Thursday, March 29, 2007

Water crisis warning prompts SwigAlerts

Plant shutdown could dry out parts of O.C. if residents ignore freeway signs and other warnings to conserve.
By Jennifer Delson and Christopher Goffard, Times Staff Writers; March 29, 2007

 
Turning to freeway warning signs to get their message across, Orange County officials said Wednesday the area could face a water crisis if residents failed to step up their conservation practices.

For many, the first indication that anything was amiss were the Caltrans warnings — 35 of them — that materialized on the Santa Ana, Orange, San Diego, Riverside and Costa Mesa freeways.

“ORANGE COUNTY WATER EMERGENCY CONSERVE WATER,” the signs read. The freeway message boards are usually reserved for child abductions and traffic snarls.

The water shortage stems from the weeklong shutdown of a water treatment plant in Yorba Linda that supplies Orange County with half of its water and South County with 95%. Yet since the shutdown of the Robert B. Diemer plant for upgrades was planned for more than a year, how did it suddenly become an “emergency”?

Water officials insist they’ve done their best to gently urge conservation: issuing news releases, buying radio time, making automated calls to residents. But in this uncommonly dry season, people just aren’t hearing — or just aren’t heeding — pleas to delay watering their lawns or washing their cars until the plant reopens Sunday.

“We thought we were prepared,” said Karl Seckel, assistant general manager of the Municipal Water District of Orange County. “The last two years we did a similar shutdown. When we requested the conservation, it was there.”

As ominous as the Caltrans signs seem, the likelihood that Orange County will be on the brink of running out of water is remote.

Firefighters and hospitals are not in danger, officials say, and vast backup supplies elsewhere in the county make it unlikely that kitchen spigots will run dry. Still, officials were troubled that water usage in some areas was 40% higher than expected Monday and Tuesday, and reservoirs in cities such as San Clemente and Yorba Linda were sinking rapidly.

But on Wednesday, the county was conserving again. The Caltrans signs seemed to be doing the trick. “We had used all the traditional means to ask residents to conserve, and usage was still up,” said Kelly Hubbard, emergency services manager at the water district. “Considering that most people spend a lot of time driving on the freeways, we thought this was a good way to get the message” across.

Caltrans officials said this was the first time their freeway signs, which will continue to carry the water conservation pleas, were used for that purpose. They were unaware of any traffic problems or accidents caused by the new messages.

“We knew this wasn’t just a promotional idea,” said Yvonne Washington, a Caltrans spokeswoman. “When they call, it’s really an emergency.” She said the messages would continue until further notice.

In Yorba Linda, half of the 50-million-gallon water reserve was gone within two days of the shutdown, although a new pump installed Tuesday will probably prevent residents from running out of water, Seckel said. In San Clemente, officials feared that without conservation, the reservoir level would drop to 30%, about 10% less than what is minimally maintained, said San Clemente water conservation specialist Nathan Adams. “We were sucking that water out faster than we ever imagined,” Adams said. “We don’t want to shut water off in people’s homes.”

But George Scarborough, San Clemente’s city manager, said he was troubled by the phrasing on the Caltrans signs.

” ‘Emergency’ implies that we didn’t know this was going to happen, or the residents didn’t know. There was considerable notification,” Scarborough said. In San Clemente, he said, “we’re not in a crisis or emergency mode.”

Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Steve Miller said fire authorities were carefully monitoring the situation.

“Of course we are concerned — if there is no water, we can’t fight fires,” he said, adding that if there were areas without water, water tenders, which are tank trucks, would be sent on calls.

During the plant’s shutdown, the Irvine Ranch Water District, which serves Irvine and other parts of Orange County, has been sending 16 million gallons of water a day to help South County with its supply. When the Yorba Linda plant shut down in previous years, she said, calls for conservation resulted in 10% to 20% drops in water usage countywide.

“This year, perhaps because of drier than normal temperatures, that hasn’t happened,” said spokesperson Marilyn Smith.

Orange County gets its water from natural underground reservoirs and by importing it. Gina DePinto, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Water District, which serves northern and central Orange County, said the district’s groundwater basin remained full of water, which could be sent to the southern counties in an emergency. Still, she said, it was a good idea to conserve.

“We live in a desert,” DePinto said. “People don’t often think [about] that.”

Larry Dees, director of operations of the Moulton Niguel water district, which serves several southern Orange County cities, said water use dropped Wednesday, perhaps as a result of the freeway signs. He said the district ran an advertisement in the Orange County Register, paid for a radio spot, distributed door hangers and made automated calls March 22 and again on Wednesday.

“We were disappointed,” Dees said of the lack of initial response. “We’re happy now because it does seem the message is sinking in.”

