The Brief

To many locals, the Los Angeles River — hugged by concrete embankments and heavy vehicle traffic — hardly seems like a river at all.

The waterway bisecting the city was converted to a giant storm drain nearly a century ago to contain flood waters. Today, it's an extension of the urban network of concrete, running beneath freeways and bridges as it collects all kinds of refuse: spent tires, scrap metal, trash thrown from car windows.

But when Doug Rosenberg came upon a shopping cart tipped over in the river's shallow waters back in 2020, he saw the potential to meet nature halfway.

"It had begun to bloom some greenery around it, and there was a great blue heron perched on the cart, hunting in this little spot," Rosenberg recalled. "That was when it clicked for me — that any 3D geometry at all in that river channel will trap sediment, will begin a micro-bloom of ecosystem."

Doug Rosenberg is trying to push the grassroots guerrilla gardening movement forward in Los Angeles.

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The 36-year-old artist saw an amusing paradox — life sprouting from the metal cart — that planted the seed for his next project: a pop-up wetland in the middle of the LA River.

In a desolate part of downtown, he pushed large rocks from the riverbanks into the water and arranged them in loose, concentric circles. The structure would trap sediment, allowing life to take root.

In other words, Rosenberg produced a patch of watery land — like a marsh or swamp — to support plants and animals.

Over the course of 10 weeks, the simple assemblage of rocks spawned a totally new 10-by-20-foot green island in the middle of the 100-foot-wide channel.

Rosenberg calls it performance art: a visual statement that carries a call to action. The wetland installation isn't quite what he'd call "impactful ecology," but rather a work of art to show environmental good can be low-tech and small-scale.

"The impetus behind this project is to show that the barrier to entry doesn't exist. To basically provide a simple format for action," he said.

Guerrilla gardeners

It's not so much that the barriers don't exist — they do — he's just flouting them, city officials say. Despite his good intentions, none of this is legal. He's a guerrilla gardener: someone who plants where they're not supposed to. The federal government deems this flood control channel "navigable water," providing protections under the Clean Water Act and making any unauthorized changes to its course illegal. That includes obstructions and modifications in the channel, such as dredging or disposal of materials like rocks.

Across the country, as urban development replaces tree cover and natural landscapes with buildings and parking lots, guerrilla gardeners flout local ordinances to disperse seeds or otherwise alter their environment, usually with an overriding mission to reclaim underused public spaces. They seek to grow healthy produce in urban food deserts, capture greenhouse gases and beautify their neighborhoods.

The movement has taken many forms, from creating a verdant oasis for the nation's largest housing project in New York City, to planting a front-yard vegetable garden in defiance of state law in Florida, to grooming a busy bike path in Seattle.

Here in LA, Rosenberg's guerrilla tactics include trespassing and planting without permits in the publicly managed waterway. Getting to his wetland requires jumping railroad tracks and scaling down the steep side of the channel to the riverbed. But as far as he's concerned, it's open to the public.

Rosenberg (right) and a few volunteers walk past railroad tracks to get to the river.

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"I feel like it's possible to relate to a city the way we're used to relating to nature — or as we imagine we could relate to unspoiled wilderness," he said.

But officials and longtime river advocates say people can't plant wherever they want, and that guerrilla actors have the potential to do more harm than good.

"Even small changes can affect water quality, habitat, and safety downstream," said Ben Orbison, a spokesman for Friends of the LA River, an advocacy group focused on revitalization efforts, including cleanups along the waterway. "Restoration is incredibly important, but works best when guided by ecology and collaboration," with local and federal agencies to prioritize safety, he added.

Chief among the concerns is flooding.

"If you have rocks, if you have vegetation, if you have other things that slow the water down then it builds up faster. That's where you get the overtopping of the channel," said Ben Harris, an attorney with Los Angeles Waterkeeper, an environmental watchdog group.

Crews place rock on the LA River's banks during channelization in 1938.

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The whole reason the Los Angeles River became a concrete straightjacket was to prevent a repeat of the city's devastating floods in the 1930s. The Army Corps of Engineers channelized and paved the once-meandering river. The roughly 51-mile channel continues to serve as a hydro-highway shuttling stormwater runoff from the mountains to the sea.

Generally, local officials and river advocates are far ahead of Rosenberg in revitalizing the channel. In recent years, the city has built several projects under a master plan designed to resurrect some of the river's natural habitat and expand public access. But progress is slow. Legal roadblocks and budget constraints have delayed the implementation of many proposals.

