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align="right">For as long as modern plumbing has been around, cities that are upstream of the Los Angeles River have emptied their stormdrains into the channel and sent it out to the ocean. This has been a main culprit in Long Beach's notoriously dirty shoreline and the installation of stormdrain gates should prevent p to 840,000 pounds of trash from entering the system each year.

The gate is a simple metal design that catches trash and debris before it enters the sewers. In a demonstration, fast food cups and potato chip bags were stopped even as the gates opened to allow rushing water into the sewer. If debris does happen to enter the system, basins inside the drain will catch and filter it out. The leftover pollution is extracted by the city or collected through street sweeping. It is exactly the kind of system that has been in place in Long Beach for several years, and was profiled in an LBPOST.com article last summer.

But finally, those same practices are reaching the more than one dozen cities that also contribute to Long Beach's horrendous water quality. In years past, many have sought to hold upstream cities responsible for their roles in the pollution, and there was even a failed effort to pursue litigation. Last year, city officials estimated that trash and debris from the city of Long Beach accounts for just 3% of the city's ocean pollution.

With $10 million available from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Los Angeles Gateway Authority will oversee the construction and installation of the metal gates. The actual work will be performed by a local contracting business. Cities from Compton and Paramount to Maywood and Montebello will have the gates installed.