Posted by M at 19:07:50 | Permalink | No Comments »

One-way streets may get Westside on the fast track

By Jean Guccione and David Pierson, Times Staff Writers; March 29, 2007

Traffic relief

One-way solution?

There are a lot of ideas for fixing traffic in L.A., but almost all would cost a fortune.

Subway to the sea: $5 billion. Extending the Expo Line: $800 million. Widening the 405: $1 billion.

Then there is an idea that would cost comparatively little and is generating growing buzz around City Hall and the Westside: turning Olympic and Pico boulevards into one-way streets from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica.

A traffic consultant is completing a study of the concept, which was proposed in January by Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and has been the subject of much discussion since.

It remains to be seen exactly how much the conversion would improve traffic. The study marks the beginning of what would probably be a more than yearlong process to reconfigure the streets. The change would require approval of the L.A. City Council as well as leaders in Beverly Hills, home of a small stretch of Olympic.

As the plan moves forward, officials will have to balance the potential inconveniences from rerouting two of L.A.’s busiest streets with the potential for traffic relief.

Some officials said the city needs to embrace ideas, even ones that might rankle neighborhood groups. In a sign of how severe traffic problems have become, two councilmen in the affected areas are backing Yaroslavsky’s push for one-way routes.

“As the frustration level of our constituents becomes palpable, anything is better than the current situation,” Councilman Bill Rosendahl said.

Councilman Jack Weiss, who represents another section of the route, said he hopes a design can be crafted that addresses community concerns while finally doing something about the gridlock that roils his district.

“I know my constituents want help,” he said.

Backers say it could be done quickly, simply by adding new signage, reconfiguring traffic signals and perhaps doing some relatively minor street improvements along the 15-mile stretch.

The idea isn’t new. After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which closed the Santa Monica Freeway for months, then-Mayor Richard Riordan proposed making Pico and Olympic one way to improve east-west traffic. The proposal died amid concerns from some residents that the boulevards would turn into dangerous speedways.

As traffic has worsened, fears of a “one-way racetrack” have largely dissolved.

Still, Pico and Olympic are unusual candidates for one-way conversion. Most one-way streets are one block apart, making it easy for drivers to switch directions.

By contrast, the distance between Pico and Olympic varies. Through large swaths of West L.A., Mid-City and Beverly Hills, the streets are only two or three blocks apart. But in Century City and neighborhoods south of Hancock Park, the gap widens to up to three-quarters of a mile.

Yaroslavsky said his plan calls for making Olympic westbound and Pico eastbound. Two lanes of each street — one in each direction — could be dedicated to bus traffic. The traffic consultant is completing a preliminary study to determine if the idea would work.

Yaroslavsky came up with the idea after years of hearing residents in the Westside and beyond complain about traffic.

Officials have talked for years about how to improve traffic flow between the Westside and downtown, but the price tags have been daunting. The most popular idea is to extend the subway along Wilshire; the line currently ends at Western Avenue. But even if officials can raise $5 billion and gain the political support to build it, the subway would be at least a decade from completion.

“This would cost a fraction of what it would cost otherwise to increase capacity,” the supervisor said. “It’s a radical idea.”

L.A. city traffic officials estimate it would cost millions of dollars to make the boulevards one way. The costs could include relocating street signs, moving parking meters, removing some signals, adding underground traffic detectors and re-striping the road, said John Fisher, assistant general manager of the L.A. Department of Transportation.

There could be additional costs if the city decided to install “traffic calming” measures on nearby residential streets to reduce cut-through traffic, including speed humps and barriers. Traffic engineers say one-way streets are faster because they eliminate the need for left-turn lanes and can be synchronized much more effectively than two-way streets.

“You can time them perfectly,” said Harry Parker, who worked for years as the county’s top traffic engineer before retiring. Parker said the one-way streets would probably benefit commuters by speeding up traffic but could cause more headaches for local residents, who would have to run a maze to get to their favorite shops or other destinations.

Westwood resident Lori Everett, who lives near Pico and Olympic, said the traffic has gotten out of control. But she worries that making them one way would result in more cut-through traffic.

“It’s already so busy it wouldn’t be safe at all,” Everett said. “As it is, I already can’t let my kids on the front lawn” because of fast drivers.

The model for this is an experiment that proved highly successful in downtown L.A. during the 1984 Olympics. City officials temporarily switched the traffic flows on Figueroa and Flower streets to improve traffic during the games.

At the time, merchants along the downtown stretch expressed concern that there would be confusion and a loss of customers. But problems were few, and officials found that the one-way lanes improved traffic flow, so they were made permanent.

