New Urban Oases

On the corner of Slauson and Compton avenues, landscapers transform an old city storage yard into an 8-acre nature habitat. To the west, conservationists work to reclaim oil fields among the urban ravines of Baldwin Hills. And throughout the county, officials debate how to spend more than $90 million to “green up” the paved Los Angeles River.

Nature is sprouting through the most unlikely cracks in Los Angeles’ sprawl.

Flush with money from a booming economy and a massive state park bond, politicians and activists are hatching plans to transform the urban environment as never before. From South Gate to Tujunga, they are working to convert blighted land into parks, bikeways and nature preserves as they continue to fight sources of pollution.

On Saturday, the greening of L.A. took another small step as the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy dedicated a new park near Montecito Heights. The 3/4-acre open space features its own twist on urban renewal--a miniature version of a restored L.A. River, right next to the real, concrete-bound one.

“It’s the first environmental renaissance that takes into account the inner city,” said state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), one of the first lawmakers to push for a more natural L.A. River. “I don’t want to sound utopian about this, but we’re entitled to say this is a major turning point.”

The renaissance is reshaping the environmental movement as well, prompting national mainstream groups such as the Sierra Club to take a second look at urban areas they had largely written off. The trend has suburban, middle-class activists preaching a new gospel: that to halt the encroachment on mountains, deserts and coastlines, you must make the cities pleasant to live in.

Although some local activists view this new interest skeptically, they could use the help. The greening of L.A. has a way to go.

Even with swaths as big as the Santa Monica Mountains and Griffith Park, the city is still one of the most park-poor in the nation. Only 10% of the land within the city limits is designated as open space, compared with 27% of New York and 25% of San Francisco, statistics show.

For more than a decade, numerous grass-roots groups in Los Angeles have been fighting to improve the urban landscape. Their banner has been environmental justice--the idea that poor people, whose communities are often dumping grounds for factories and industrial waste, have a right to live in a clean place.

In large part, the fights have been defensive maneuvers, aimed at keeping new sources of pollution from being introduced to minority neighborhoods. Groups such as Mothers of East L.A. have fought plans for new prisons, freeways and incinerators.

But a different kind of urban activism is emerging, a more proactive one, that seeks to redevelop forsaken inner-city areas into places where people can picnic, play soccer and enjoy nature.

Latino Lawmakers Leading the Charge

Among those leading the charge are Latino lawmakers, many of whom grew up in environmentally degraded neighborhoods and who see the lack of open space as a social inequity, much like toxic dumps. They strive to improve their neighborhoods in the long term with new policies and public space.

State Sen. Hilda Solis (D-La Puente), who grew up downwind from a landfill, wrote an environmental justice bill last year that requires the California Environmental Protection Agency to consider the health effects its policies and decisions have on low-income people. She also sponsored legislation that created a conservancy to buy parkland along the San Gabriel and lower Los Angeles rivers.

State Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier), who grew up in a diesel haze near the freeways in East L.A., last year sponsored the Children’s Environmental Health Protection Act, which requires the state to study and revise air pollution standards on the basis of the health effects on children, not just of adult males.

Assembly member and former Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), who was raised in Boyle Heights, was one of two principal co-authors of Proposition 12--the $2.1-billion parks bond measure approved by voters in March.

That influx of money--with more than $90 million going to L.A. River restoration from this year’s state budget--has renewed debate on the future of the much-maligned watercourse. Once the very source of the city’s growth, the river in the last half century has been little more than a concrete flood control channel stretching 51 miles, like some abandoned interstate highway.

But taking a cue from river restoration projects in Chicago, Cincinnati and Denver, many conservationists see the L.A. River as the backbone of the city’s emerging park movement; the watercourse can provide a means to link fragmented bits of open space.

“I think the most important thing the next mayor of the city of Los Angeles can do is to provide for open space and livable communities and begin to revitalize that river,” said Villaraigosa, a mayoral candidate, at a debate on Sept. 14.

Villaraigosa admitted he hadn’t given the river much thought until recently. “I used to ride my bike through the Elysian Valley as a kid,” he said. “I didn’t even think it was a river. I didn’t know what it was. I thought maybe it was some kind of aqueduct.”

But soon after he was elected to the Assembly in 1993, he said, he started listening to Friends of the L.A. River and other environmental groups. Now, although he concedes that restoring the river will take some serious imagination, Villaraigosa has joined colleagues such as Hayden to advocate altering, even removing, parts of the river’s concrete walls and bottom.

