Sun Valley has long been one of the most flood-prone parts of the city. In the ‘80s and '90s when it rained, news crews would head there for the most dramatic shots. The largely working-class, Latino neighborhood in the northeast San Fernando Valley is also a pollution hotspot, with landfills, auto shops and heavy industry nestled amid homes.
At the same time, as the climate crisis leads to hotter droughts, more intense rainstorms and less reliable snow — traditionally our largest source of drinking water — L.A. desperately needs to become more like a sponge.
That will help to capture more stormwater locally when rain does come and lessen devastating flooding, said Edith de Guzman, a UCLA water equity and climate adaptation researcher.
“We’ve created a problem because we have paved a large majority of the area,” de Guzman said. “What used to be porous is not porous.”
In Sun Valley, an effort to address flooding, the need to capture more stormwater and add much-needed green space is decades in the making.
Rory Shaw was a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles who was killed after floodwaters swept him into a giant sinkhole that opened up on Tujunga Avenue during a 2005 storm. At that time, Sun Valley had no flood control or storm drains.
Flood alleviation projects in Sun Valley over the years, including this one that we profiled last year, have significantly helped, but the climate crisis could hurt that progress as storms are only expected to grow more intense when they do come.
The Rory M. Shaw Wetlands Park Project will turn a 46-acre landfill formerly used for materials such as concrete and gravel into an engineered wetland that can boost local water supply and alleviate local flooding. It’ll also become a 15-acre park with a lake and walking paths. It's one of several projects (including one we profiled last year) in the area that aims to address flooding. But it's the only one that will add such a large new green space.
The project will capture stormwater in the lake, then allow that water to seep into a 10-acre “wetland” that will filter pollutants. That stormwater can then be pumped underground into the neighboring Sun Valley Park, which was retrofitted in 2006 with huge underground chambers that filter water into the groundwater basins to be treated and used for drinking water later. That project has helped significantly to reduce flooding in the area, according to community members and the county.
But the largest benefit of the Rory Shaw project is adding significant green space in a neighborhood that sorely lacks it.
“This is not a luxury project for us. This is a must,” said Mariam Moore, who lives next to the former landfill and serves on the Sun Valley Neighborhood Council Board.
This is not a luxury project for us. This is a must.
Sun Valley has some of the least green space in the entire county, so outside of its ability to capture stormwater and help with flooding, the new park would go far in improving quality of life and helping to cool the community amid rising heat.
Planning for the project first began in earnest in the early 2000s. The timeline was always long — if all had gone according to plan, it could have been done by 2019 or 2020, according to L.A.'s 2015 Stormwater Capture Master plan. The project’s potential to rectify environmental injustice and disinvestment of the past has led to a long list of supporters throughout the years, from former County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky to former City Councilmember Nury Martinez to current U.S. congressman Tony Cárdenas and current County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath.
In response to a request for comment from LAist, Current District 6 council member Imelda Padilla stated, "This project is something that my neighbors in Sun Valley have anticipated and deserved for a very long time. As Councilmember, I am committed to looking at any and all strategies to accelerate this long overdue project."
But for now, the site of the future park remains a massive open dirt pit, right next to a neighborhood.
The first major delay came in 2014, when the project broke ground and food waste and other organic materials producing methane were discovered in the landfill, which was supposed to only have materials such as concrete and gravel. The county covered and sealed the methane leak, then had to entirely redesign the project to include a methane capture system. Construction had to be pushed, with a new completion date of around 2025.
But now, the biggest barrier to completing the project is funding, said Mark Pestrella, the director of L.A. County Department of Public Works, which is spearheading the project (after it’s constructed, the city of L.A. will take over maintenance). The new goal is to complete it by 2028 or 2029.
“Our timelines have been getting pushed out because we do not currently have the funding to complete the project,” Pestrella said.
The pandemic drove up material and labor costs, which is why roughly $180 million dollars is still needed, Pestrella said. So far, L.A. County has already invested more than $86 million in the project (a chunk of that was purchasing the former landfill for $28 million). Proposition O and Measure W are providing $27,800,000. In total, the project is expected to add up to around $240 million.