A decade later, Riordan proposed making Pico and Olympic into one-way “super boulevards” designed to ease traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway. At the time, city engineers predicted the shift would reduce congestion along the east-west corridor by 17% and significantly speed up traffic.

Congestion has worsened in the 13 years since, and some business owners now hope that a one-way conversion would make it easier for customers to get to their stores. But others worry that the changes would discourage customers from coming in — especially if some street parking is eliminated for the bus lane.

“Our customers come from both sides,” said Lucy Attala, a clerk at Michael’s Cleaners on Olympic Boulevard in Westwood. “If it goes one way, then we’ll lose people coming from the other direction. It’s not a good idea.”

*

jean.guccione@latimes.com

david.pierson@latimes.com

*

The ins and outs of one-way streets

How would converting Olympic and Pico boulevards to one-way traffic reduce congestion?

Answer: Although the total volume of traffic on the two streets might remain the same, traffic engineers say one-way traffic is much easier to manage. With easier left turns (not crossing traffic), traffic signals can be synchronized much more efficiently. In fact, traffic experts say one-way streets are ideal for signal synchronization.

What are the drawbacks?

Most, but not all, one-way streets are one block apart. Pico and Olympic are 0.23 miles to 0.7 miles apart. That means people trying to go from east to west would need to drive several blocks to switch directions. Some residents worry about motorists cutting through their neighborhoods to get from Pico to Olympic.

How much would it cost?

It remains unclear. Early estimates place it at several million dollars. Officials would need to change signage, repaint lines and alter traffic signals. Barriers, cul-de-sacs and speed humps might be needed to prevent cut-through traffic in residential neighborhoods. That’s a tiny fraction of widening freeways, building a Wilshire Boulevard subway or extending the Expo Line (all about $1 billion).

Why Pico and Olympic?

East-west cross-city traffic has long been L.A.’s Achilles’ heel. There is no rail line and only one freeway, the 10. Pico and Olympic are the best candidates for one-way conversion because they are relatively close and are relatively straight shots between downtown and Santa Monica.

Where would the route go?

Backers would like it to run from downtown L.A. to the ocean. But it might end up terminating at the Santa Monica city limits at Centinela Avenue. Beyond that point, Olympic is bisected by a large, planted median that makes one-way traffic difficult.

From Times Staff

Posted by M at 19:06:05 | Permalink | No Comments »

Raw but Welcoming, a Space for Lofty Ideas

One Small Step After renovating San Francisco building on a run-down street to use as an office, Loring Sagan installed a coffee bar in the garage that became a community gathering place.

By THERESE BISSELL; Published: March 29, 2007

Sharon Risedorph
Sharon Risedorph
He built a loft, which he uses as a bedroom on late worknights and as a place to conduct meetings
Sharon Risedorph
The conference room, which is connected to the loft by a walkway, is the site of a monthly salon.

WHEN Loring Sagan bought a decrepit building on Linden Street here in 2002, the surrounding area in the Hayes Valley neighborhood was desolate. But having inherited an affinity for social activism from his mother, who was a leader of the American branch of Amnesty International , he set out to do his part to improve the situation.

 

Mr. Sagan, 53, an architectural designer, artist and entrepreneur, renovated the 1920s concrete building as an office for Sagan Piechota Architecture, the firm he founded with the architect Daniel Piechota, and Build Inc., the real estate development company he runs with two partners. Almost from the start, though, he was using it for more, holding a monthly salon that at times included brainstorming sessions about solutions to neighborhood problems, and then, in 2005, joining forces with a local barista to remake the garage into the sleek Blue Bottle Coffee kiosk.

“Linden was a dead little alley,” Mr. Sagan said. But within a few months of the kiosk’s opening it had become a lively gathering place and a prime example of his belief in the value of little, strategic upgrades to the urban fabric. Mr. Sagan is “a passionate agent for social change,” said David Meckel, the director of research and planning at California College of the Arts in San Francisco — one who sees “integration into the neighborhood as less about the broad brush than the fine grain of incremental change.”

“An idea grows, people engage,” Mr. Sagan said of the area’s improving fortunes. “There’s what I call collaborative enthusiasm.”

In renovating the Linden Street building, Sagan Piechota Architecture stripped it to its wood-frame shell and added, along with wood siding infill and a pair of steel bifold doors on the entrance facade, a concrete-block third floor under a roof fitted with photovoltaic panels.

It is the third floor, specifically the just-completed loft connected to the conference room by a steel walkway, that has come to define the building. This 500-square-foot space serves as Mr. Sagan’s San Francisco pied-à-terre (privacy is achieved by closing the sliding translucent-glass panels) and an idea lab for a kind of casual community planning.

