things um the first being a story about what the la river could have been yes。
so in our reporting， we discovered that in the nineteen thirties as we all know Los Angeles city leaders turned to concrete as the solution to the citiesflutting issues， but you and i learned that it didnt have to be this way there was actually， a an alternative idea for flood control being thrown around a few years earlier that would have created a very different los angles in the late 20 early thirties the city。
and i think the chamber of commerce commissioned a study and they said you know look at Los Angeles were on this point of incredible growth what will the what should the city look like thats pat moreson again author of Rio la。
so she says that in the late nineteen 20 as Los Angeles was experiencing the superrapid growth the la chamberof commerce actually had all of these concerns about all the things that came with population growth， soflike， pollution and traffic and disappearing public park space and there are already by this point conversation about constraining the la river and some of the chamber worried that this approach would just make these other issues way worse， which was absolutely correct they were a dead on， dead on and also listen to the 99 pi episode about americasloss public transit if you want to hear more about， why we dont have better uh public transportation on Los Angeles yes shutout to our own show so OK im taking you back but time machine so at the time the chamberformed a subcommittee of about a hundreddifferent highprofile angelnotes one member was the director suselbde email another was a actress Mary pickfor yeah， very important person the earlyhistory of Hollywood uh Google hera feed never heard of her please do and this committee commissioned a proposal for the urban redesign of Los Angeles that would tackle all of these other issues， as well as the flooding problem and when i finally saw。
it i started to cry because it was the city that we never got that we should have gotten it was called the emerald neckless。
so the emerald neckless proposal was cocreated by the sons of Frederick law omstead who was actually， the landscape architect the design Central Park and on said senior design something very similar Boston decades earlier and like that plan the Los Angeles emerald necklas imagined a series of interconnected parks in green ways， along the coast in all throughout the city。
and it would have created a more natural river path and also absorbed flood overflow and if you look at it keeping that intact even marginally intact as green belts as overflow zones would have made this a paradise much as we love it now we know it is an imperfect paradise i dont know about paradise！
but it would have been awesome and the only stead plan would have just provided protection from flooidwater it would have connected the entire city by green space and rather than funneling out precious rain water to the ocean a lot of it would be able to absorb back into the watertable through these parks right yeah！
thats so sad to think about me you know how it would have solved so many issues yeah？
so what ended up happening with the old steadplan well unsurprising the proposal was shot down immediately it was actually killed by the chamber of commerce itself， which was the entity that commission the plan and almost no one even new adexisted for decades。
but took too much stuff off the market and it was the depression we couldnafford it and so now we have to live with the consequences a hundred years on it is striking how the old stead plan was you know the exact opposite management that we ended up with and it would have created like of fundamentally different loss angles you know you and i both live here and its its not that angeline notes dont value park space but it does feel like builds into Los Angeles is the the feeling that you know this kind of public space is not a priority for the city itself yeah and you have good reason for that feeling so the the trust for public lan puts out a park score rating you know the hundredmost populous cities in the country and Los Angeles ranked eighty eight out of a hundred which is uh its really bad thats such a boomer yeah i mean yeah he could feel it but that is such a boomer i know！
eh eh we know its bad i didnt was that bad uh i and i did want to say that the only said plan has served as an inspiration for some of the proposals to revitalize la river so one day we might see some elements of that design i dont know Wes see i mean dont make pat moreson cry thats just what i want to say that la power figures yes！
yeah type morson adall cost at all cost he yes dont make her ever pre ever again yeah so you know me maybe one day will see some some reflection of the emerald necklas in Los Angeles if we could if we could ever get our yeah together um and thats the good news thats the good news portion of the quota and originally was going to be the only thing were going to talk about but something very recently happened in the news and it felt like it was important that we talked about it because it could possibly impact the future of the Ella river yes！
so you know a big part of the main episode was this key moment in 2008 when the la rivers， clean water protections were put in jeopardy， because of an interpretation of a supreme court decision so vivin do you want to take away？
the recap sure yes， uh so the clean water active protects quote navigable bodies of water uh thats the language of the law itself and then in 208， the army corv engineers declared the la river nonnavigable but eventually， the epa stepped in and overrolled the army core engineers and declared that the la river was navigable again， which preserved its clean water act protections yes！
so the epa was able to step in and preserve the la rivers cleanwater protections becauseof this longstanding president called the Chevron doctrine the Chevron doctrine basically meant that when a law is vager， ambiguous federal courts need to defer to an agency like the epi to interpret that law so the reason why the la river was able to keep its cleanwater protections was because the cleanwater act had this ambiguous language quotnavigable waters so the epa had the power to interpret the meaning of navigable right？
because there was some confusion about the language of the cleanwater， act， scientists and biologists in engineers that work within the epa as an entity they were allowed to make the decision of whether the la river specifically was worth protecting rather than in court by some nonexpert judge yes！
but while we were reporting the story the supreme court overturned the shover on doctrine and so now its not clear how long the apaas protections will last？
which is？
which is super scary like that is really scary this is my version of a horror film we dont know if this is gonna have an impact on the la river and there is a possibility that someone else in the future will challenge the rivers， clean water protections and this ends up in court but maybe not uh yeah right？
and it you know its important to note that this ruling has like other huge implications to outside of the early river um you know protections for other a femeral waterways like wetlands and creeks can be challenged it also means that you know all sorts of federal regulations could end up in court from like the clean air act uh climate protections endangeredspecs protections you know， so its， its？
its a yeah and i know this is why activism and raising awareness um of the river and the importance of the river is so key and you know thats why all the measures that people have been taking for decades are important to preserve？
right and i mean those protections start with people actually knowing about their rivers and these waterways thats were kind of the caring starts of it that yeah for the activism goes from there yeah， um so yeah i know its not its not the happyest note to leave this episode on but but we had to tell you dear listen we had to tell you know its we gotta know you know thank you so so much for reporting the story with us um and thank you for overcoming your fears and getting into a kayac oh my god actually river i know youre superwords i just glad that this pod cast does not have a YouTube channel because otherwise。
Vivian would be uh showing footage of me just um failing at kayacking so he did only for you Vivian and only for 99 pi yeah will i get into a cayac well！
thank you gilion， thank you Vivian！
99 percent invisible was producethisweek by Gallien Jacobs and me Vivian lay edited by Kelly prime， mixed by martingansolas， music by Swan Rio with additional music by neuburn backchecking by Gramhusha special thanks this week to Georgewolf island Takata and Andy Solas Catti two is our executor producer colestead is the digital director delayhall is our senior editor our intern is nicket that upday the rest of the team includes CRISPR Ruby， Jason Dailyon， Emit Fitzgerald， Gabriel Le Gladne， Christopher Johnson， Lasschemadan， Jaca meldonadomedina， Nina Potec， Joe Rosenberg， and of course， the Bossman Roman Mars the 99 percent invisible logo was created by Stuffin Lawrence we are part of the Stitcher and serious Xmpodcast family now headquartered three hundred and seventy， one miles and six blocks north of Los Angeles in the Pandora， building in beautiful Uptown， Oakland， California you can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as our brand new discord server， theres a lot of nice people talking about architecture and complaining about Robert Moses there theres a link to that as well as every passed episode of 99 pi at 99 pi dot org。
OK， i can do this i can do it i can do it！
come on baby！
come on baby！
i get it hello that was like a level one rapids in it really kill me。