The Politics of Urban Sustainability and Environmental Justice in the Los Angeles River Watershed

Restoring a River to Reclaim a City?: The Politics of Urban Sustainability and Environmental Justice in the Los Angeles River Watershed By Esther Grace Kim A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Jeff Romm, Chair Professor Nancy Peluso Professor Richard Walker Fall 2017 Restoring a River to Reclaim a City?: The Politics of Urban Sustainability and Environmental Justice in the Los Angeles River Watershed Copyright © 2017 by Esther Grace Kim Abstract Restoring a River to Reclaim a City?: The Politics of Urban Sustainability and Environmental Justice in the Los Angeles River Watershed by Esther Grace Kim Doctor of Philosophy in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management University of California, Berkeley Professor Jeff Romm, Chair This dissertation examines the intersection of urban sustainability and environmental justice (EJ) in Los Angeles, California. ‘Urban sustainability’, the idea that incorporating sustainable measures into urban development plans/strategies can ameliorate ecological degradation and social inequality without compromising economic growth, has recently emerged as a powerful discourse with regards to city planning and environmental governance. In this dissertation, I critically interrogate urban sustainability’s claims, questioning how equitable socio-spatial configurations can be created through modes of urban governance, which despite its optimistic rhetoric, are still driven by the logic of capitalist economic development and overseen by the racial state. To investigate the ways in which environmental justice, then, is facilitated and/or constrained under the programmatic realization of urban sustainability, I focus on one particular sustainability project in Los Angeles—the restoration/revitalization of the Los Angeles River Watershed. Restoring the L.A. River is an ambitious undertaking by a diverse consortium of state and NGO actors, and consists of an agenda that goes beyond any single urban environmental issue; it has emerged as a symbol of a ‘cleaner, greener’ Los Angeles. In order to examine this sustainability initiative, I conducted a critical ethnography that consisted of two years of fieldwork in Los Angeles. Based on this research, I present several arguments throughout this dissertation. I trace the history of the environmental movement to restore the Los Angeles River and sustainably manage its watershed; in doing so, I identify the counter-hegemonic narratives and objectives embedded within this political activism. These activist efforts, I argue, which seek to disrupt the dominant urban land-water management regime in metropolitan Los Angeles, enable the environmental agenda of river restoration to articulate with local environmental justice efforts centered on equitable distribution of greenspace, public health considerations in urban planning, and youth/community development. Despite these achievements, the current plan to restore the Los Angeles River embodies principles of ecological modernization, which rely upon dominant political-economic processes and ultimately stymie a more substantive engagement with the politics of environmental justice. The contradictions of relying upon urban processes—those dictated by capitalist land markets and entrepreneurial forms of governance—that produce environmental injustices, in order to implement sustainability programs that purport to undo 1 those injustices, reveal the inability of this particular urban sustainability project to advance environmental justice. These contradictions reproduce inequalities, which are already observed in the environmental gentrification unfolding in certain riverside neighborhoods. These historically divested neighborhoods are heralded as new sites of urban greening, but often are left unprotected from real estate speculation and housing markets that threaten to displace lower- income residents. Another major argument of my dissertation is that limited conceptualizations of environmental justice prevent even well-meaning state and NGO actors from effectively promoting more equitable environmental conditions for communities. Many actors involved in the environmental projects centered on L.A. River restoration operate from a narrowly-conceived distributive model of justice. Focusing solely on distributions of environmental burdens and benefits throughout a geographic area, I argue, not only falls into the trap of handling urban places as static and bounded, but also precludes meaningful engagement with other aspects of environmental justice politics. In