Beyond the bike paths and trails lining the waterway, the efforts are most visible in parts of the river where the soil was left unpaved. Willows, egrets and frogs populate soft-bottom sections where springs and a high water table would reject a concrete casing. And, upstream from Rosenberg's wetland, there's a plan in the works to build what's essentially a larger, permanent version of the artist's project. Long before Rosenberg plunked his first rock into its waters, the city adopted a plan to turn an 11-mile section of the river into a wetland to allow the safe passage of salmon.

Still, some city staff give guerrilla artists a lot of credit for laying the groundwork.

"The biggest shift points in the river's history were made, in my opinion, not necessarily the legal way," said Kat Superfisky, an urban ecologist with the city, but from "the community advocate, artist, guerrilla kind of efforts."

'He's onto something'

On social media, Rosenberg shares his art with a wider audience than was made available to his artist-activist predecessors. People curious about his project have reached out to him, asking how they can help support it. He's invited them to join him on his visits to the wetland, where he's put them to work. Others have taken issue with Rosenberg's accommodation of an invasive plant species in his wetland. It's mostly populated by Goodding's willow, a native species, and creeping water primrose, a non-native invasive. Those non-native plants tend to crowd out native habitat, drink more water and lead to increased use of toxic pesticides.

Some people accustomed to reading the river's currents say the wetland will be gone before it can cause any lasting harm to the river. In the likely event of a heavy rain, the rising tide in the river channel could wipe out the wetland, washing it into the ocean.

Canadian geese come in for a landing near the mini-wetland, in a downtown section of the LA River.

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From an ecological standpoint, Superfisky says "he's onto something," in terms of thinking about how to recreate conditions found in a natural, sprawling river using the impractical medium he's given.

The channel functions like a straight, unobstructed tube, she said. But the placement of rocks allow sediment buildup and produce varied flow patterns — much like grooves in braiding streams — to set up stiller pockets where wildlife can thrive.

But it all falls apart if he's not accounting for flood risk, the ecologist said.

Harris, of the watchdog LA Waterkeeper, thinks flood management and ecological values can coexist in a concrete channel.

Removing the concrete would open up more possibilities, he said, adding that there are "a variety of nature-based solutions" for the channel that support flood management.

Volunteer Isaac Cohen places more rocks around the guerrilla wetland.

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But an overhaul of the existing concrete flood management system would also require big shifts in mindset.

"It's kind of a scary thought," he said. "If you imagine being a policymaker in government and you're trying to do that, you have to turn things on its head."

The Army Corps of Engineers has not responded to requests for comment. According to its website, the agency works to clear vegetation it warns can clog the channel and hamper flood control. But the agency has recently prioritized the removal of non-native species due to lack of funding, the site notes.

"They probably would just talk to him and explain rather than prosecute anything, or they might just go in and take it away," said Felicia Marcus, a fellow at Stanford University's Water in the West program and a former head of the city of Los Angeles' public works department.

Rosenberg says he understands the consequences.

"If they throw a book at me, it'll be quite a big book, but I'm at the point where that's less urgent to me than making art that obviously deserves to get made," he said.

Guerrillas lay the groundwork to rewrite the rules

Passersby who look down from nearby bridges can spot the pop-up wetland.

Artists have long exploited that legal gray area around what's considered public land.

Historically, it was the late Lewis MacAdams, a poet and activist, whose guerrilla tactics expanded public access to the LA River. In 1985, MacAdams and friends cut open a fence blocking its entry and declared the river open to the people.

Through Friends of the LA River, the advocacy group he founded, MacAdams made sure the city wouldn't forget the river that birthed it. He promoted it as a resource that people should protect, restore and enjoy.

During a meeting with the county, as MacAdams told it, whenever the head of the public works department referred to the waterway as a "flood control channel," he would shoot back with "river." In 2008, kayakers carried the baton, when writer George Wolfe led a scofflaw fleet of paddlers down the entire waterway to prove that it was "navigable waters" so it could keep its Clean Water Act protections. Two years later, the Environmental Protection Agency agreed with what MacAdams had started and designated the river as navigable.

"He didn't know jack doodle scratch about the river or river ecosystems at that time. He led with his artistic passion," Superfisky said. "But then, my golly, he is the one guy that really got us to start calling it a river again."

Superfisky says Rosenberg is having his "Lewis MacAdams moment."

Knowing his wetland experiment could wash away in an instant, Rosenberg said he feels there's some wiggle room to experiment and make mistakes.

Rosenberg acknowledges the dangers that can spring from an uneducated approach. "I wouldn't push back on someone calling it reckless, to be honest," he said.

But he's more focused on the good he says can come from "vigorous action." He says that, among his millennial peers and younger generations, "a sense of attainability and agency" is lacking when it comes to helping chip away at big-picture issues like climate change.

