Perhaps avian species can acknowledge that city life is full of compromise. Los Angeles has to flush. In exchange, the birds get 40 million gallons, every day of the year. S ince the Flood Control District built the contraption that is the modern Los Angeles River, the city has swallowed its outlying valleys filled with orange groves and horse ranches. Today, an impermeable layer of concrete and asphalt caps the watershed.
Little rainfall percolates into the soil.
Most drains into the giant flume ride that the Los Angeles River becomes every time a storm blows through. The confluence of Bell and Calabasas creeks is the nominal origin of the Los Angeles River. Now the waters rise so high and fast, the system's ability to withstand a major flood is questioned. In 1980 the river briefly topped a levee in Long Beach. A few years later, the Corps revised its rating of the flood control system, concluding that the system might not withstand even a 40-year flood.