A natural solution

Lauren Vane

Bill Roley wants Laguna Canyon to get back to nature.

The Laguna Beach resident has come up with an idea that he says

will both address environmental concerns on the flood-prone canyon

road and bring the community together.Roley is presenting a watershed

management project to the City Council, in hopes that community

members will decide to get to work and reduce ocean pollution and

flooding in the canyon corridor.

“Instead of digging up the past, I’m helping to invent the

future,” said Roley, who previously worked as a watershed coordinator

at California Dept. of Water Resources.

“Gateway to the Greenbelt” is an extensive plan to restore the

Laguna Creek watershed to its natural, and more effective, state, by

replacing the current concrete channel with a natural alternative,

Roley said. Roley plans on redirecting water through natural “swales”

-- contours in the landscape that catch and slow down the flow of

water. Native plants will allow the water to soak into the earth and

undergo a natural purification process facilitated by surrounding

vegetation, Roley said.

“Slow it, spread it, sink it,” Roley said of the project’s plans

for managing natural water flow.

Plants and marshes act as a biofiltration system for the water,

reducing the amount of toxins and ultimately resulting in cleaner

water going into the ocean.

“Without the restoration of the habitat of the watershed, we’re

going to continuously have pollution of the ocean,” said Mike Beanan,

a teacher of environmental sciences who collaborated with Roley on

the project.

Due to modern roadways and housing developments, the creeks that

run through the canyon have been channeled into a concrete bed, and

this is causing problems, Roley said. The creeks converge at the

intersection of Laguna Canyon Road and El Toro Road, a spot plagued

by chronic flooding.

“The long-term benefit is that the canyon road won’t close,” Roley

said.

The presence of humans in the area has altered the natural course

of water through the canyon, but now residents have a chance at

helping to reverse the damage, Roley said.

“People will not, in the long term, support projects that they

don’t understand, and the only way they can really understand it is

to make contact with that environment,” Beanan said.

Typically, work on such a large-scale project would be referred to

contract laborers, but in this case, Beanan insists on the importance

of community members getting their hands dirty.

“We see this as a really nice work opportunity for local people

who do care a lot about the environment and will therefore be there

on a long-term basis,” Beanan said.

The project will require a significant amount of time and the help

of many hands, Roley said. To make it manageable, Roley and Beanan

broke down the work into small areas with teams of people working

each section.

With members of the community hopefully working side-by-side to

restore the environment, there is yet another benefit to the plan,

Roley said. In what he called a “biological textbook,” the watershed

management project can become an educational opportunity for local

students.

“What we don’t have is a value or an ethic that provides the

community with giving back,” Roley said.

Both Roley and Beanan said they expect a positive reception from

the City Council.

“Laguna Beach has always been committed to environmental

restoration and preservation,” Beanan said.