Existing Habitat at Ballona Wetlands: Areas A and C

One picture is worth a thousand words.  The first picture above is a 2006 vegetation map of Ballona Wetlands.  Areas A and C are the roughly 200 upper acres bounded by Fiji Way on the north, Ballona Creek on the south and bisected by Lincoln Blvd.  Marina Del Rey construction in the 1960s filled this entire area with sand, silt and mud.  This “dredge spoil” buried former wetland there comprised of tidal channels and salt marsh vegetation.  The second picture, a historical photo, shows this burial nearly complete during Marina construction. 

Before this wetland habitat was buried, its elevation was a foot or two above sea level.  Today its elevation averages around 15 feet.  So, doing the arithmetic, assuming about 13 feet of fill:  ~200 acres x 43,500 square feet per acre x 13 feet deep / 27 cubic feet per cubic yard = 4,188,888 cubic yards of dirt.  A single axle construction dump truck holds around 10 cubic yards, so this volume equals 418,000 dump trucks!  In a future blog, I’ll write about how to move about half of this volume to restore wetland without placing a single truck on the street.  It’s been done elsewhere many times. 

Back to the vegetation map, the colors show the percent of non-native vegetation in various Ballona Wetlands areas.  Notice all the red color south of Fiji Way and north of the Ballona Creek flood control channel.  At least half of Areas A and C are 75% or greater non-native vegetation, because this area is too high in elevation to be flooded by ocean tides, and was allowed to become overgrown with weeds and ornamental plants.  Though upland animals do inhabit these areas, the numbers and variety of species are very low compared to far more productive tidal wetlands and uplands, whether natural or restored. 

Enjoy your Ballona Wetlands! 

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