Posted: October 6th, 2005

Keeping Historic Millard Canyon and Altadena Crest Trails Open for All

The Center for Law in the Public Interest, together with the private firms of Reed Smith and English Munger & Rice, have filed a lawsuit to preserve public access to the trails in historic Millard Canyon that begins in the Angeles National Forest and ends at the Arroyo Seco in Altadena. Property owners in the gated La Viña enclave have sought to cut off public access to the trails by posting “No Trespassing” signs and harassing hikers and equestrians. The suit names La Viña Homeowners Association, the County of Los Angeles, and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy as defendants. 

The trails have been used by the public for millennia, beginning with the Native Americans who traveled seasonally through the canyon from the mountains to the plains along the Arroyo Seco and the Los Angeles River. In the 1820s, Millard Canyon was known as Church Canyon because the lumber to build La Placita Catholic Church was brought from the canyon to the original Pueblo de Los Angeles, the birth place of the City. La Placita (now also known as Our Lady Queen of Angels Church) was the first church built in Los Angeles and is now in El Pueblo Historic Monument. Robert Owens, a slave who bought his freedom and moved to Millard Canyon around 1850, used local trails to get firewood and building materials down to the U.S. Army post near the Los Angeles harbor. Owen Brown, son of abolitionist John Brown, moved to Altadena after surviving his father’s raid on a government arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia in 1859. Owen Brown was buried on a peak overlooking Millard Canyon.

Plaintiffs Marietta Kruells and Karina Macías are members of the public and taxpaying residents of the County concerned with the obstruction of their right to access, use and travel on the open space and trails. 

The suit seeks to keep the trails open for all, and to preserve the rich historical and cultural legacy of Millard Canyon and the beauty of the site. Los Angeles is park poor. The trails are needed for hiking and horse back riding, to improve human health through recreation, to promote spiritual and environmental values of stewardship of the earth, and for equal access to public resources, whether or not one can afford to live in a secluded gated enclave. Plaintiff Save the Altadena Trails filed a similar suit on July 19, 2005, represented by the law firm of Monroe & Zinder. The County of Los Angeles also filed a suit on July 21, 2005.

Katrina and the Demographics of Destruction and Reconstruction

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Coast region need to be rebuilt in a sustainable and socially just way. It will cost well over $100 billion in federal funds to rebuild the region. The people who lived in the areas of New Orleans that were still flooded days after Hurricane Katrina struck were more likely to be black, have more children, earn less money, and be less educated than those in the rest of the city. People of color and low income communities disproportionately bear the burdens of the Katrina disaster, and disproportionately stand to loose out on the benefits of recovery and relief. 

Normal federal contracting rules have been largely suspended in the push to help people displaced by the storm and reopen New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The administration has already waived the federal law requiring prevailing wages be paid on construction projects underwritten by federal dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars in no bid contracts have been issued with more to come, and the region will be rebuilt with no guarantee that it will be done so in an environmentally friendly way.

The Center and Marc Brenman, Executive Director of  the Washington State Human Rights Commission, have developed recommendations to help ensure the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of reconstruction, while promoting democratic values of full information and full and fair public participation in the rebuilding process.

As Advocates Prepare to Sue, Coastal Commission Issues Cease and Desist Order Against Malibu Homeowners

The California Coastal Commission issued a Cease and Desist Order against the Trancas Property Owners Association in Broad Beach, Malibu, in August 2005, to prevent the continued use of illegal “private property” and “no trespassing” signs, fencing, and private security guards on all-terrain vehicles that harass and prevent the public from reaching the public beach. The Cease and Desist Order is long overdue, given the Broad Beach property owners’ long history of  fighting public access on Broad Beach. In June 2005, property owners in Broad Beach took the utterly astonishing step of using heavy equipment to remove sand from public land and pile it onto their property.                                                          
In a letter to the Coastal Commission concerned California residents Bernard Bruce, Carol Jacques, and Edwin Rosales, along with the Center for Law in the Public Interest, Environmental Law Foundation, and the private law firms of Hadsell & Stormer, Inc., and Kecker Van Nest, LLP, announced plans to file a lawsuit to enforce the public’s rights under the California Coastal Act, the California Constitution, and other California state laws if the Commission failed to issue the Cease and Desist Order to stop illegal signs, fencing, ATVs, and public harassment.

Bernard Bruce is the grandson of the original owners and developers of Bruces’ Beach in Manhattan Beach, the only beach resort in Southern California that allowed African Americans at a time when most parks, pools, hotels, and other recreation facilities were off-limits to people of color. As coastal land became more valuable and the Black population in Los Angeles increased – bringing more African Americans to Bruces’ Beach – so did White opposition to the Black beach. City officials pressured the Bruces to sell at prices below fair market value and prevailed through condemnation proceedings in the 1930s. Mr. Bruce has made a life-long commitment to ensure equal access to the beach.                         

Carol Jacques was a child when her family was forcibly evicted from Chavez Ravine, a bucolic Latino community near downtown Los Angeles through the 1950s. The City of Los Angeles forcibly evicted the residents of Chavez Ravine and destroyed their homes and way of life with promises of affordable housing. The City then broke its promises and sold the land to the Dodgers, who drowned Chavez Ravine in a sea of asphalt to build Dodger Stadium and 50,000 places for cars to park with not a single place for children to play. Ms. Jacques opposes the privatization of public space and is committed to equal access to public beaches for all.

