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incorporate EJ into public policies. In 1994, President Clinton issues the landmark Executive Order 12898—an exciting name, yes?— which requires all federal agencies to assess the environmental impact of their policies on minority and low-income communities. EJ is now a top EPA priority. Although EJ/mainstream tensions haven’t exactly disappeared, collaboration has become the norm more often than not. Even better, NRDC and others in the Group of 10 now passionately pursue EJ as integral to their mission.


What does the MRCA have to do with hazardous waste?


While initially EJ initiatives focused on pollution hotspots (Erin Brockovich, anyone?), they now tackle a host of environmental inequities—such as access to healthy food, vulnerability to climate change, and access to park space.


In most U.S. cities, affluent folks enjoy a lot more park space on average. In the L.A. region, that’s a disparity of just whopping proportions. You can walk a mile (or two!) in many low-income areas and not run into a single public park. These neighborhoods also enjoy a great deal less private green space than L.A.’s leafy affluent areas.


Healthy communities require parks. Plain and simple. We at the MRCA know that. Kids need outdoor places to play. Neighbors need places to gather. City folks need places to walk, run, hang out, and enjoy the air and sun. Parks clean up the air and capture and clean our stormwater. Everyone has a right to these indispensable social and ecological benefits. This makes the current budget cuts and outright closures a huge blow to sustainability, to the health of


individuals, and to the health of communities. And which is why the stunning lack of green space in L.A.’s lowest-income communities is—plain and simple—a blow to democracy.


How whopping are the disparities, exactly? Numbers, please.


We’ve all heard that L.A. generally has less park space per capita than most American cities. In the City of L.A., 8% of the land surface is public parks. In New York, it’s 20%. San Francisco? 18%. Boston and Portland? Both 16%. Altogether, only 29% of City of L.A. residents live within a quarter-mile of a public park.


Now look at that meager acreage by race and income. The affluent Westside enjoys 34 acres of park space for every 1000 people. East L.A. has 3.5 acres, and South Central has 1.2 acres. Neighborhoods that are predominantly white have 32 acres. African-American neighborhoods have 1.7 acres, and Latino areas have .6 acres. You hardly have to be a math whiz to know that’s a 50:1 ratio in white versus Latino neighborhoods. (Wolch et al., 2002)


That’s where the MRCA comes in.


In 1980, the statute that created the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy included one line that we take very seriously—that SMMC should “provide recreational access from downtown Los Angeles and the inner city...[to] all income and ethnic groups.”


We approach the dramatic inequities in park space in the L.A. region as a twofold problem. One, low- income and minority neighborhoods often lie too far from the wildlands


Making friends with bugs during a trip to the mountains.


A young boy stops to smell the Mariposa lily.


Augustus F. Hawkins Natural Park Photo by Karin Mueller


Winter 2012 5


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