Free Republic

Lino Jubilado has been fly fishing in the Los Angeles River for over 40 years. Though most LA residents view the river as a polluted eyesore, to Lino, it’s a slice of nature’s paradise hidden within a big, bustling city. Amongst the trash and the concrete, Lino fly fishes for carp, bass and bluegill. But it’s the joy of catching carp that keeps Lino coming back to the river several times a week. Lino doesn’t usually eat the carp he catches from the LA River, but today is unusual.

Embracing an ambitious and expensive vision, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved 12-0 a long-awaited blueprint for revitalizing the much-maligned Los Angeles River. The plan -- which itself cost $3 million -- calls for spending as much as $2 billion over the next half century on more than 200 projects along the 31 miles of riverbed within Los Angeles' city limits. It took five years to frame the details, but the roots of the proposed river restoration go back to a fledgling group of environmentalists who in the late 1980s began insisting that the river could be much...