California: Santa Clara river project

Image Collections from the Field

(Click for slideshows in isolation)

Santa Clara River, California
© Copyright Peter Goin

Aliso Canyon, birthplace of the Santa Clara River.
© Copyright Leo Grillo

Location

California, USA

This is the location map for the project

Aims

Through the presentation of evidential photographic portfolios, we aim to save the Santa Clara river, southern California’s last wild river, from extinction.

Overview

The Santa Clara river is one of America’s ten most endangered rivers, an archaeologically important natural landmark that provides habitat to many rare and endangered species of wildlife and plant life.

To monetize every inch of their holdings, housing developers in Valencia have already re-channeled sections of the Santa Clara river by placing it in a parabolic choke of concrete. This slaughterous action has resulted in an unnatural increase in water flow, mutilation of this vital water source and habitat destruction of endangered and threatened species.

If immediate conservation-minded measures are not enacted and a comprehensive program to address proper management of population growth is not initiated, expansive areas of land will be transformed from their current natural settings to an urban one. Additional buffer zones around this river will degrade and more of Southern California’s last riparian and freshwater habitats for wildlife will disappear.

To raise awareness of the plight of the Santa Clara river on a national and international level, notable landscape photographer Peter Goin, head of the “Water in the West” photographic project, partnered by Scott Hinton, and AOTE President Leo Grillo have been conducting a survey of the river system and its landscape.

The Santa Clara river is our best chance to protect what is left of our jeopardized river habitation, our ecology and agricultural heritage. It is where we live, work and prosper. Through this photographic survey we will campaign to protect it for this generation and the next.

A selection of images from Peter Goin, Scott Hinton and Leo Grillo are displayed in the project slideshows.

Future Actions

These evidential images, together with new, additional photographic works, will travel the United Sates in a museum exhibition and will later be monographed in a beautiful presentation book, with the aim of helping save Southern California’s last wild river from extinction - the culmination of fifteen years work by the project’s visionary architect, Leo Grillo.