“It never made any real financial sense to allocate such valuable space to giving me somewhere to sleep,” said Mr. Sagan, who lives in Marin County, which is adjacent to San Francisco County, with his wife, Margherita Stewart-Sagan, a restaurateur. “But I knew it would be an intangible asset” to the business, he continued, “a quiet, energizing place where my partners and I could step back from the office at any time to reconnect and refocus.”

The loft, which overlooks the main workspace, is a testament to the warmth of raw building materials, like the concrete of the floors and the walls and the exposed wood beams of the ceiling. White-painted drywall separates the living area from the bathroom, in sculptural contrast to the exposed structural elements. Sliding glass doors lead to an outdoor deck that extends the usable space by 400 square feet for most of the year.

Natural light, however, is the most striking feature of the loft; it comes from the south-facing glass wall of the neighboring conference room and from a large, central skylight. The relationship of light and materials reflects, Mr. Piechota said, “the aesthetic sensibility we want to communicate.” Caesar Naples, a former vice chancellor of the California State University system and a client of Sagan Piechota, recalled a meeting in the loft. “As I sat there,” Mr. Naples said, “I realized that this was the sort of openness my wife and I wanted for our house. It caused me to think in a way that looking at two-dimensional drawings and models wouldn’t have.”

The loft’s furnishings are informal and neutral enough so as not to be at odds with a professional setting. Apart from the bed — whose slatted-walnut platform was built in-house, as were the aluminum-framed glass panels, the walnut bookcase and the steel-and-plywood low dresser — the few pieces are not overtly residential. A bent-plywood chair was a gift from a decorator friend. A leather chair and the hand-woven rug were “rejects from some friends’ projects,” as Mr. Sagan put it.

For the monthly after-hours salon, held in the conference room, the loft serves as a spillover conversation spot. That event, conceived by Mr. Sagan in 2003 as a way for a small group of architects and designers to share ideas over wine and pizza, has become so well attended that a reservation is now required. At one recent salon, David Winslow, an architect who rents space in the building, discussed the way alleys like Linden Street have become forgotten elements in cities. “That evening was transformative,” Mr. Sagan said. “People all of a sudden got very excited about what we could do here.”

Indeed, Mr. Sagan and Mr. Winslow have serious ambitions for their part of town. In 2006 the two were awarded a challenge grant of $100,000 by the City of San Francisco for a master plan to make Linden Street more friendly to pedestrians. (The amount will be matched by contributions from Mr. Sagan and his businesses.) Another project under way is Parcel P, a 250-unit affordable-housing development that will begin construction a few blocks away next spring; Sagan Piechota and Build Inc. are one of five architect-developer teams selected to participate.

As work on the loft, which had continued for years, came to a close, one last phase of the renovation began this month: the conversion of the ground-floor wood and metalworking shop into a ceramics studio with a new kiln for Mr. Sagan. Long a clay artist, he plans to spend more time working in the medium, and expects that as a result he, along with Ms. Stewart-Sagan, will be staying above the office regularly.

“I’ll often hear architects say, ‘I’m designing this as an environment I’d like to live in,’ ” Mr. Meckel said. “But Loring does actually live in his ongoing project, fully committed to the experiment.”

Posted by M at 19:03:29 | Permalink | No Comments »

Looking beyond green

Eco-friendly houses used to be clumsy, idiosyncratic and all about the message, but architects are discovering stylish approaches to sustainable designs. For one Santa Monica couple, home is more than a soapbox.
By Morris Newman, Special to The Times; March 29, 2007

The Green HouseBOB BEITCHER says he and his wife, Carol, want their newly built home in Santa Monica to be a showcase of sustainable practices “without being granola-y, if you know what I mean.”

Their house off San Vicente Boulevard has been carefully designed by architect Warren Wagner to optimize solar energy and the use of recycled and renewable materials. Yet the modernist dwelling seems more about the panache of architectural possibilities than the virtuousness of green design.


Seen from the busy boulevard, the facade is energetic yet understated, as if it had power in reserve. The hip-looking exterior is covered in Western red cedar, stucco-covered block and unfinished sheet metal. The upward-tilting roof seems to float above ribbon-like windows at the ceiling line, without external supports.

A closer look, however, reveals that the house is sustainable down to its foundation. A two-story opening in the center acts as a thermal chimney, pulling the hot air out of the house while drawing in cool air, all through an automated skylight. The walls are insulated with recycled denim, made from the remnants from a blue-jeans factory. Twelve photovoltaic panels supply 85% of the home’s power needs, while 10 solar thermal panels supply the house with hot water and radiant heat for the floors and heat the swimming pool.

“The primary thing is that the house has an architecturally interesting design, and the punch line is that it’s got all these sustainable design features,” Bob Beitcher says.

