“These individuals are responsible for tags not only in Los Angeles but Las Vegas and San Francisco,” said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Dan Finkelstein, who is chief of the Metropolitan Transit Authority police. “The Army Corps of Engineers estimates that removing the “MTA” tag from the riverbed alone will cost $3.7 million.
Cleaning graffiti from the river is far more expensive than cleaning other areas. Officials use high-pressure water spray to remove the toxic paint.
But hazardous-materials crews must then dam and capture all the paint and water runoff to prevent it from getting into the river. The crew did an additional $20,000 worth of damage to transit vehicles and facilities. Finkelstein said the Los Angeles River “MTA” tag, in a vast industrial district east of downtown between two rail yards, took about 400 gallons of paint — 300 gallons white and 100 gallons black. “It took them four nights to do it,” he said.

Let’s do the math… One 5 Gallon bucket of white paint = $48.00 from Lowes. 400 gallons divided by 5 = 80 5 gallon buckets. 80 x $48.00 = $3,840 to paint the MTA. In this video they are clearly buffing over it as opposed to using high pressured water and dam system to collect all the toxic/hazardous materials. So tell me how it makes sense that $3.7 million is needed to clean this up? Where is the rest of the $3.6 million going!?

-Vito