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The ecology of Hollywood
Los Angeles is an unlikely city. Built over a major seismic fault, on the edge of one of the world's most inhospitable deserts, the city has developed like the extension of a Hollywood movie set, a sprawling urban fantasy which many people feel should not really exist. Scientists have estimated that the land and water in the area could naturally support 200,000 people, not the 15 million that live there.
Since the 1880s, Los Angeles has been transformed from a sleepy cattle town with a population of 4,000, to a metropolis that now accounts for nearly one per cent of global greenhouse emissions. It is the car culture, with nine million cars contributing to the smog and air pollution and 40 per cent of the population suffering from respiratory problems due to vehicle emissions. Surprisingly, LA is now becoming the forum for some of the most progressive environmental thought in the USA.
The city is full of contradictions. Often regarded as the symbol of consumerism and material extravagance, it is seen as the essence
of anti-nature. Paradoxically, people often move to Los Angeles because of nature; attracted by its climate, the snow-capped mountains, the ocean
and the beaches. The movie industry came here because of the clarity of the light, the 270 days of sunshine per year and the diversity of location close by.
The fantasy has always depended on one fundamental resource – water. No metropolis on the planet has looked farther afield for its supply than LA has, and the fact that there are "no more rivers to bring to the desert" is a cause of much concern. The natural water table was exhausted after four decades in the 1890s. In 1913, when the controversial Los Angeles Aqueduct was first opened, diverting water over 350 kilometres from Owens Valley, chief engineer William Mulholland proclaimed that it would supply Hollywood's lawns and swimming pools for ever.
Within ten years, the city needed more. And in the 90s, with the water level in Mono Lake falling to dangerously low levels, LA was ordered to reduce its water intake.
Almost a third of the water feeding Los Angeles is now obtained by extraction from underground aquifers. Half of the considerable winter rainfall, which would permeate the soil and recharge the aquifers, is swallowed by concrete drainage systems and diverted into the Pacific. Since intensive farming methods require around 200,000 litres of water to produce what an average Californian eats in a day, the issue of water supply is never far away. Desperation has led to some ambitious proposals, ranging from a plastic pipeline from Alaska to towing icebergs from Antarctica.
What few Angelinos are aware of today is that the city is actually built on a river. The so-called LA river, which passes through Hollywood studios and Chinatown, is the central natural feature of the city. As the city was paved over, the winter floods created a threat to economic expansion and, in the 1930s, work began to erase the river altogether. Engineers built a concrete channel, put the river inside it and fenced it off with barbed wire. The river became the ultimate symbol of LA's destruction of nature.
Inevitably, the concrete flood-control system had disastrous ecological consequences, destroying wetland areas. However, plans are now underway to restore the river, recreate wetland areas to attract birds, establish nature walks and cycle paths. There is a feeling that if you can fix the LA river, you can fix the city. And if you can fix this city, it seems possible that you can fix any city."