Rosenberg acknowledges the dangers that can spring from a freewheeling approach to ecological art. But he says there's also value in "vigorous action," adding: "There's a long history in ecological actions of perfect being an argument against the good happening at all."

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He's aware that there are legal avenues available to produce ecological art. He appreciates that artist Lauren Bon, for example, has secured more than 70 permits as part of an ongoing project to divert water from the river that could irrigate a state park nearby. But Rosenberg thinks there's room for some freewheeling.

"Maybe it's not about waiting for permits or even about waiting to feel like you've mastered the material," he said. "There's a long history in ecological actions of perfect being an argument against the good happening at all."

Nature bats last

On a recent Saturday evening, during one of his public tours, Rosenberg handed out scythes and an agenda to whack away the invasive plants.

Allie Baron, a lifelong LA resident, brought her two sons with her after reaching out to Rosenberg on Instagram.

Allie Baron brought her two sons with her to help Rosenberg tend to the guerrilla wetland.

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As she gleefully tore out a creeping primrose, the 36-year-old said, "All I can do is try to make my community better and make the river pretty. You do what you can to try to restore life to things that need help."

Caught in the wetland brush was a blue rubber bullet — just like the ones LAPD officers had deployed during the anti-ICE protests held in downtown LA this summer, over immigration raids.

"One of the cool things about a structure like this is that it's trapping that stuff," Rosenberg said. "The rubber bullet was here and not in the ocean yet."

That and some oily sheen on the watery patch of willows were another reminder of the intensely urban environment.

Later, the guerrilla group witnessed a hawk snatch its dinner from the water.

A few days after that, the forecast from river pundits proved accurate. It rained, filling the channel with a fast-moving current.

"The garden is gone," Rosenberg said.

He says he'll start gardening again in the spring.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Allie Baron's son Robert carries a bunch of invasive water primrose pruned from the guerrilla wetland.

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Take accountability and move forward.

Those were the two points Los Angeles Fire Chief Jaime Moore hit repeatedly when speaking with LAist’s Larry Mantle this week.

On taking accountability, Moore said hazardous conditions and decisions made before the Palisades Fire erupted a year ago meant “our firefighters never had a chance” to arrest the fire that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of structures.

On moving forward, he emphasized that reform is already in the works.

“Things have changed since the Palisades Fire, and we're going to continue making big changes in the Los Angeles Fire Department,” said Moore, who was selected for the LAFD top job by Mayor Karen Bass in November.

Here are three takeaways from the interview, which aired on AirTalk on Tuesday.

1. Staffing decisions hampered fire response

The LAFD uses a so-called pre-deployment matrix to set firefighter staffing levels ahead of high-risk weather.

According to the department’s after-action report, however, staffing levels on the day the Palisades Fire began fell short of the LAFD standard for extreme weather conditions. The National Weather Service had warned of low humidity, high winds and dry vegetation, what it calls a “particularly dangerous situation.” It’s the highest level of alert the agency can give.

Despite the high risk, the LAFD report said the decision not to deploy more firefighters in advance was in part made to save money.

Moore said Monday that the department has updated its policies to increase staffing for especially hazardous conditions, but he said he doesn’t believe additional resources would have stopped a fire of the magnitude that leveled the Palisades.

To suppress that kind of fire, he said, the department would need to pre-deploy resources across the city’s vast geography — to places like Baldwin Hills, Franklin Canyon, the Hollywood Hills, the Palisades, Porter Ranch and Sunland-Tujunga.

Moore said the department has already made new policies to call for more resources when the Weather Service issues a “particularly dangerous situation” alert.

2. LAFD is mostly an urban firefighting department

Moore referenced a key finding of the after-action report regarding a lack of training in wildland firefighting, which contributed to confusion and struggles to effectively utilize resources during the fire.

Wildland fires pose a number of challenges that are different from what firefighters face in urban environments. Those include the need to coordinate a large number of resources over vast areas, all while dealing with fast-moving flames that can rapidly tear through dry plants and structures.

The department found in its report that fewer firefighters were trained in fighting these wildland fires in recent years and that “leaders struggled to comprehend their roles.”

Some leaders in the department had “limited or no experience in managing an incident of such complexity,” the report said. And some reverted to doing the work of lower positions, leaving high-level decision-making positions unfilled.

“What we're doing now is really furthering that training and reinforcing that education with our firefighters so that they could be better prepared,” Moore said on AirTalk.

3. Changes to the after-action report

Early versions of the after-action report differed from the version released to the public in October, a fact that was first reported by the Los Angeles Times. The Times also reported that Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, who wrote the report, wouldn’t endorse the final version because of the changes.