His interest in green design was sparked a decade ago when a house designed by Wagner arose in his neighborhood. “I was dragging everyone over there to see it,” he recalls.

When the family decided to build a new house, sustainability seemed preordained. “It never occurred to us to do it any other way,” says Carol, whose four children include a vegan chef. Their children also “had plenty of input” on the design of the house, she adds.

The Beitcher house is the latest in a series of recent Westside houses — Pugh + Scarpa’s Solar Umbrella house, also in Venice; Ray Kappe’s prefab house in Ocean Park; and the Ehrlich house in Santa Monica by John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects — that have excited interest for their design and sustainable features.

THE combination of architecture and environmentalism is the credo of Wagner, who founded W3 Architects in Venice in 1993 to “demonstrate the integration of solar and sustainable technologies into the highest level of architecture.” He earlier earned his graduate architecture degree at UCLA and worked for several years with passivesolar-design pioneer Edward Mazria in Santa Fe, N.M.

Wagner also is a modernist who counts R.M. Schindler, the Viennese-born architect who created many boldly geometric homes in the hillsides and canyons of Los Angeles, among his artistic heroes. He calls his own style “warm Modernism.”

“Architecture is about one form doing several things,” he says.

The shape and siting of the Beitchers’ house on a corner lot is a case in point.

Rather than position the house in the center of the lot, as most architects do, Wagner pushed the house north, almost to the sidewalk on San Vicente, to maximize the size of a south-facing courtyard and to capture as much sunlight as possible.

This long-and-narrow configuration also fits the Beitchers. An open plan makes the living room, kitchen and dining room — all furnished in comfortable contemporary furniture by interior architect Tracey Loeb — into a single, continuous space.

The sliding-glass doors open onto a courtyard that unifies the garden and pool with the living areas. The result is a communal setting for the close family. The Beitchers have two teenagers living at home and two adult children.

As if to make a witty commentary on the close connection between the living room and the courtyard, Wagner located the fireplace outdoors, where it takes the form of a decorative fire pit, with a bed of black sand. The surrounding xeriscape was designed by Sasha Tarnopolsky of Dry Design.

The shape of the house also provides privacy: The rear of the house has a separate entrance that leads to a second-floor breezeway that opens into a guest room, which the Beitchers call “the crash pad,” available to their adult kids on visits. The rear entrance allows visitors to enter the house at all hours of the night without disturbing the rest of the family.

The 4,000-square-foot, four-bedroom house is large enough for Carol to have a separate room for quilting. Located on the shorter side of the L-shaped floor plan, this rooms allows Carol, a confessed “clutterbug,” to work in her own space. The west-facing wall gives her a full view of the courtyard and the living room. “You can be aware of all the activity that is going on in the house,” she says.

Bob and Carol’s bedroom is upstairs, above the quilting and media rooms. The master bath features rough-hewn carved limestone on one wall, a slatted floor of sustainably farmed Paulope wood and a shower lined in honed limestone.

Also upstairs on the landing is a sunny room with windows in three directions plus a skylight that offers an unobstructed view of San Vicente and the joggers on the central median. The landing is furnished with a daybed and a low table, where the Beitchers plan to plop down and read together.

ALTHOUGH Bob Beitcher, who is president and chief executive of Panavision, could afford a showier home, his aim is to make the house into a demonstration of green living.

The house is scheduled to be featured on three tours (see accompanying story) even before the owners have fully moved in. Despite all the green materials and special techniques, the house cost $310 per square foot to build, not including the cost of land or landscaping, according to the architect.

The interior finishes are part of that demonstration: Amber bamboo flooring has been used to clad the ceiling (it was difficult to apply, because workers had to make the ceiling perfectly flat before installing the flooring upside down) but the material wins compliments from visitors. The interior stairs are made of wood harvested from palms that are too old to bear fruit and would otherwise go to waste.

Even more radical, for this high-end house, was the choice of comparatively humble strawboard — a composition material made of compressed straw — for their kitchen cabinets and shelves in the TV room. The kitchen cabinets have a clear finish that highlights the material’s natural light brown, gold-flecked color, while the TV room shelves are stained a bluish gray. “We were blown away by how quiet and dignified it looks,” Carol says.

The choice of unusual materials is one of the issues that Wagner says most excites him about sustainable architecture. “Sustainability brings in a whole array of new materials to use,” he says. “Some are cruddy looking, some are OK, and some, like the straw board, are very good looking.”

The architectural sophistication of the house contrasts strikingly with the first passive solar houses built in the 1970s. Although idealistic, these houses were often clumsy and idiosyncratic-looking, and gave environmental architecture a bad name for decades.

