In March 1924, Los Angeles geologist and engineer Wayne Loel sketched a simple diagram of a dam that would profoundly alter the Southern California environment for the next century. … In a neat script on the upper right corner of the tracing paper, Loel wrote two words: Rindge Dam. The dam’s name was a nod to “the Queen of Malibu,” the imperious May K. Rindge, who owned a 17,000-acre ranch that stretched for 25 miles along the Malibu coast. Although it’s been functionally obsolete for 80 years, Rindge Dam survives as zombie infrastructure, dead but with a lethal afterlife that haunts Malibu Creek and the local coast. … Dismantling Rindge Dam, as well as smaller upstream barriers, and clearing the dam’s 800,000 cubic yards of accumulated sediment—rocks and gravel, sand, fine silt—could open 18 miles of prime steelhead habitat. The project aims to restart, not jump-start, long-disrupted natural processes: the steelhead won’t be restocked; they will have to repopulate Malibu Creek on their own.