There's a dirt parking lot behind Local Market at 303 Culver Boulevard. On a handful of mornings each month, a small group gathers there in close-toed shoes and walks through a gate into the Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve. The gate is locked behind them. If you're late, you stay outside.
That rule appears on every Friends of Ballona Wetlands event page for the reserve, and it explains how the wetland works for anyone who lives beside it. The state's Ballona Wetlands Restoration Project page says most of the reserve is closed to the public because of its degraded state. Its 577 acres are all that remain of a wetland complex that once covered roughly 2,000 acres from Playa del Rey to Venice and inland to the Baldwin Hills. For Playa del Rey, getting into that land depends on a calendar, and the state's revised plan, now open for public comment, leaves the calendar as the way in for the foreseeable future.
The rule at the gate
Friends of Ballona runs the guided access. Its pages for the Culver Boulevard events list the same conditions every time. You register in advance, sign a digital waiver, and for restoration days you also watch an instructional safety video before you arrive. Activities are recommended for ages 7 and up, and youths 16 and under should come with an adult.
The practical details are spelled out too. Close-toed shoes are required. Long pants help with the occasional prickly plant. There are no water fountains on site, so bring your own water bottle, along with gardening gloves. Rain cancels the event, and the suggested donation is $5 per person.
The guided program reaches well beyond the neighborhood. CDFW says nearly 10,000 schoolchildren a year visit the reserve through an environmental education program, on a small patch that Friends of Ballona restored. That small patch is most of what anyone gets to walk on behind the Culver Boulevard gate, and the calendar decides when.
What stays open from dawn to dusk
Some of the Ballona area needs no booking, though most of it sits east of Lincoln Boulevard on the Playa Vista side.
The Freshwater Marsh path. Friends of Ballona describes an L-shaped wood-chip path around the edge of the Freshwater Marsh. It connects to the Jefferson Trail and is open to the public from dawn to dusk. Leashed dogs are allowed on the public trail. The route Friends of Ballona gave when it announced the Jefferson Trail's reopening in October 2024 starts at Bluff Creek Drive. Head toward Lincoln, cross it, and take the steps down to the L-shaped trail. Parking is on Bluff Creek Drive by the Sports Park and Ballona Discovery Park.
Ballona Discovery Park. At 13110 Bluff Creek Drive, it's listed as open daily from dawn to dusk. Most of the Freshwater Marsh programs below start here.
The Ballona Creek bike path. Ballona Creek Renaissance describes the paved bikeway as running about seven miles from Syd Kronenthal Park to the Coast Bike Path. The Pacific Avenue bridge connects it to the beach path.
These are long-standing routes. The salt marsh and dunes on the Playa del Rey side of the reserve aren't on the list. That part of Ballona is closest to Culver Boulevard and the lagoon, and it opens only when a guide unlocks it.
The guided dates through December
The Friends of Ballona calendar for the rest of the year has events on both sides of Lincoln. Here are the dates from November 21 on. Every one requires registration and a waiver.
- Saturday, November 21, 9:30 a.m. to noon: Community Habitat Restoration. Meet in the dirt lot behind Local Market, 303 Culver Boulevard. Volunteers clear invasive plants so slow-growing natives have room to grow, and the reserve gates are locked for the whole event.
- Sunday, November 22, 10 a.m. to noon: Freshwater Marsh Tour. Starts at Ballona Discovery Park, 13110 Bluff Creek Drive. Suggested donation $5.
- Saturday, December 5, 10 a.m. to noon: Freshwater Marsh Tour. Same meeting point and format.
- Sunday, December 6, 10 a.m. to noon: Salt Marsh & Dunes Tour. Starts from the lot behind Local Market at 303 Culver Boulevard. This is the guided walk into the Playa del Rey side of the reserve, and the gates lock once it begins.
- Sunday, December 13, 8 to 10:30 a.m.: Beginner Birding Tour. Starts at Ballona Discovery Park. The walk stays out of the gated part of the Freshwater Marsh because of sensitive nesting birds.
- Saturday, December 19: Salt Marsh & Dunes Tour. Friends of Ballona lists a second salt marsh walk for this date.
- Sunday, December 20, 8 a.m. to noon: Birding with Bob. Local bird expert Bob Shanman leads it from the west-side Del Rey Lagoon parking lot at 6520 Pacific Avenue. The route covers Del Rey Lagoon, Dockweiler Beach, the breakwater and jetty, and the Ballona Creek estuary.
The Salt Marsh & Dunes Tours on December 6 and December 19 are the year's last two chances to tour the Playa del Rey side of the reserve. November 21 gets volunteers behind the Culver Boulevard gate to pull weeds. Birding with Bob, on December 20, is the one outing that starts at the lagoon, a short walk from much of the neighborhood.
What the revised plan changes
The calendar matters this much because the long-promised restoration is still in its environmental review. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has published a Draft Revised Environmental Impact Report for the project. Its comment period runs from October 23 to December 7, 2026, and all written comments must arrive by 5 p.m. on December 7. CDFW accepts comments by mail to 3883 Ruffin Road in San Diego, by email at [email protected], or through an online comment card for five comments or fewer.
The revision has a narrow scope. In May 2023, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that CDFW had to disclose and analyze new flood control design parameters and commit to more environmental review if its performance criteria changed. CDFW prevailed on every other point, and the court rejected the challenges to the project as designed. CDFW decertified the earlier EIR on September 28, 2023. The new document, dated September 2026, describes its purpose in two points:
- Revises the 2020 Final EIR to disclose a Standard Project Flood (SPF) of future, unrestricted channel flow at 68,000 cfs as the proper flood control design parameter.
- Revises the 2020 Final EIR to clarify and confirm CDFW's commitment to conduct additional environmental review should conditions warrant a reduction of restoration goals, any change to performance criteria, or any material change to the Conceptual Habitat Restoration and Adaptive Management Plan…
The 2020 Final EIR used 46,000 cubic feet per second, so the design flood figure goes up. CDFW reports that its new hydrology analysis shows the levees don't need to be redesigned for the higher number, and that the change creates no new potentially significant impacts compared with the 2020 EIR. The restoration plan stays as it was. It still covers 566 of the reserve's 577 acres, with Alternative 1 built in phases.
Why the gate stays on a schedule
The plan describes the access neighbors would eventually get. Existing bike trails would be realigned to run on top of new perimeter levees. There would be new pedestrian-only trails, about 2,000 linear feet of elevated boardwalk next to the wetlands, two footbridges, and a spur trail. CDFW says the boardwalk could be closed in some places during environmentally sensitive times of the year. The plan includes no visitor center. Education would come from interpretive panels at entrances and along trails. The state also analyzed a parking structure and road behind Culver Boulevard and chose to leave them out.
Several approvals have to come before that. Restoration work can't start until a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit is in hand to modify the Ballona Creek channel and levee system. CDFW will pursue it with the Los Angeles County Flood Control District, and it says it can't predict with any certainty when that permit will be issued. Its project page says an application will likely be submitted within the next two years. The project also needs approvals from the California Coastal Commission and the Regional Water Quality Control Board, and possibly from other agencies, each on its own timeline. The state also says funding will determine when the first phases can begin.
Until then, the boardwalk and levee-top trails exist only on paper. For now the Playa del Rey side of the reserve opens for small, registered groups on the dates Friends of Ballona posts, and only for people who reach 303 Culver Boulevard before the gate closes.
If you take one of these walks this season and start thinking about what it's like to live with the wetland next door, I'm always happy to talk it through over coffee. Homes by Marlyse knows the Westside's quieter corners well, and a conversation never comes with any pressure. Let's Connect.
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