“The first houses tended to be too diagrammatic,” says Deva Berg, a design architect at W3 Architects, referring to the steep roofs and awkwardly mounted solar panels in some early passive solar house that attempted to align themselves precisely to sun angles for 100% efficiency.

“The fact that the early homes were made of high-mass adobe set them apart as alternative architecture,” says Richard Schoen, professor emeritus at UCLA and one of Wagner’s former instructors. Passive solar technology, he adds, became associated with the counterculture and its anti-modern, utopian ideas.

By the 1980s, passive solar housing “ceased to be an issue, period,” Schoen says. “There were two or three generations of architects who had no idea as to what constitutes passive solar design.”

The growing awareness of global warming has helped architects embrace energy-saving design and construction. The construction of homes and buildings, coupled with heating and cooling of these structures, contributes to about 50% annually of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., according to the American Institute of Architects.

The new standard is the zero-energy house, a dwelling that consumes no more energy than it produces.

Solar pioneer architect Mazria, Wagner’s former employer, has started an organization known as Architecture 2030, to promote the zero-energy goal, while the American Institute of Architects and other professional organizations have started their own emission-reduction programs.

“Now, we are coming full circle,” says Schoen. “Zero-energy housing is becoming mainstream and architects will have to catch up.”

Wagner says that the didacticism of the 1970s has been replaced by a more inclusive, artistic approach. At the Beitcher house, the architect laid the photovoltaic panels flat on the roof rather than at an upward angle facing the sun because he did not want the panels to be visible and disturb the design of his facade. By lying flat, the panels lose 5% of their efficiency. Wagner shrugs.

“As an aesthetic decision, it was more important to lay the PVs flat than maximize their overall efficiency. They work well enough to accomplish all they need to do.”

Although Bob expects to entertain many of his friends and contacts in the entertainment industry at the house, he does not see Carol and himself as standing on a soap box for green design. He thinks the house will speak for itself.

“”We prefer to be quiet evangelists.”

home@latimes.com

*

(INFOBOX BELOW)

Look inside the `green’ home

“Greenies,” architectural and design buffs and the newly environmentally conscious can get a firsthand look at the Beitcher house inside and out during three tours over the next two months:

Friday: CA Boom 4 architect-led tour of Santa Monica homes. $75 for the shuttle tour, includes admission to the design show at Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, 3021 Airport Ave. The first shuttle leaves Banker Hangar at 11:12 a.m., the last one at 2:36 p.m. The buses run continually in between. Reservations strongly suggested. For information, call (310) 394-8600, http://www.caboomshow.com .

April 28: Third Annual Santa Monica Green Gardens Tour, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Advance tickets $30, tour day $40 ($25 for seniors), van tour $60. Proceeds benefit the Virginia Avenue Project. Tickets and information are available at (310) 264-4224, or at http://www.virginiaavenueproject.org .

May 19: Venice Art Walk Architectural Tour. Self-driven, docent-led tours of green homes in Santa Monica and Venice, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., featuring works by John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects, Warren Wagner, Ray Kappe, David Hertz and Victoria Yust. Tickets are $50. Proceeds benefit the Venice Family Clinic. http://www.venicefamilyclinic.org/index.php?view=art_architecture .

–Morris Newman

Posted by M at 18:12:49 | Permalink | No Comments »

The looming sinkhole crisis

Aging pipes badly needing repair are to blame for craters cropping up in cities worldwide.
By Thomas Rooney
March 28, 2007

WHEN THEY SAW the recent pictures of a giant sinkhole in Guatemala, some folks in Los Angeles may have thought: “It could never happen here.”

They’re wrong.


The Guatemala City sinkhole that killed three people and swallowed dozens of homes was formed by the same thing that creates sinkholes in Los Angeles. Not weather. Not an act of God. Not strange rock. Bad sewer pipes created this sinkhole. And the problem is getting worse, around the world and in the United States.

Last year was the worst ever in the U.S. for sinkholes. Almost every state in the country experienced record problems.

In San Diego, the mayor held a news conference near a yawning abyss. A 64-year-old Brooklyn woman fell into a 5-foot-deep sinkhole in front of her house.

In Los Angeles, a broken water main created a sinkhole 30 feet deep and shut down half of Pacific Coast Highway near Malibu. At the same time, a broken sewer pipe shut down the adjacent beach.

In Northern California, an 8-foot-deep sinkhole stunned the occupants of a nearby office building. In Grand Rapids, Mich., residents had to boil water after a sinkhole cut off their water service.

And this year is shaping up to be even worse. From Hawaii to New York, Alaska to North Carolina and everywhere in between, an epidemic of breaking pipes is causing unprecedented havoc.