The most ambitious proposal is for a 62-acre state park at the abandoned Taylor Yard, a Southern Pacific railroad facility just off the river near downtown Los Angeles on San Fernando Road. The project would be the first new state park in L.A.’s urban core in 17 years, and $45 million is already earmarked for it, according to state figures.

Planners envision a bucolic setting of sycamores and hiking trails along the riverbank, with soccer fields, picnic tables and playgrounds.

In time, state park officials say, they also might remove some of the concrete and restore a natural slope. They are still working to acquire the land from the railroad, so the park is several years away.

Other funding for the proposed L.A. River parkway includes$4.7 million for a park at the confluence of the river and the Arroyo Seco at the Pasadena Freeway and $2.4 million for a riverside park on a polluted industrial lot in Maywood.

To Lewis MacAdams, a poet and founder of the Friends of the L.A. River, the March bond measure and the September mayoral debate represent a watershed in his 15-year quest to promote his vision of a revived river.

He was especially heartened by the debate, during which the river was called “the thread that binds together the community of Los Angeles.”

MacAdams noted that three mayoral candidates--Villaraigosa, U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra, and Councilman Joel Wachs--came out strongly during the debate for a second park development on the river. They endorsed the idea of putting green space, schools and playgrounds on a contaminated 50-acre parcel near Chinatown, called the “Cornfield.”

Plan Near Chinatown Sparks Controversy

That put them at loggerheads with Mayor Richard Riordan, who successfully pushed for speedy approval at the site for an industrial park proposed by influential developer Ed Roski. Environmental Defense, a New York-based environmental group, sued over the fast-track treatment, and federal officials now say they are conducting a full review before granting $12 million in Housing and Urban Development money to the project.

The mayor’s staff defended both Riordan’s position on Cornfield and his record on parks. Deputy Mayor Rocky Delgadillo said Roski’s project would provide at least 1,000 jobs to an area that suffers high unemployment and sits next to Elysian Park, the second-largest park in the city.

Yet three candidates running to succeed Riordan said they would reverse the city’s approval.

“Mayor Riordan’s complete lack of interest in the L.A. River and park creation in general has created a backlash effect,” said MacAdams, echoing the statements of numerous other environmentalists.

The newfound interest in river restoration has even tempered opposition in southeast Los Angeles County, where residents must pay for flood insurance and government officials worry about a 100-year deluge. In fact, a federal project is still underway to raise the concrete river walls and earthen levees for protection.

Downstream residents now embrace some form of greening, as long as it doesn’t pose a danger.

“The river is such an icon of loss and waste,” said D.J. Waldie, an author and a spokesman for the city of Lakewood, which has been suspicious of river restoration until recently. “To see it transformed . . . is a powerful symbol of reconnecting and restoring public places in the county.”

So powerful, in fact, that the river restoration movement has taken hold in working-class cities from Long Beach to the San Gabriel Valley, where residents and officials have resented what some think is environmentalism that is being crammed down their throats by the Westside. Now, they are hoping the new conservancy created by Solis will steer money to parks along the Rio Hondo, the lower Los Angeles and the San Gabriel rivers. The agency expects to get at least $15 million in Proposition 12 money and is still developing its “open space plan.”

Local leaders, meanwhile, are moving forward with their own ideas. In South Gate, they are trying to acquire land for a green belt and a riparian habitat of willows and alders near the confluence of the Rio Hondo and the L.A. River.

South Gate City Manager Andrew Pasmant, who rides his horse along the L.A. River in Hollydale Park, said that cities in the southeast county have been excited about fixing up the river ever since they got a conservancy of their own.

“It’s our plan now,” he said. “It’s not coming from somebody outside the region.”

The new bond money is also going to build dozens of other non-river-related pocket parks, soccer fields and youth centers throughout the region. In North Hollywood, $2.5 million is going to expand Blythe Street Park and $1 million is headed for a bikeway in Burbank.

Among the projects: A $4.5-million nature park being built by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy on an old city storage yard site in South-Central Los Angeles.

Across from an auto parts warehouse and industrial yards, the oaks are already rustling in the breeze as landscape architects form low hills and a wetland on the 8-acre site.

Residents have even trespassed on the unopened site to barbecue.

As the urban parks movement gains steam in Los Angeles and across the country, it is shaping environmentalism itself. National groups with offices in California are changing their agendas as state leaders express strong support for more urban parks, activists say.

