South L.A. among communities awarded state grants for climate projects
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San Bernardino
A group of residents in San Bernardino have been selected as recipients of the Climate Corps programs, which grant small- and large-scale projects in their communities to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.
Sidewalks have been planted in Santa Monica’s historic El Sereno district, and the San Bernardinos have begun building an underground storm sewer underneath a residential neighborhood in the city. The city awarded a $90,000 grant to the group for the project.
In the city, “The City of West Hollywood and the City of Los Angeles were also awarded grants,” said Eric Jaffe, executive director of the Los Angeles Environmental Law and Policy Center, which helped provide the city with the grants. “These grants are intended to provide low-cost, long-term solutions that can help the community, so they can continue to develop and invest in their areas,” he said. “Our role is to match the skills and resources of the larger community and bring them into the larger region.”
Los Angeles
For six years, a group of residents in West Hollywood have been working on storm water management at an apartment complex that now has a community garden. They hope the garden, which they named “The Green Acres,” will provide the community with a place to grow vegetables, as well as provide a new focus for the city’s water treatment efforts.
“We have always had a garden, but it’s been in a backyard,” said Paul Seidl, managing member of the West Hollywood Tenant Association, which helped prepare the grant proposal. “We wanted (The Green Acres) to be the first green space that’s in a neighborhood and not in the backyard but in the community. We wanted it to be more than a simple garden.”
The Green Acres project, which received a $500,000 award from the city, includes purchasing on-site water treatment equipment, and installing a series of stormwater capture systems to treat and divert runoff water from the apartment complex’s parking lot.
The Los Angeles Area Regional Commission has approved three more
