L.A. Kicks Off Water Quality Improvement Project

Los Angeles City Councilmember Bill Rosendahl, District 11; City Engineer Gary Lee Moore; and other officials of the city of Los Angeles Department of Public Works joined Venice, Calif., stakeholders Sept. 15 at a groundbreaking ceremony for the Grand Boulevard Tree Wells, the first city project fully funded by Proposition O funds.

The Grand Boulevard Tree Wells project will install seven Filterra Bioretention Systems with trees at various locations along Grand Boulevard in Venice. The Filterra systems combine landscape plants with an engineered filtration media to capture and remove storm water runoff pollutants, such as trash and debris, oil and grease, sediment, nutrients, metals and bacteria, prior to discharging treated runoff into local waterways. The city of Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services staff chose Saucer Magnolia trees for the seven storm water systems to help remove storm water pollutants while adding nice landscape features into the urban streetscape.

“This is an important day for Filterra with its use in the Prop O Program at the city of Los Angeles”, said William Harris, Western Zone Manager for Filterra Bioretention Systems. “It’s also an important day to Filterra’s future use in other cities and counties throughout southern California.”

In 2004, the city of Los Angeles approved Proposition O, Clean Water Bond to improve water quality and comply with the federal Clean Water Act and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s total maximum daily load requirements. The installation of the systems meets local and federal requirements and will significantly reduce the amount of targeted pollutants discharged into the storm drain system.

Source: Filterra Bioretention Systems