particular, promoting EJ requires understanding how place- based identity formation, histories of structural racism and cultural marginalization, and access to participatory mechanisms differentially impact afflicted communities. I present the case studies of two neighborhoods (Pacoima and Elysian Valley) and two coalitions (the Chinatown Yard Alliance and Alianza de los Pueblos del Rio) to demonstrate how struggles for environmental justice in Los Angeles involve a politics of place, race, and identity. Through these cases, I conclude that urban sustainability agendas that actually advance environmental justice, then, must move beyond distributive myopia to recognize the underlying socio-spatial processes that create inequitable and unjust places. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS ---------------------------------------------------------------- v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- vi CHAPTER ONE The “Nexus” of Urban Sustainability and Environmental Justice at The Los Angeles River ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Introduction 1 Restoring the Los Angeles River: An Urban Sustainability Agenda 3 Interrogating the Discourse of Urban Sustainability and its Commitment to Environmental Justice 6 Theoretical Framework and Relevant Literatures 9 Environmental Justice: Developing a Critical and Multivalent Framework 9 The City as Material-Discursive Socio-Nature: An Urban Political Ecology Framework 15 Research Methods and Epistemological Stance 18 Main Arguments and Overview of the Dissertation 21 CHAPTER TWO A City and Its River: A History of the Los Angeles River’s Transformation (1880s-1940s) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 25 Introduction 25 The Early History of the Los Angeles River (Late 18th Century to Early 1900s) 27 “Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de la Porciuncula”: Pre-European Uses of the River 27 Pipes, Property Rights, and People: Anglo-American Transformations of Urban Nature 29 Changing Ideologies of Water and the Disconnection of Flows 31 “A Freakishly Paradoxical Environment”: Geography of a Southern California Watershed 32 “Aqueous Supply” and “Treacherous Stream”: The Two Faces of the River 34 “A River for a City!”: The Los Angeles Aqueduct and the Changing Role of Local Water 38 Acts of God and Acts of Man: Flooding and the Social Construction of Disaster 43 “A New Ecosystem”: Urbanization, the 1914 Flood, and County Response 44 “The Greatest Catastrophe in Los Angeles’ History”: 1930s Floods and Federal Involvement 47 From Floods to Disasters: Representations of Nature’s “Menace” 51 The Politics of Scientific Knowledge and the Engineering of Flood Control 54 Engineering the Modern City: Narratives of Unruly Natures and Technologies of Control 57 The Imperative of Urban Development: Commodification of Land Through the Control of Water 60 Conclusion: The “Death” of the L.A. River? 66 i CHAPTER THREE From Concrete Ditch to Navigable Waterway: The History of the Los Angeles River Restoration Movement (1985-2015) ------------------------------------------------------------------- 68 Introduction 68 Resurrecting the River: A Local Environmental Movement Thirty Years in the Making 70 The 1980s and Early-1990s: Art, “Weirdo” Activism, and Changing Sociopolitical Conditions 74 The Political and Cultural Context for River Restoration Activism 77 Conflict in the 1990s: LACDA and the Beginnings of Agency Restructuring 81 Nonprofit Organizations Rally Around Watershed Protection 83 Urban Parks and Water Quality Protection: Early- to Mid-2000s as Tipping Point 87 Warehouses versus Urban Parks: Environmental Justice Comes to the River 87 Water Quality Regulation and Protection: Cleaning Up Polluted Waterways 90 Public-Private Efforts Increase for the River Restoration Agenda 92 The Making of “Big Plans”: Formalization and Coordination in the Latter-2000s 95 The City of Los Angeles Becomes the “Biggest Player in the Room” 95 Integrated Water Management and the Scaling Up of Plans to the Watershed 98 From Instigators of Change to Professional Partners: The Changing Role of Environmentalists 101 2010-2015: Federal Support and Growing Recognition Amid Continued Contestations 103 Navigability, Access, and Recreation: Does the River Deserve Regulatory Protection? 104 Local, State, and Federal Efforts Grow Around Watershed Protection 108 Counter-Hegemonic Narratives of Urban Waterways: From Freeway to Flood Channel to Flowing River 113 Conclusion: Can Restoring the River Bring About a Greener L.A.? 123 CHAPTER FOUR The Promises and Perils of Parks:

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