Elmer Paseo Stormwater Improvemts

Client: The Council for Watershed Health

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Landscape Architect: Tetra Tech

A small solution to a big problem.  The challenge put before you: transform a blighted alleyway where 20 acres of urbanized rainfall runoff is channeled, into a beautiful, functional paseo, and create a template for future solutions to similar problems.  The Council for Watershed Health faced this very challenge, and the Elmer Paseo project is how they solved it.  In order to allow 16 acre-feet of water to infiltrate annually, the first step was for American Landscape to remove the asphalt alley and replace it with a state-of-the-art subsurface drainage and infiltration system.  Next we added growing medium, permeable conc. paving, and water-wise plantings.  The finishing touches included painting the alley walls, installing green-screen vine trellis, and bollards and boulders.

Now the neighbors have a safe, beautiful way to navigate their neighborhood, while directing stormwater and recharging the aquifer when it rains.

SUSTAINABLE