The ongoing funding challenge is why many longtime members of the community — who have suffered the most from the landfill and other nearby industries’ pollution — worry they’ll never benefit from the project.
73-year-old Maria Luisa Lopez Jacquez has lived in a corner house right across from the former landfill for more than 40 years. She made her living selling tamales and burritos in Sun Valley Park across from her home. She said her house is always dusty and she has to put up plastic on her windows to block the dust from the former landfill at times.
“And that doesn't matter, all the dirt goes in my guest house, in my house, everywhere,” she said.
For years, she knocked on doors and reached out to local city and county leaders to get something done about the dust, the many trucks driving in the area and other pollution from the landfill and its neighboring recycling facility. She watched as her grandsons and other local kids suffered from nosebleeds, headaches and breathing issues after playing in the park. She herself has asthma and other health issues she attributes to living near the landfill and recycling plant for so long.
“This problem is for a long, long, long time,” Lopez Jacquez said, shaking her head.
When she first heard about the Rory Shaw project in 2008, she was excited things might finally change. But now, she’s lost hope it’ll be done within her lifetime.
They just promise and they don't do nothing ... We worked so hard for this. I’m tired.
“They just promise and they don't do nothing,” Lopez Jacquez said, tears coming to her eyes. “After that, they don't want to talk to us. We worked so hard for this. I’m tired.”
It’s an emotional topic for many people in the community.
Moore lives on the other side of the park from Lopez Jacquez in a house also right across from the former landfill. She has worked with Lopez Jacquez to engage the community with the project, and having only moved in a few years ago, has brought a new energy to fighting for it to get done, especially in her role on the Sun Valley Neighborhood Council Board.
“We pay taxes for these funds to be available for projects like this,” Moore said.
Furthermore, Moore said mitigation measures are needed now, such as more security at the site, cleaning up trash along the perimeter, addressing ongoing dust issues, better maintaining fencing, and adding sidewalks and improved drainage to surrounding streets, which quickly turn into lakes even in mild rain. She, Lopez Jacquez and others in the community see the lack of investment as a form of environmental racism.
We feel like we're third-class citizens and we don't matter.
“Because Rory Shaw has been taking so long for this community, it impacts us severely,” Moore said. “We feel like we're third-class citizens and we don't matter. If this project was somewhere else in the city, it would have been completed 10 years ago.”
In an interview with LAist, Pestrella acknowledged he’s not satisfied with his department’s engagement with community members in recent years, and promised to regain their trust through more public meetings this year. He also said the county will double down on maintaining the site now, mitigating dust and cleaning trash and graffiti at the perimeter, and potentially adding lighting and security patrol.
“I agree that the site is becoming somewhat of a nuisance,” Pestrella said. “More needs to be done to get the site into a condition so that it doesn't become a blight on community, that we make sure that there's no trash on site, we control the dust on the site. We’re gonna treat it with a lot more attention. They’re gonna see a big investment in an interim solution.”
“We pretty much just need to secure the site as if it's going to sit in this condition for some time until we can secure the funding,” Pestrella added.
As for shortening the timeline to actually getting the project done, Pestrella said it’s unlikely, but that he’s prioritizing getting the needed funding. He said the department has applied for grants for the project from the Biden Administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and is pushing for funding from the state.
It is a priority. My biggest regret is we can’t get it going faster.
“It is a priority,” Pestrella said. “My biggest regret is we can’t get it going faster.”
“We’d like to make this our shining star for the Olympics, frankly,” he added. “It's an example of what can be done anywhere in an urbanized area.”
Meanwhile, he urged community members to report any issues at the site to the county.
At this point, the project is proof that even with the support of the community and local, state and even federal leaders, it can be really difficult to get these kinds of long-term projects done.
“It takes a long time to undo what we did in the past,” said de Guzman, the UCLA researcher.
For now, all residents such as Lopez Jacquez and Moore can do is continue to wait and push for the promises to be fulfilled.
