Melanie Winter, who devoted a lot of her life to reimagining the Los Angeles River as a pure asset, has died. She was 67.
Winter labored persistently for practically three a long time to unfold her different imaginative and prescient for the river and its watershed, calling for “unbuilding” the place possible, eradicating concrete and reactivating stretches of pure floodplains the place the river might unfold out.
Main her nonprofit group the River Venture, she championed efforts to embrace nature alongside the river, saying that permitting area for a meandering waterway lined with riparian forests would assist recharge groundwater, scale back flood dangers and permit a inexperienced oasis to flourish within the coronary heart of Los Angeles.
She developed bold plans for rewilding components of the river channel and close by areas, and helped spearhead new riverfront parks in addition to neighborhood “city acupuncture” tasks that changed asphalt with permeable paving, permitting rainwater to percolate underground as an alternative of operating in concrete channels to the ocean.
Melanie Winter and her canine, Maisie, look over the L.A. River close to the Sepulveda Basin.
“She was a voice for nature and a voice for the river,” stated Rita Kampalath, L.A. County’s chief sustainability officer and a longtime pal of Winter’s. “She had such power of her convictions, and she or he was so clear-eyed within the imaginative and prescient that she needed to push ahead. And I believe that impressed lots of people.”
Winter had lung most cancers however continued working and attending native water conferences whilst her well being declined. She died Tuesday evening at a Los Angeles hospital the place buddies had been visiting to spend a bit final time collectively.
“I believe what at all times drove her was the sense of, it was a river that had been contained in concrete … and that nature-based options might do a greater job,” stated Conner Everts, a pal and chief of the Southern California Watershed Alliance. “Her objective was to re-create a pure meandering river, with the power to recharge into the [San Fernando] Valley and restore nature, as a lot as doable.”
Winter was born in 1958 and grew up within the Valley.
She was a proficient dancer, and at 17 moved to New York Metropolis to begin a profession as a dancer and actor. She carried out in Broadway reveals and several other Hollywood movies, and likewise discovered work as a photographer, making black-and-white portraits of actors together with Bruce Willis, Helen Hunt and Val Kilmer.
She left the town in 1991 and moved again to L.A., the place she gravitated towards different artwork types and social activism.
In 1993, to lift consciousness about breast most cancers, she made plaster casts of a whole bunch of girls’s torsos and positioned them in a cemetery-like set up on a garden.
Melanie Winter admires the luxurious environment throughout a canoe journey on the L.A. River within the Sepulveda Basin in 2024.
She organized a river cleanup for the group Pals of the Los Angeles River, after which a pivotal second got here in 1996 when she attended a gathering the place she heard activist Dorothy Inexperienced eloquently describe how concrete channels had starved the life from waterways, and the way the town might make room for the river as soon as once more. Inexperienced grew to become her mentor.
Winter labored for a time as govt director of Pals of the Los Angeles River, then left to begin the River Venture in 2001.
She sued builders and the town to problem a deliberate improvement by the river, and arranged a group coalition to push for a brand new state park. In 2007, she and others celebrated the opening of Rio de Los Angeles State Park.
Winter spoke passionately in regards to the want for a community of parks “alongside the spine system of our waterways,” saying this could increase ecosystems, enhance air high quality and shield public well being. The plush, shady vegetation alongside restored stretches of river, she stated, can present pure cooling, serving to the town turn into extra resilient to local weather change.
“I need to reverse-engineer us to a greater future,” Winter stated in an interview in 2024. “It might be a dwelling river as an alternative of a concrete river.”
At Rio de Los Angeles State Park, Melanie Winter sits on a bench designed by native artists to commemorate the park’s founding.
Winter was steadfast and uncompromising as she confronted resistance from engineers and native officers who most popular conventional hard-infrastructure approaches.
“Engineers simply can’t wrap their heads round the concept that nature can do it cheaper, higher, simpler than they will,” she stated. “If you would like a livable Los Angeles, then I absolutely imagine that flipping the script on how we deal with our waterways is central to all of it.”
Three years in the past, her group revealed a research outlining a proposal to revive the river and its tributaries within the Sepulveda Basin and remodel the realm into the “inexperienced coronary heart” of the Valley, decreasing the scale of three golf programs and opening huge corridors the place the river and creeks would unfold out within the floodplains.
Winter was disillusioned when the town launched a plan for the realm that she stated did not prioritize restoration.
“Despite the fact that she met with a lot resistance through the years, she didn’t lose her optimism and her sturdy need to make constructive change,” stated Melissa von Mayrhauser, a doctoral scholar at UC Berkeley who interviewed Winter for her analysis and have become a pal. “I’m impressed by her imaginative and prescient, and I’ve introduced that into my analysis, and I plan to proceed engaged on a profession in river restoration.”
She stated Winter’s legacy consists of not solely the parks and neighborhood tasks she accomplished, but in addition important plans and ideas that may nonetheless be adopted all through the watershed, and alongside different rivers.
“Because of Melanie, there are such a lot of extra individuals imagining a dwelling L.A. River than ever earlier than,” she stated.
Melanie Winter leaves the location of a shuttered quarry together with her canine, Maisie, in 2024. She supported a proposal to transform two previous gravel quarry pits into large reservoirs the place storm runoff might be routed to recharge the aquifer and scale back flood risks downstream.
Close to Winter’s house in Studio Metropolis sits a small riverside park shaded by cottonwood timber, the place the native crops appeal to hummingbirds. There’s a bench formed like a butterfly, a retaining wall with a snake sculpture, and a inexperienced steel gate with an arch within the type of an enormous toad.
Within the early 2000s, Winter began envisioning the park, known as Valleyheart Greenway, and invited a gaggle of fourth- and fifth-grade college students to design the backyard panorama.
When the park opened in 2004, Winter stated it wasn’t nearly planting the backyard, but in addition about instilling within the youngsters a connection to their river.
Studying in regards to the river, she stated, created a gaggle of “youngsters with a fierce sense of place and a fierce willpower to guard what’s left and to deliver again as a lot as we will.”
