Recreational Opportunities by Jill Shakoor

In Los Angeles, the center of trends, being green is suddenly the latest fad. It seems people are seen as nobodies unless they drive a Prius, use energy efficient light bulbs, or wear T-shirts that blatantly express how they feel being cool means buying green.

However, is doing these newly hip eco-friendly things the only thing that goes into saving the environment? Taking care of natural surroundings doesn’t just lie in conserving energy. “When communities can work together in helping preserve the nature and wildlife around them that is just amazing,” Northeast Trees outreach director Nidia Garcia said.

The Los Angeles River is an example of a neglected resource that gets taken for granted everyday by residents of the LA area. When LA residents are told there is a river in they often respond with “we have an LA river?”


According to the American Lung Association 2008 Air Report, Los Angeles and Long Beach rank second for worst short-term particle-pollution, and first for both worst year-round particle pollution and worst ozone pollution. This ranking indicates that residents of Los Angeles need to start taking care of their environment.

However, the extraordinary number of people residing in LA makes it hard to get everyone to help in cleaning the natural surroundings of the city. “It is challenging to get people to come out, but we’re trying to build a mechanism so that local neighborhoods and groups that are really set up for working and volunteering can really help communities keep their areas beautiful,“ Garcia said. “It’s great to see residents of such an urbanized city realize they can also enjoy the green life.”



The city finally deciding to implement the Master Revitalization Plan for the river offers vast opportunities for communities to take action in stopping the problems they contribute to their neighborhoods. “We want the public to know it starts with them; the cigarette butts they drop, the trash they leave laying around,” Diego Cadena , County Public Works deputy director said on a Dominguez Gap website. “They are a key component to water quality and helping solve the problem.”

Organizations such as Northeast Trees, Friends of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR), Rivers and Mountains Conservancy (RMCA), have all contributed to the parks and their cleanliness. The common denominator between these organizations is the desire to help communities conserve their natural resources and create outdoor recreation opportunities near their homes. “The environment movement is so popular now, it is basically trendy,” said Alisha Katano, FoLAR’s education coordinator. “The different organizations, including us, and the city are doing a lot of work to make sure people become more cautious with how they treat their communities. And it’s working. People are finally starting to realize that we don’t have an unlimited supply of natural resources, and it shows in the participants we get for each cleanup.”

Organized cleanups from FoLAR bring out “everyone from individual neighbors in the area, neighborhood councils, schools and universities, corporations, musicians, photographers, and other environmental organizations,” Katano said. They held four cleanups the past year, in total bringing out somewhere between 3,800-3,900 volunteers. “Last year in total we pulled 38,000 pounds of trash,” Katano reported. “We are working on increasing the attendance for the May cleanups at the moment”.

FoLAR is not the only organization working hard to preserve the parks and areas surrounding the river. “There is passive and active recreation, we are building passive,” Northeast Trees Nidia Garcia said. “Northeast Trees is in charge of maintaining and restoring 25 parks, all mini parks. They are all built with the idea that recreation can be more than an active play space. The mini parks we restore serve as a filter. They are a place to play, they have air/water quality benefit, and habitat restoration benefit.”



Organizations like RMCA have funded over a dozen projects that involve raising money through funds and getting the support of the city to purchase properties to create parks that serve both as river gateways and recreational areas for everyone to enjoy, according to representatives of the organization.

“It took a long time and a lot of hard work both in getting the support of the people and raising enough money to create what is now adding to all of the communities alongside the river, but it was well worth everything that has come out of it,” Executive Officer of RMCA Belinda Faustinos said.

The Maywood Riverfront Project showed that even an industrial city like Maywood could have open facilities and parks. “The Maywood Riverfront Project was definitely our biggest one so far. We were able to take nasty industrial type facilities out of the overly dense city and replace them with a park which allow people to have access to river corridor and Los Angeles gateway,” Faustinos said.

In a press release announcing the approval of the Maywood Riverfront Project, Mayor Samuel Peña said “I want to assure the residents of Maywood that we will do everything possible to save these critical funds. The residents of the Southeast area have waited over 12 years for the completion of this project and it will be a landmark addition to the LA River and to the City of Maywood.”

The Dominguez Gap Project north of Long Branch also contributed to getting people to become more aware with the wildlife that habitat in the river. “While developing the parks we tried to bring back some of the plants that these native habitants were used to and so many of the animals who used to live at the river came back,” RMCA Faustino said. “Residents were amazed at the amount of wildlife living in the River, so this project served as a dual purpose.”

“We brought back the native plants to the different species of birds who are now engaged back in the space. They are coming back because of the rebirth of plants that they were used to thanks to what they put in the new parks,” Northeast Trees Garcia said.

“People are now becoming more aware of the wildlife that inhabits their communities with them,” Garcia said. “More people are open to the idea of a passive place to rest when they know that large crowds may not gather there but many species will and begin to flourish. Also, more of these types of parks are being built and they have become to standard in building as opposed to the traditional turf grass and nonnative plants that require much care and money.”

“These new parks are creating a sense of empowerment and pride in community,” Garcia said. “The way the plan has been shown through workshops is giving people a say in things they would like to see revitalized and how they would like to see them implemented.” “There are about five to ten new projects in the works currently, and the open recreational green land throughout the city will continue to increase,” Faustino of RMCA said.