Over 11 years and 570 episodes, John Rabe and Team Off-Ramp scoured SoCal for the people, places, and ideas whose stories needed to be told, and the show became a love-letter to Los Angeles. Now, John is sharing selections from the Off-Ramp vault to help you explore this imperfect paradise.
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Now that it's almost been drained completely, we can find out. And why did we empty it in the first place? Off-Ramp Producer Kevin Ferguson got to the bottom of things, literally: he met local councilman Eric Garcetti at the newly dried-out lake to find out.
Garcetti said the goal of the $65 million project is to clean the polluted lake, calling it "a complete change in the way this city approaches its water." He said water in L.A. is littered with trash, which ultimately washes out in bodies of water like the lake. As a result, bacteria grows in the water rendering it unsafe for people to use.
Part of the project includes creating a wetland around the island in the north end of the lake, which will feed nutrients into the water. The wetland will reduce the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus, which contribute to the growth of algae and the depletion of oxygen in the water.
But most importantly: what did they find at the bottom of the lake? Hubcabs, traffic cones, shopping carts, pay telephones, toys, trashcans, even a few firearms, long since out of commission.
In addition to the lake clean up, the city is spending $1.5 million on the restoration of the Echo Park Boathouse. The landmark, built in 1932, will undergo a complete structural retrofit and historical preservation rehabilitation. Garcetti hopes the restoration will bring boating back to the lake.
The project will take two years, but the councilman said it couldn't wait any longer. "We've polluted this lake, it's lost its character," Garcetti said, "It's time to bring it back to something that's healthy for the next hundred years."