Plans Brewing to Beautify Laguna Creek

Often referred to as “the ditch,” Laguna Canyon Creek may soon see its own form of urban renewal.

With replanted native vegetation, renewed wildlife habitat, walking trails and improved water quality as a result, an environmental team recently unveiled a plan they hope will make the creek look like again.

The mostly cement-channeled creek has been misused and abused as it runs from the freshwater Laguna Lakes at the north end of the canyon through homes, businesses and industrial zones along Laguna Canyon Road and out to sea, said Bob Borthwick, co-author of the 19-page report. The creek is also prone to flooding and has sent torrents of mud-filled waters into the downtown during extreme storms.

Over the past 18 months, landscape architect Borthwick and Laguna Canyon Foundation vice president Lance Vallery compiled the report with 22 recommendations on how to restore the creek to a more natural state.

He and Vallery unveiled their plan to “better” the creek in presentations to open-space preservation advocate Laguna Greenbelt last week and to members of the Laguna Canyon Conservancy in December. Their intent is to build support for funding the concepts, which do not involve reconfiguring the creek or its purpose, Borthwick said. “We’re stuck with the flood control measures that are there,” he said. “The plan is to take what we have and make it even better.”

Paying for the improvements will take a village, as Borthwick envisions it, though he didn’t estimate the cost. “I think there’s an untapped resource of just individuals who would be happy to have our front door look better,” Borthwick said. “In a lot of the recommendations, we’re not talking about a whole lot of money involved.”

Each of the creek’s three sections has from six to eight recommended improvements, including tree plantings, upgrading fencing, a “wildlife bridge” and a creek-side trail to downtown, the report says.   The recommendations can be accomplished piecemeal by community groups, individuals or grants, said Borthwick.

Laguna Greenbelt is on board, said president Elisabeth Brown. “There are places where it’s incredibly ugly,” said Brown. “Anything that makes the canyon look less like an industrial park and a raceway, I’m in favor of that.”

Borthwick and Vallery also hope to get the city to pitch in financially to restore “a sense” of the creek’s original beauty. They plan to present their project to the City Council soon. “We consider ourselves an environmental community and we’re still back in the ‘50s when it comes to the creek,” Borthwick said. “The purpose is to educate the public that there is an actual creek in Laguna Canyon.”

Borthwick cites the Los Angeles River and San Luis Creek in San Luis Obispo as examples where community consciousness helped reclaim waterways. “It used to be 20 years ago that everybody laughed at any treatment for the L.A. River and people who supported it were just kooky,” Borthwick said.

The city of Los Angeles took on the project of revitalizing the first 32 miles of unsightly cement channels in 2007. The goal, according to Carol Armstrong, director of the Los Angeles River Project, is to raise awareness about the importance of keeping the river clean and “not to use the river as something that divides the communities of Los Angeles but connects them.” Portions of the Los Angeles River now support kayak tours.

Hallie Jones, director of Laguna Canyon Foundation, said her group will do whatever it can to support the creek project. “The community has sort of thought of it as a storm drain rather than a real riparian habitat,” said Jones. “The plan looks at what’s feasible first and doable,” she said. “It’s implementable.”

Borthwick, president of Borthwick Guy Bettenhausen, Inc., a landscape architecture firm in Irvine, said he’s been trying to upgrade the city’s “front door” since the 1990s.

“There is a backpacking motto about leaving a campsite cleaner than you found it,” he said. “I would like for us to leave Laguna Canyon and the creek better than we found it.  And by ‘better,’ I mean still rural, still rustic, but less cluttered and even more beautiful.” Borthwick has been hired for several landscaping projects in the city. This project, he said, is gratis.

The report’s recommendations extend to the 405 freeway, covering eight miles, though the creek extends over 5.5 miles, from its headwaters at Laguna Lakes to its terminus at Main Beach.

“Although much of the creek has been channelized, piped and otherwise manipulated by manmade development, at its essence, it is still a natural watercourse,” Borthwick wrote in the report. “Much of the creek is forlorn, but it is not the creek’s fault. It is our lack of action.”

Laguna Canyon Creek is walled by a concrete channel for most of the 2.5 miles between Main Beach and the Dog Park with much of it serving as a receptacle for trash, debris and pollution, according to the report. Borthwick hopes to raise awareness about its importance as a natural resource.

“When people change their perception of the creek to being a creek rather than a ditch or a storm drain, they’ll stop putting things in it that don’t belong in a creek,” he said.

Borthwick credits economics professor, photographer and Laguna Beach resident Ron Chilcote for seeding the idea. At Chilcote’s suggestion, Borthwick received a $5,000 grant from the Foundation for Sustainability and Innovation in June of 2013 to initiate the study.

“If we can save the canyon, we can save the creek,” Borthwick said.