Yet for all this damage, few people understand how broken pipes create sinkholes. Most water and sewer pipes in the United States were built 60 years ago — but were meant to last 50 years. Do the math. Pipes are breaking as they get older.

When pipes break, two things happen: Water or sewage gets out, and water or dirt gets in. Havoc results when dirt enters a broken pipe and is whisked away, as though on a magic carpet ride. Soon, even if only by a spoonful a day, the dirt disappears from above the pipe and below the sidewalk — or below the road, park, building, etc.

We also know that rainwater entering broken pipes can overload sewage systems, causing even more sewage spills. Rain, though often cited as the culprit in sewage spills, is frequently just an innocent bystander.

Even when bad pipes don’t lead to a sinkhole catastrophe, they can cause major problems. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that last year 3.5 million people became ill from E. coli and other toxins released from 40,000 sewage spills. A study last year by UCLA and Stanford University found that, every year, bacterial pollution in ocean water off beaches, much of it coming from broken pipes, makes 1.5 million people sick in Southern California.

Pipes are not that hard to fix anymore. With video cameras to find the leaks and new trenchless technology to fix them without the need for digging up streets, there is only one reason why so many broken pipes are forming so many huge sinkholes: We are not paying attention.

This may be changing. Mayors in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, San Diego, North Kansas City, Mo., and other cities are making sewage and water pipe repair a top priority.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the pipes are getting worse faster than people are catching on.

*

THOMAS ROONEY is president and chief executive of a large sewer, water and oil pipe repair company.
Posted by M at 06:39:41 | Permalink | No Comments »

The upside of going downtown

American cities, despite the revival in many of them, need ‘urban impact statements’ on federal actions.
The Monitor’s View; from the March 28, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0328/p08s01-comv.html

Most US cities – New Orleans being a big exception – are on the rebound. Jobs in the city are more plugged into the “new economy” than those in the suburbs. And city living may become essential to curbs on global warming. Downtown is looking up.

But enough older cities such as Detroit aren’t experiencing the trends reviving other urban areas, such as baby boomers giving up suburban McMansions for skyscraper condos or global tech firms tapping “knowledge workers” near urban universities. Poverty still remains concentrated in urban cores as US manufacturing declines. Even cities seeing a revival worry it’s not sustainable.

That’s why Living Cities, a leading nonprofit investor in urban neighborhoods, has come up with a proposal to overcome the lack of a national urban policy: A required “urban impact statement” for every new federal project that might influence cities.

Like environmental impact statements used for decades to alter potential ecodamaging projects, cities need a similar bird’s-eye view of every change in federal policy from highways to daycare to immigration.

Cities are “places of hopefulness,” says Living Cities’ chief executive officer Reese Fayde, and yet federal policy on cities is fragmented. Government money streams are erratic and uncoordinated. Mayors are entangled in federal red tape.

One bright light for cities is that Congress now includes more than a dozen former mayors. Last year, they formed a caucus, led by Reps. Michael Turner (R), former mayor of Dayton, Ohio, and Michael Capuano (D), former mayor of Somerville, Mass., to improve US action on cities. Among their first moves should be to require a White House-led conference on urban policy every five years.

As an ongoing Brookings Institution project on cities makes clear, a global economy puts a premium on ideas and innovation, and “idea workers” thrive in cities with their diverse businesses, cultural variety, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, waterfronts, and unique architecture.The future of the US economy depends on realizing each city’s potential.

But cities need more control over the federal role in transportation and housing. Congested roads and a lack of affordable housing have held back many urban areas. Cities also need to bring more choice in education (with more charter schools), and in housing (with vouchers for low-income housing). And as post-Katrina New Orleans has discovered, urban renewal is better done when there is widespread grass-roots input.

Two major contributors to improved cities have been federal welfare reform and new ideas on crime prevention, such as those used during the 1990s by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. More mayors also see that their cities’ future lies in fostering entrepreneurship and small business. And with rapid climate change, cities need to play up that they use energy and environmental resources more efficiently than outlying areas. The “green building” movement (notable by its plant-growing rooftops), for instance, is now thriving in urban areas .

Urban success cannot be taken for granted, and many worn-out cities need help. Washington must step up its urban role, and do it smartly.

Posted by M at 05:38:08 | Permalink | No Comments »

Surge in homeless hits New Orleans

The city has double the homeless it had before hurricane Katrina – but far fewer emergency shelters.
By Bill Sasser| Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor; NEW ORLEANS
from the March 28, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0328/p03s03-ussc.html

Up to 40 people were believed to be living in the Economy Motor Lodge on Tulane Avenue when a fire struck the long-abandoned property on the night of March 7. Located six blocks from the mayor’s office and just down the street from the Superdome, the fire was the fourth at the boarded-up motel since hurricane Katrina. Rescue workers spent the next day searching the ashes for possible victims. None were found, though one man who had apparently slept though the blaze emerged from the building the next morning. The city has since ordered the property torn down.

