4 Windstorm Questions for Environmentalist Mark Vallianatos

Patch: How do you think the City of Los Angeles, especially the LADWP, could have better handled its response to the storm's aftermath? What sort of logistical, advisory or supplies-based support could—or should—the City have offered?

Mark Vallianatos: I imagine that it is hard to predict exactly when power will be restored to different areas. But perhaps a call-in-number and app/website on which affected residents could enter addresses and get a rough estimate of time remaining until power is restored [seems reasonable in this day and age]. Maybe staff from various agencies could go street to street to ask residents if they had any special needs.

Patch: Because a lot of the storm damage was focused around collapsing trees—most of which evidently are non-native species that have shallow roots—what sort of horticultural/environmental rethinking and re-planning do you think the City needs to do to minimize the impact of future storms?

Vallianatos: Ensuring that all future street trees planted next to sidewalks are native trees that resist winds is one way to reduce tree-falls taking out power lines. Another way is to switch from aboveground power lines to underground power cables. Yet another way to reduce the impacts of storms on power is to move toward a more distributed power grid. Rather than having huge power plants feeding substations—and then neighborhoods, we should build more resiliency and local power into the system by having more buildings generate power on site through renewable energy sources such as solar or geothermal.

Also, let’s remember that most buildings with solar panels currently still lose power when the grid is down because the power from photovoltaics is put into the grid rather than being used on site. Buildings with solar power should be able to go off-grid temporarily when there is a disruption in the grid. (There are some good safety reasons why a utility wants all power to be off when they are fixing wires, so such a mechanism would have to be well designed.)

Finally, the city can use zoning rules to promote walkable neighborhoods so that people don't need to drive as much during natural disasters.

Patch: Do you think the City's arguably inept handling of the Occupy L.A. movement—allowing the protesters to break the law by welcoming them to camp outside City Hall and then using the law to arrest and jail protesters while denying citizen journalists access to their actions—had some sort of impact on its response to the windstorm's aftermath? After all, the hundreds of thousands of dollars that will be spent on cleaning up and restoring City Hall's lawns, plus the fairly expensive mobilization of 1,400 police officers to evacuate City Hall, could have been spent on a better response to the storm as well as perhaps providing relief to storm victims.

Vallianatos: I view this as an important but mainly unrelated issue. 

Patch: What is your view of the widespread perception that the elected officials who run the City of Los Angeles tend to work less for the interests of residents than for businesses and certain lobbies representing "vested-interest" groups?

Vallianatos: This is complicated. Residents vote—but wealthy interests are a source of fundraising, so elected officials have incentives to cater to both groups. Elected officials in Los Angeles have less power than in many cities because supposedly apolitical commissions hold some power. 

It is true that City Council people and L.A. County supervisors represent huge numbers of people—and we may get more responsive governments if we have more council districts and more supervisorial districts. As the kind of environmentalist who thinks we need more but better development—denser land use and more transit—I value local participation but don't want local residents to be able to block projects that are important for the city and the future.