Not the Last Day, After All

Word has it that the Devil's Gate Dam interim silt removal project is complete. If so, all the silt has been moved to Johnson Field from the dam. For now.

It's not the whole project by a long shot. There will be an environmental impact report before the rest of the work is done. I don't know how long that'll take or what the end result will look like, but it will be a much larger project.

Here's how Johnson Field looked last Saturday at dusk. Not nearly as bad as I'd feared. I took the photo from my usual spot, so those of you familiar with PDP's Last Day Project could make comparisons even if you've never seen Johnson Field in person.

A pan to the left:

It's a bit dark, but I hope you can see in both photos that the trees have been spared. Basically, the county workers piled the silt neatly at the north end of the sunken basin that is Johnson Field. The silt took up about half the space. Room for more silt in the future, I guess.

I have a list of disappointments related to this work, but those disappointments are (mostly) not with LA County. There's plenty of time for it to get worse but so far, the work they've done has been more sensitive than I expected. We even saw a few toads at the fountain. With a little rain we'll soon have some nice weeds growing in the silt. Maybe wildflowers.

We were treated to spectacular skies that night. More pictures to come.