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Melanie Winter and her dog, Maisie, look over the L.A. River near the Sepulveda Basin.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a voice for nature and a voice for the river,\u201d said Rita Kampalath, L.A. County\u2019s chief sustainability officer and a longtime friend of Winter\u2019s. \u201cShe had such strength of her convictions, and she was so clear-eyed in the vision that she wanted to push forward. And I think that inspired a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winter had lung cancer but continued working and attending local water meetings even as her health declined. She died Tuesday night at a Los Angeles hospital where friends had been visiting to spend a little last time together. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think what always drove her was the sense of, it was a river that had been contained in concrete \u2026 and that nature-based solutions could do a better job,\u201d said Conner Everts, a friend and leader of the Southern California Watershed Alliance. \u201cHer goal was to re-create a natural meandering river, with the ability to recharge into the [San Fernando] Valley and restore nature, as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winter was born in 1958 and grew up in the Valley.<\/p>\n
She was a talented dancer, and at 17 moved to New York City to start a career as a dancer and actor. She performed in Broadway shows and several Hollywood films, and also found work as a photographer, making black-and-white portraits of actors including Bruce Willis, Helen Hunt and Val Kilmer.<\/p>\n
She left the city in 1991 and moved back to L.A., where she gravitated toward other art forms and social activism.<\/p>\n
In 1993, to raise awareness about breast cancer, she made plaster casts of hundreds of women\u2019s torsos<\/a> and placed them in a cemetery-like installation on a lawn.<\/p>\n Melanie Winter admires the lush surroundings during a canoe trip on the L.A. River in the Sepulveda Basin in 2024.<\/p>\n She organized a river cleanup for the group Friends of the Los Angeles River, and then a pivotal moment came in 1996 when she attended a meeting where she heard activist Dorothy Green<\/a> eloquently describe how concrete channels had starved the life<\/a> from waterways, and how the city could make room for the river once again. Green became her mentor.<\/p>\n Winter worked for a time as executive director<\/a> of Friends of the Los Angeles River, then left to start the River Project<\/a> in 2001.<\/p>\n She sued developers and the city to challenge a planned development by the river, and organized a community coalition to push for a new state park. In 2007, she and others celebrated the opening of Rio de Los Angeles State Park<\/a>. <\/p>\n Winter spoke passionately about the need for a network of parks \u201calong the backbone system of our waterways,\u201d saying this can boost ecosystems, improve air quality and protect public health. The lush, shady vegetation along restored stretches of river, she said, can provide natural cooling, helping the city become more resilient to climate change.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to reverse-engineer us to a better future,\u201d Winter said in an interview in 2024. \u201cIt would be a living river instead of a concrete river.\u201d<\/p>\n At Rio de Los Angeles State Park, Melanie Winter sits on a bench designed by local artists to commemorate the park\u2019s founding. <\/p>\n Winter was steadfast and uncompromising as she faced resistance from engineers and local officials who preferred traditional hard-infrastructure approaches.<\/p>\n \u201cEngineers just can\u2019t wrap their heads around the idea that nature can do it cheaper, better, easier than they can,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you want a livable Los Angeles, then I fully believe that flipping the script on how we treat our waterways is central to it all.\u201d<\/p>\n Three years ago, her group published a study<\/a> outlining a proposal to restore the river and its tributaries in the Sepulveda Basin and transform the area into the \u201cgreen heart\u201d of the Valley, reducing the size of three golf courses and opening wide corridors where the river and creeks would spread out in the floodplains.<\/p>\n Winter was disappointed when the city released a plan for the area that she said failed to prioritize restoration.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though she met with so much resistance over the years, she didn\u2019t lose her optimism and her strong desire to make positive change,\u201d said Melissa von Mayrhauser, a doctoral student at UC Berkeley who interviewed Winter for her research and became a friend. \u201cI\u2019m inspired by her vision, and I have brought that into my research, and I plan to continue working on a career in river restoration.\u201d<\/p>\n She said Winter\u2019s legacy includes not only the parks and neighborhood projects she completed, but also vital plans and concepts that can still be adopted throughout the watershed, and along other rivers.<\/p>\n \u201cThanks to Melanie, there are so many more people imagining a living L.A. River than ever before,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Melanie Winter leaves the site of a shuttered quarry with her dog, Maisie, in 2024. She supported a proposal to convert <\/b>two <\/b>old gravel quarry pits into giant reservoirs where storm runoff could be routed to recharge the aquifer and reduce flood dangers downstream.<\/p>\n Near Winter\u2019s home in Studio City sits a small riverside park shaded by cottonwood trees, where the native plants attract hummingbirds. There is a bench shaped like a butterfly, a retaining wall with a snake sculpture, and a green metal gate with an arch in the form of a giant toad.<\/p>\n In the early 2000s, Winter started envisioning the park, called Valleyheart Greenway<\/a>, and invited a group of fourth- and fifth-grade students to design the garden landscape.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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