Fans of Arroyo Seco lobbying hard for it to get revitalized

For years now, the Los Angeles River has been getting all the attention with plan after plan rolled out to revitalize it.

The estimated price to restore it to a more natural state: $1.6 billion.

But now friends of the Arroyo Seco are lobbying hard for their river to get a piece of the restoration pie.

"This is an important part of the L.A. River. It's like an arm on a body," said Tim Brick, the managing director of the Arroyo Seco Foundation, a group that wants the Arroyo linked to the L.A. River revitalization plans.

The two rivers meet right where the 5 Freeway and the 110 Freeway merge.

A California legislative working group was established last year with the goal of restoring other streams and rivers that feed the L.A. River.

The Arroyo Seco was left out, but Brick says new legislation aims to add it to the group.

"If you're going to call it the Upper L.A. River and Tributaries Group, you've got include the Arroyo Seco," he said. "These are really the systems that feed floods and water and habitat and wildlife and fish and aquatic species into the whole river system."

But restoring the Arroyo Seco is no small feat. It's 22 miles of tributaries, about half of it north of the Devil's Gate Dam in La Canada-Flintridge. Brick says it begins high in the mountains of the Angeles National Forest, near Mount Wilson.

Brick admits restoring the Arroyo would not be cheap. He says the non-functioning, 75-year-old Brown Canyon Dam in the Angeles National Forest would have to be torn down, the Devil's Gate Dam would have to be re-engineered so fish could pass through it, and miles of concrete embankments along the Arroyo would have to be removed.