Los Angeles and its environmental groups held press conferences and briefing sessions for 3 days from February 5 to 7 to benchmark Korea's river restoration. The conferences were hosted by FoLAR (Friends of the Los Angeles River) which is the largest environmental group founded in 1986 with the aim to restore LA River to a more environment and culture friendly river. LA Bureau of Public Works, the LA River Restoration Team, politicians and 500 citizens participated in the conferences.
LA River is 82km in length originating from San Fernando, passing through Los Angeles and reaching to the Pacific Ocean. However, in 1930, the U.S. Army built a concrete flood control bank that seriously contaminated the river where no fish is alive. Lewis MacAdams, Chairman of FoLAR says that there have been many difficulties in carrying out the Los Angeles River Project so he wants to have some lessons from Korea that successfully restored Cheong Gye Cheon and is currently restoring 1,000-mile-rivers.
Gary Moore, Chief of the LA Bureau of Public Works says that Los Angeles used Cheong Gye Cheon restoration as a model and developed a Master Plan for LA River Restoration under which concrete banks will be removed and ecosystem will be restored, increasing the accessibility of the public. He also emphasized that he was very much impressed to see Korea's four major rivers restoration project go smoothly and wanted to visit Korea as soon as possible.
All in all, the conferences were a good opportunity for Korea to promote the four major rivers restoration project.
