Mark Abramson, who served shape L.A. environment, dies at 56

When Mark Abramson was a young intern at the environmental nonprofit Mend the Bay in the mid-1990s, he was offered the notably dull assignment of reviewing once-a-year stormwater allow reports for all 88 towns in Los Angeles County and monitoring their compliance.

He went about the task with attribute gusto, and was so fascinated and fired up by what he located that he “didn’t leave for yet another dozen decades,” laughed Mark Gold, who, as Mend the Bay’s former president, experienced assigned the chore.

Abramson went on to turn into a towering determine in the earth of Los Angeles water — anyone who would leave a long lasting mark on its shorelines, streams, wetlands and preserves, and whose legacy will be loved by Angelenos for a long time to appear. Abramson died instantly on Sept. 15 of a suspected heart assault, close friends and relatives say. He had just turned 56.

A gruff, burly, vibrant character with a booming voice and an undeniable presence (a 2001 Los Angeles Moments profile described him as “Mr. Thoroughly clean with a goatee and an attitude”), Abramson was instrumental in the cleanup and preservation of the Malibu Creek watershed, a 110-square-mile space that runs from the southeast edge of Ventura County to Malibu Lagoon, discharging at Surfrider Seashore.

Mark Abramson, left, and volunteer Joshua Hocieniec stand in a compact pool in Las Virgenes Creek in August 2000. The pair had been measuring the pool and recording other properties before plotting its place with the help of GPS.

(George Wilhelm / Los Angeles Periods)

He also blew the whistle on polluters, secured the potential of Ahmanson Ranch, taken out fish limitations in Ballona Creek and Leo Carrillo State Park, and aided condition stormwater procedures and clean water specifications — all while wrangling volunteers and mentoring scores of young men and women. In 2014, Abramson received the Environmental Legislation Institute’s Nationwide Wetland Award for his conservation and restoration efforts in Los Angeles County.

“The greatest environmentalists are folks who get insults to the setting personally, and that was Mark,” Gold said. “Here’s a person who grew up in Agoura Hills and understood each inch of the Malibu Creek watershed, and he secured it like it was just one of his have children.”

Certainly, not lengthy soon after Abramson came to Heal the Bay, he established out to map and check the total watershed. He founded a volunteer team recognised as the Stream Team, which patrolled the total area on foot and gathered invaluable information about its h2o high quality and biodiversity.

His perform was instrumental in restoring Malibu Lagoon, one of the final coastal wetlands in the county, which was struggling from lower oxygen levels, poor drinking water quality and tainted sediment connected to city runoff and discharges from the nearby Tapia sewage remedy plant. The energy also served cleanse up Surfrider Seashore, which for several years had been a single of L.A.’s most polluted beaches because of to surges from the lagoon.

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“What he did at Malibu Lagoon — I indicate, that just shows you his perseverance,” Gold reported. “Because he was a stubborn S.O.B., and thank God for the watershed that he was.”

An aerial see of Ahmanson Ranch with residences in Los Angeles County, ending at the Ventura County line, in March 2002.

(Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Instances)

In the early 2000s, Abramson aided halt a controversial proposal to build Ahmanson Ranch, a 3,000-acre assets at Malibu Creek’s headwaters, into a private community with two golf classes.

Abramson mapped the place and uncovered it to be a exceptional and crucial habitat for red-legged frogs and other endangered species. Its proprietor at the time, Washington Mutual Lender, marketed the expanse to the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority for $150 million, preserving it as a parkland and ending a tense 17-calendar year battle.

“He was so sensible and hardworking and identified, and he was visionary for the reason that he chose projects that have been seriously hard to do, and he did them perfectly to demonstrate us all what was attainable,” explained Shelley Luce, an unbiased water good quality marketing consultant who beforehand held roles at Heal the Bay, the Sierra Club and the California Coastal Fee.

Luce claimed Abramson gathered significant data on benthic macroinvertebrates — small creatures that stay on the bottom of the creek — that aided in creating laws for discharges from the sewage therapy plant and improving stormwater management tactics in the region.