Behind that four-alarm fire lies a disturbing trend: Hurricane-ravaged New Orleans faces a major crisis with homelessness. Already taxed to the breaking point on many fronts, the city has a homeless population that is now approximately double what existed before the storm – in a city half its previous size.

Facing a severe shortage of affordable housing, displaced residents returning to the city along with an influx of construction trade workers are being forced to sleep in everything from cars to flooded-out houses to long-abandoned motels, as Katrina relief workers from across the country still struggle to fill gaping holes in the city’s social services.

“The vast majority of emergency shelters have not been reopened since Katrina,” says Martha Kegel, executive director of UNITY, a regional collaborative of 60 agencies serving the homeless. “There’s an enormous shortage of housing and people are desperate. Do we have the resources to deal with this problem? No.”

While New Orleans has long struggled with poverty, the face of homelessness has changed since Katrina, Ms. Kegel and other advocates say. The population now includes the chronically homeless who never left the city or have returned; residents who lost their homes to the flood and have run out of federal assistance – or may have never received assistance – and cannot afford higher rents; and thousands of Latino workers who came to rebuild the city, many of whom brought their spouses and children and cannot find a place to live.

“I’ve been into some of these buildings myself and seen dozens of people living in them, including very young children,” Kegel says. “One of the most shocking things we’re seeing now are the very elderly who are living in abandoned buildings and on the street – people in their late 80s living this way, who never in their lives expected to be homeless.”

More than 12,000 on the street each night

On any given night, more than 12,000 homeless men, women, and children need shelter in New Orleans, Kegel estimates. Before Katrina it was 6,000 a night; just a year ago it was 2,000. Her estimate does not include people living in federally provided trailers or multiple families occupying a single house.

The growing homeless population also faces a dearth of social services and a nearly complete lack of mental health care, along with rising crimes rates and the myriad other dangers that come with living on the streets.

According to homeless advocates, the city has no effectively functioning social-services agency offering case management to the homeless.

City officials say addressing the city’s shortage of affordable housing hinges on state and federal funds, both of which have been slow in materializing. “Mayor [Ray] Nagin realizes that homelessness is a growing problem in New Orleans,” says Pat Robinson, deputy chief for planning for the Mayor’s Office of Planning and Development. “To address this, we’re utilizing state and federal allocations and working with agencies such as UNITY, which are working as an extension of city government.”

What little aid many of the homeless receive is being offered by grassroots volunteers who often have no experience. Brandon Darby, interim director of Katrina relief group Common Ground, says the nonprofit has taken numerous calls from the public advocacy office asking for help to find housing for homeless residents.

During one recent week, a volunteer acting as a caseworker assisted a middle-aged diabetic who was facing discharge from a local hospital with nowhere to live, a senior citizen addicted to gambling who had been living in Harrah’s casino before she was turned out, and a mother who had spent weeks living in a car with her teenage son. The mother had recently moved back into her flood-damaged house in the city’s hard-hit Ninth Ward when a tornado knocked it off its foundation in mid-February.

“By law the federal government was supposed to give people made homeless by Katrina 18 months of assistance, but in many, many cases that never happened,” says Mr. Darby, who has set up a toll-free number so Common Ground can take calls directly from the homeless and accept donations for their support. “Many landlords will not work with people who have FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] vouchers, because they’re afraid FEMA will not pay. There are almost no services in this city for people with severe disabilities. Rates of mental illness have gone through the roof, but there are no psychiatric beds available…. Everyone has their own problems to deal with, and it’s hard to find someone to help them.”

City opens new homeless housing facility

New Orleans did mark a step of progress last month when it opened a 40-unit supportive housing facility for the homeless and disabled through a private-public partnership. “This is a great day in the city of New Orleans,” Mayor Nagin said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

New Orleans resident Jackie Silverman, a member of Congregation Gates of Prayer Synagogue, helped establish one of the two small shelters Common Ground opened last year, providing 30 beds for the homeless. She now volunteers as a lay caseworker with other congregants from her synagogue. “We ask them where they were before the storm, where they are now, and where they want to go.”

Several homeless residents in the Ninth Ward have joined Common Ground’s staff, living in dorm facilities with volunteers from across the country while they await housing. Al Bass, a resident of the Lower Ninth Ward, returned four months after Katrina with nowhere to live but his flooded-out home. “I was in my house during the storm when 12 feet of water came in, and that’s what I came back to,” says Bass, who lived in the gutted-out property until last April.

Posted by M at 05:36:24 | Permalink | No Comments »