Moore acknowledged to the L.A. Board of Fire Commissioners at a Jan. 6 meeting that the report had been watered down.

“It is now clear that multiple drafts were edited to soften language and reduce explicit criticism of department leadership in that final report,” Moore told the commissioners. “This editing occurred prior to my appointment as fire chief, and I can assure you that nothing of this sort will ever again happen while I am fire chief."

Some changes were small but telling. A section titled “Failures” later became “Primary Challenges.”

Moore told LAist that changes between versions “ made it easier for the public to understand,” but an LAist review found the edits weren’t all surface-level.

In the first version of the report, the department said the decision not to fully pre-deploy all available resources for the particularly dangerous wind event “did not align” with their guidelines for such extreme weather cases. The final version said that the initial response “lacked the appropriate resources,” removing the reference to department standards.

The department also removed some findings that had to do with communications.

One sentence from the initial version of the report said: “Most companies lacked a basic briefing, leader’s intent, communications plan, or updated fire information for more than 36 hours.” That language was removed from the final report.

LAist has asked the Fire Department for clarification about why these assertions were removed but did not receive a response before time of publication.

Olympic organizers announced Tuesday that registration to buy tickets will run through March 18, with sales beginning in April. LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover said that locals will get the first bite at the apple.

The registration period opens 7 a.m. Wednesday.

" Our host city communities here in Los Angeles and Oklahoma City will have the opportunity to be a part of a local presale," Hoover said outside the Coliseum while surrounded by Olympic athletes from Games past. "With our thanks and as part of our commitment to making sure that those who live and work around the games, where the games will take place, can be in the stands and cheer in 2028."

Olympic organizers also provided more details on ticket prices for the first time. One million tickets will sell for $28 a pop and around a third of tickets will be under $100, according to LA28 Chair Casey Wasserman.

That means the majority of tickets to the Olympic Games will run into triple digits. If the World Cup is any indication, some tickets could get astronomically pricey.

Interested fans can go to LA28.org to register. Those who are selected will get an email with a time slot to purchase tickets.

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors took a step toward banning ICE from unlawfully operating on county-owned property and to post signage designating those spaces as “ICE Free Zones.”

The board unanimously approved the motion at Tuesday’s meeting, directing staff to draft the policy.

The draft could include requirements for county employees to report to their supervisor if they see unauthorized immigration activity on county property.

The city of Los Angeles passed a similar order last July, which strengthened protocols that prohibit ICE from operating on city-owned property. The agenda staff report points to an “ICE Free Zone” ordinance passed by the city of Chicago in October.

Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Hilda Solis co-authored the motion.

Horvath said the county will not allow its property to be used as “a staging ground for violence caused by the Trump administration."

Solis added that their action as a board could have a ripple effect on other city councils and local governments.

“Even though it's taken us this long to get here …I think it's really important for our communities to understand what we're saying is you don't have the right to come in and harass people without a federal warrant,” Solis said. “And if you use our property to stage, then you need to show us documentation as to why.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in an X post that the county cannot exclude federal agents from public spaces.

"Anyone who attempts to impede our agents will be arrested and charged, including county employees," Essayli said in the post. "We have already charged more than 100 individuals for similar conduct."

Since June, ICE raids have ramped up across the nation, heavily targeting certain immigrant communities like those in Los Angeles.

The motion directs the draft to include language that prohibits all types of ICE operations on county land, including staging and mobilizing without a warrant.

The motion cites an incident on Oct. 8, when county officials say federal agents raided the Deane Dana Friendship Park and Nature Center in San Pedro, arresting three people and threatening to arrest staff.

The motion also requires that the county post 'Ice Free Zone' signage on all of its properties.

Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center of Human Rights and Constitutional Law, told LAist the policy is enforceable under Fourth Amendment case law.

“You have to make sure that when you post that signage … that means that you routinely, or semi-routinely, assess who's coming in to the property, so that you can control access,” Perez said. “But if ICE shows up with a warrant, with a subpoena, then all bets are off, and they can enter into the property and do what they need to do.”

Perez said the county has moved “incredibly” slow on this issue.

“It's embarrassing that the county is moving six months later, given how we've been facing violent, aggressive, invasive and illegal raids now for so long here in Southern California,” Perez said, adding that local governments have not been fast or creative enough in protecting immigrant and refugee communities.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, one of the region’s largest immigrant advocacy groups, supports the motion.

"We do not want our county resources being used for federal immigration enforcement activities, which disrupt, uproot, and terrorize our communities,” Jeannette Zanipatin, policy director for CHIRLA, said in a statement. “It is important for all public spaces to be really safe for all residents.”

County staff have 30 days to draft a plan to implement the new policy.