Abramson also collected a group of volunteers to clear away previous dams from Ballona Creek, which have been acting as boundaries to endangered steelhead trout and other fish. Stone by stone, the workforce dismantled the dams and restored the banking companies, quickly increasing the health of the stream, Luce claimed.

He then went a action more, doing the job with the Parks Division to remove 3 car crossings that ended up blocking streamflow within the Arroyo Sequit, situated just north of Malibu at the base of Leo Carrillo Point out Park. He secured a substantial grant, employed an engineer and built bridges to switch the crossings, building a cost-free-flowing creek and re-vegetating the web-site.

“Those were genuinely major, and they just would not have took place if Mark hadn’t decided that this was significant,” Luce said.

Make no error, having said that: Abramson was not your standard tree-hugger. He beloved to hunt and fish, telling The Times in 2001 that he required to “catch a steelhead in the creek right before I die.”

Mark Abramson, Stream Workforce manager with Mend the Bay, checks Malibu Creek for mudsnails in June 2006.

(Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Periods)

“Mark was, with no a issue, a person of the sweetest, most generous males I at any time met, and at the exact same time, his exterior was like 120-grit sandpaper,” reported Tom Ford, main executive of the Bay Basis. “He sort of dared you to enjoy him.”

He was so passionate about his work that he as soon as scheduled a conference about marine restoration on Xmas, Ford explained.

Later on, though functioning with Ford at the Los Angeles Waterkeeper, Abramson set out to far better establish and have an understanding of resources of pollution getting into waterways in the county. When rain was in the forecast, he would acquire a team to head out and accumulate runoff samples, even if it meant waiting around for a very good soaking at 3 a.m.

The samples he collected served establish polluters by tracing germs, metals and industrial products right to their supply, Ford stated, and “really moved the needle” toward enhanced regulatory procedures for h2o good quality and stormwater capture in the county.

But even though quite a few will try to remember Abramson for “the expanses of the landscapes he served preserve,” Ford stated, what normally receives ignored is his function as a mentor.

“He should have straight supported hundreds of young pros in their occupations — aiding them in their academic research, or [answering] professional thoughts as to where by this all healthy into context in the neighborhood of coastal Los Angeles,” he explained. “He was stellar at it.”

His family mentioned that sounded like the Mark they realized.

“In a single way, he could be seriously gruff and challenging-assed, but if you manufactured that relationship with him, it was permanently,” claimed his brother, Jeff Abramson. “You communicate to his close friends, to all the people today that labored with him even 30 a long time back, and they all say the similar matter. They loved his sense of humor, and just beloved him.”

His niece, Alicia Abramson, 23, recalled inquiring her uncle for assist with her fifth-quality science challenge when she was 10 years previous.

In standard trend, “he dragged me into 1 of those creeks and we were looking for mudsnails for hrs,” she recalled. “But we won the science good.”

Born in Santa Monica and lifted in Agoura, Abramson analyzed accounting at Pepperdine University and gained a master’s degree in landscape architecture from Cal Poly Pomona. He later on served as director of watershed systems at the Santa Monica Baykeeper and labored with the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Basis, amongst other roles.

A few decades in the past, he founded Urban Ecoscapes, an environmental landscape firm, and was actively involved in endeavours to create a wildlife crossing for mountain lions and other animals in excess of the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills.

“He needed what was there when he was a child to be there for the subsequent era and the era soon after that,” mentioned Margot Carlson, his wife of 27 a long time.

When his yrs-lengthy Malibu Lagoon restoration undertaking was eventually comprehensive, he established up an underwater digicam to see what would take place, Carlson recalled. The initial day, the footage caught only a single very small shrimp.

But just 1 week afterwards, “there were faculties of fish, crab almost everywhere, and tons of very little shrimpies,” she claimed — signals of a healthy ecosphere.

“There’s nowhere you can actually go in this location with no looking at his imprint,” Carlson reported. “There’s no seaside you can go to, there’s no spot in these mountains that he hasn’t touched.”

Abramson is survived by his wife, Margot his brother, Jeff his niece and nephews, Alicia, Max and Erik cousin Kevin Brown and aunt Kate Brown.