“Partly with environmental groups, it’s responding to the political changes they see,” said Larry Kaplan, director of the Los Angeles office of the Trust for Public Land, a national group that has reoriented its mission and is building the Maywood park.

But the change in direction has caused some angst among the groups, as staff members tackle new kinds of social issues, such as providing access to schools and transportation for inner-city residents.

Tensions Rise in Some Neighborhoods

“There’s tension,” said Jerilyn Lopez Mendoza, acting director for a Los Angeles branch of Environmental Defense. “I’ve sat down with board members who have no idea what I’m doing and why. But I’ve also sat down with board members who are very excited about what I’m doing.”

Some longtime neighborhood activists, however, see the larger groups as carpetbaggers, eager to swoop down on urban projects because of the new government money available for parks. Or as actually working against the interests of inner-city residents.

A case in point: the policy of “pollution trading.” Mainline environmental groups endorsed the practice, which allows flexibility for companies in meeting overall air pollution goals.

New rules permitted oil companies to buy and scrap old, fume-belching cars in exchange for not having to clean up emissions at their marine loading docks.

But in 1997, Communities for a Better Environment filed suit to halt the practice, alleging that it doomed residents living near the docks in San Pedro and Wilmington to breathing toxic fumes.

“If you look at these groups’ actual plans, get beyond the rhetoric of environmental justice and find out what they’re doing, it’s somewhat contrary to environmental justice,” said Carlos Porras, the group’s executive director, now based in Huntington Park.

The head of the Sierra Club’s office in Los Angeles, Jim Blomquist, accepts much of the past criticism but said his group’s commitment to the city is genuine.

“I think it is a correct assessment that groups like the Sierra Club didn’t care. We had our heads in the clouds--and mountains,” he said. “I can understand the suspicions. But my answer is: Watch us: See if we’re not responding.”

Blomquist said that of the three national staff members assigned to Los Angeles, two are working on environmental justice issues.

That includes taking a second look at the ill-fated Belmont Learning Complex; fighting the expansion of Los Angeles International Airport and trying to stop the Irwindale development of a Lucent Technology semiconductor plant, which will house toxic gases--arsine and phosphine--near two schools and a neighborhood.

The Sierra Club has also joined in the fight for urban parks, including a political push for a project to build a huge open space in Baldwin Hills.

Sandwiched between Culver City, Inglewood and Los Angeles, the dusty hills in question have been pumped for oil, flooded by a dam that burst in 1964 and encroached on by numerous housing subdivisions.

But there is still a lot of space left, with striking views that stretch from the Pacific to the San Gabriel Mountains.

Legislation this year created a new state conservancy that will channel funds to conceivably buy up 1,200 acres in open space--enough to make a park larger than the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

The state has also allocated $32 million to buy the first 100 acres.

Conservationists and government officials alike consider the project one of the more significant in the dawning era of urban environmentalism in Los Angeles.

“That is going to be one of the most spectacular parks in America when it’s done, with its views and proximity to so many people,” said Dan Preece, a state park system land agent.

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A Proliferation of Parks

With an influx of money from state bond measures, officials are planning and creating parks, bikeways and nature habitats in the urban core like never before. From the Rio Hondo to the Tujunga Wash,

here are some of the projects planned for the region.

* Tujunga Wash

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy plans to use $3 million in county money to remove concrete and plant native trees along this Los Angeles River tributary.

* Taylor Yard

A 62-acre state park, proposed along the Los Angeles River near downtown. The project, with $45 million already earmarked for it, would be the first new state park in L.A.s urban core in 17 years.

* Confluence Park

A proposed park where the Arroyo Seco and the Los Angeles River meet.

* Baldwin Hills

Legislation passed this year created a state conservancy to steer funds to buy open space around the existing Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. More than $30 million is allocated to buy 100 acres, and conservationists are hoping to eventually accumulate 1,200 acres.

* Maywood parks

Pocket parks are being built by the Trust for Public Land on old industrial sites near Slauson Avenue. The city has one of the lowest ratios of park space to residents in the nation.

* Compton-Slauson

Nature Park

A $4.5-million nature habitat is being built by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy on a city storage yard in South-Central Los Angeles. It is scheduled to be completed in December.

* South Gate nature habitat and greenbelt

South Gate officials are trying to acquire land for a riparian habitat along the Los Angeles River and Rio Hondo near Imperial Boulevard. They are also proposing a greenbelt that would bisect the city and cross the river.

Sources: Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, Community Conservancy International, Trust for Public Land, city of South Gate