A greener future opens up

A new park will open in 2014 where once there was just industrial space.

For decades, it has been just another big, concrete L.A. channel, a place known mainly for the unfortunate passersby who have had to be rescued there during winter rains.

But the hardworking Pacoima Wash has been getting a makeover lately, and this week, the Board of Supervisors approved the finishing touches for a 4.75-acre park that will give yet another neighborhood along the tributaries and banks of the Los Angeles River a welcome sliver of green.

“I think it’s going to be good,” said Bertha Macias, a stay-at-home mom in San Fernando on Tuesday as her 4 year old, Benjamin, ran back and forth between the fence and the walkway of her tiny front yard a block from the soon-to-be-opened Pacoima Wash Eighth Street Park.

A mother of three, Macias said her dense neighborhood has far too little open space for the number of children who live there. “I think it will be good for the kids to go to in the afternoons after school,” she said in Spanish. “They’ll watch less television if they can go to a park.”

Due to open in early 2014, the park, which runs between Eighth Street and Foothill Boulevard in the City of San Fernando, marks yet another bit of progress, both for its community and for the long-term movement to re-green the Los Angeles River and its various branches in L.A.. 

Constructed in the 1940s as a 10-mile-long flood control channel, the Pacoima Wash is a tributary of the Tujunga Wash, which in turn is a tributary of the Los Angeles River. When it rains, its industry-lined banks typically fill with trash and polluted runoff.

A filtering system beneath this placita will help clean storm runoff before it reaches the wash.

Historically, it has been viewed as a purely utilitarian conduit for inland water, and it has been fenced off from the dense, park-starved communities that abut it, dividing them like a freeway. But in 2005, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority acquired several parcels of land along the channel. And in 2008, with the help of a Los Angeles County Department of Public Health grant, a coalition led by the grassroots environmental nonprofit Pacoima Beautiful launched an initiative to reimagine the wash as a place that might not only do a better job of filtering storm water, but also double as an urban greenbelt.

“These communities are, in a lot of ways, park-poor and in need of nature and green space,” said Ana Petrlic, deputy chief of urban projects and watershed planning for MRCA.  “And bringing nature to the city is a primary goal of MRCA.”

Indeed, according to Pacoima Beautiful, the community of Pacoima alone has only about a quarter of the park space it should have under the City of Los Angeles’ general plan standards. Meanwhile, one in four residents suffers from heart disease and 29% of the young people are obese. 

The MRCA acreage has been combined with land owned by the Los Angeles County Flood Control District to create the first of what MRCA envisions as a series of parks along the wash. Nearly complete, the Pacoima Wash Eighth Street Park, designed by the Los Angeles environmental design firm Blue Green, will feature a small loop trail, a pair of quaint bridges, an arbor for shade and some picnic tables and benches.

“There are great views of the mountains and the Angeles National Forest,” said Petrlic, “and native plants for habitat for the local wildlife.” Built into the park’s design is a system to detain and treat storm water runoff, which will enter the site underneath two small circular plazas—one at Eighth Street, the other at Bromont Avenue—that are equipped with underground filters to catch trash. From there, the water will flow into a newly constructed creek bed that runs parallel to the wash, where it will be further cleansed of pollutants.

“And,” Petrlic said, “that’s all before the water actually reaches the wash.”

This week, the Los Angeles County Supervisors voted to take the greening effort up a notch. They approved a $100,000 grant from Third District park funds to add about 150 new trees to make the now spare-looking space a bit more inviting.

“This is a good thing,” said Manuel Franco of Pacoima, an MRCA worker, as he checked sprinkler heads Tuesday along the greenbelt. “Good for this area. Good for families.”

An arbor, surrounded by trees, shades a grassy spot.

Posted 9/12/13