Maintenance of the Silver Lake Reservoirs Pathway, an issue of primary importance to the Silver Lake Reservoirs Conservancy, has gained some key support in recent weeks.

The Conservancy has learned that the offices of City Council members Eric Garcetti and Tom LaBonge have contracted with the Los Angeles Conservation Corps to provide regular maintenance of the path and landscaping for one year. Conservation Corps crew members, composed of trained at-risk teens, are now coming every other Friday to perform light maintenance on the Armstrong Avenue segment of the path and adjacent landscaping, as well as cruising around the entire reservoir path to pick up trash and dead tree limbs and pull a few weeds. The Corps has also started a survey of the irrigation problems in the landscaping along the Armstrong “up and over” to determine what repairs are needed to the system and how they can be completed. Plans to plant new landscaping along this section of the path are also being considered.
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The Silver Lake Reservoirs Conservancy is anxiously awaiting news from the Department of Water and Power later this year on its efforts to gain state approval for the proposed Tesla Pedestrian Path that would complete the walking route around Silver Lake and Ivanhoe Reservoirs.

Department officials submitted plans for the Tesla walkway on October 1 to the California Department of Dam Safety and now say that they expect word back from Dam Safety officials within 90 days of the submittal date. State approval of the plans is key because the proposed Tesla walkway, a six-foot-wide concrete path adjacent to the current roadway, would cut into the retaining wall of the Ivanhoe Reservoir. Earlier, the DWP had proposed constructing a decomposed granite pathway that would match the existing reservoir pedestrian path, but design engineers switched to concrete to provide more structural strength to the dam. READ MORE

Silver Lake neighbors have apparently been heard: design of the final segment of the reservoir pedestrian path–the section along Tesla Avenue–is being reworked to accommodate objections that the original plan for boardwalk-style structure was too high, too narrow and too inaccessible to be safe and attractive to walkers and joggers around the reservoirs.

“Our latest thinking is centered on making the path as low as possible and having easy ingress-egress to it so no one feels ‘trapped’ ,” Marty Adams, DWP’s director of water operations at the Silver Lake and Ivanhoe reservoirs, explained to The Silver Lake Reservoirs Conservancy, the neighborhood citizens group that has worked to enhance public access to the reservoir property for the last 20 years.
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Regular Reservoir Path walkers have surely noticed that development of the meadow area on Silver Lake Boulevard has started up again, and in earnest. The Silver Lake Reservoirs Conservancy checked with the City of Los Angeles for a status report on the project and we learned that the project should be completed by mid-December.

Here’s where things stand now, the first week of September:

The new landscaping will include new trees and shrubbery.  The paths traversing the meadow will be of decomposed granite, like the existing path.  READ MORE