Edwin Morales is a youth soccer coach with the Anahuak Youth Soccer Association. Every Friday evening or Saturday afternoon, Mr. Morales takes his ten 14 year-olds to the beach to exercise, train, and enjoy the ocean breezes and views. According to Mr. Morales, the children who live in Koreatown, Pico-Union, and other inner city communities did better in school, developed important leadership and interpersonal skills, and exhibited less behavioral problems once they began participating in organized sports. The weekly visits to the beach—which encourage the youths to have fun while they train— contribute to the students’ improved performance on and off the soccer field. Mr. Morales is committed to protecting the right of the children he coaches and others to public beaches for recreation, education, and fun.

National Park Service: Olmsted For a New Century

The National Park Service’s magazine, Common Ground, focuses on the influence of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted across the country in the summer 2005 issue. Sliced, diced, and in one case censured, the handiwork of Olmsted and his firm has survived and thrived in different mixes of geography, climate, politics, and history. Directors of three groups discuss why: Susan Rademacher of the Louisville Olmsted Parks Conservancy, Deborah Trimble of the Buffalo Parks Conservancy, and Robert García of the Center for Law in the Public Interest, who takes inspiration from an Olmsted plan that never was, but might be one day. As budgets shrink for urban parks, these organizations have been critical to carrying on the Olmsted legacy.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the 1930 Olmsted Report, Parks, Playgrounds and Beaches for the Los Angeles Region. The Olmsted Report recommended 71,000 acres of parkland, and another 92,000 acres in outlying areas, with 440 miles of connecting parks and parkways, including a parkway along the Los Angeles River. The Report proposed the joint use of parks, playgrounds, and schools to make optimal use of land and public resources, and called for the doubling of public beach frontage. The Center is working to renew part of the lost vision. The Olmsted map is available at www.clipi.org/ourwork/olmsted.html.

Healthy Children, Healthy Communities

Low income communities in urban areas are disproportionately denied the benefits of safe open spaces for physical activity in parks and schools and disproportionately suffer from diseases related to obesity and inactivity. Through advocacy and public education campaigns, legal services providers can help communities achieve equal access to schools, parks, and green spaces for healthy children and healthy communities.

The Center has published an article to help legal service providers improve human health and the quality of life for traditionally underserved communities through equal access to schools, parks, and green spaces. The article Healthy Children, Healthy Communities, and Legal Services, published in a special issue on Environmental Justice for Children in the Journal of Poverty Law and Policy by the National Center on Poverty Law and the Clearinghouse Review (May-June 2005), provides recommendations to incorporate human health, urban equity, and sustainable regional planning into legal services advocacy.

Robert García Resigns as Chairperson of LAUSD School Bond Oversight Committee

The Center’s Executive Director Robert García has resigned from the LAUSD School Bond Oversight Committee after serving five years as its Chairperson. During that time, new schools were built, older schools became less crowded, fewer children were bussed out of their neighborhoods to relieve overcrowding, more schools returned to traditional calendars, local jobs for local workers were created, contracts were awarded to small businesses, and hundreds of acres of land were environmentally restored. Since 2002, the district has completed 24 new schools, 23,423 new classroom seats, and more than 10,000 repair projects.
           
A Los Angeles Times editorial credited “dogged oversight” in part for the success of the school construction and modernization program. The Environmental Law Institute cited LAUSD as a national "best practice" example for sustainable new school construction with natural lighting, trees and grass, and renewable energy meeting CHPS (Collaborative for High Performance School) standards. What remains lacking at LAUSD is consensus on the values at stake in building schools for our children and our communities. Drop out rates of over 50% remain intolerably high. Achievement test scores are rising but still lag behind where they should be. 87% of children in LAUSD are not physically fit. Los Angeles needs to implement the joint and community use of school yards and parks to provide places for children to play. The School Board and the Superintendent have not yet adequately articulated the values at stake for public education in general, or how school construction and modernization advance those values. 

EPA Must Consider Race in Environmental Justice Strategic Plan

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has proposed eliminating the consideration of race and ethnicity in environmental justice matters in the EPA’s “Framework for Integrating Environmental Justice,” and “Environmental Justice Strategic Plan Outline” (Strategic Plan). The EPA’s Strategic Plan defines environmental justice as the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, national origin or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”  The concern lies in the word regardless. The field of environmental justice is based on the fact that people of color  and the poor are more affected by environmental problems than others. The appropriate approach is found in the California statutory definition of environmental justice: “Environmental justice means the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, and incomes with respect to the development, adoption, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”

The EPA must explicitly consider the impact of environmental laws, regulations, and policies on people of color and low income communities. The EPA cannot legitimately ignore race, ethnicity, color, national origin or income. The Center’s public comments overwhelmingly demonstrate the need for the EPA to consider the impact of environmental laws, regulations, and policies on people of color and low income communities. In response to public outcry, the EPA has agreed to hold local public hearings on its plans.  Visit the Center’s website at www.clipi.org for regular updates.