00:00As Los Angeles grew throughout its long history, people built closer and closer to the water's
00:05edge, and the river made them pay for it. The river had flooded before, but in March of 1938,
00:11a storm hit that the city couldn't ignore. Streets turned to rivers, bridges collapsed,
00:16entire communities were swept away, and after the water receded, Los Angeles made a choice.
00:21The Army Corps of Engineers was brought in to make sure it never happened again.
00:25Over the course of 20 years, they encased about 80% of the LA River's 51-mile span in concrete.
00:32At the time when this was built, the only thing was to get the water out to protect the city.
00:36There's like 1,500 miles of underground storm drains that connect to the river and just get the water
00:41out of the city as fast as possible. And once the river was locked in concrete,
00:46the land around it was suddenly available. We've built right up to the edge of the river.
00:49That's what the concrete channel encourages us to do, is to build right up to the edge of the wall.
00:53That then frees up that area to be used for economic purposes. So you get development
00:59of those previous habitats into whatever it is, housing, industry, commercial. It was sort of
01:05one of the precursors to the development of the entire lower watershed.
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