The Friends in the community--an evolving mission

Jim Odling is the president and chair of the Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area. He recently sat down with RFTC to talk about the organization, its current activities, and what the future holds.

The Friends and its mission have evolved over time, Jim said. The organization was started specifically as a community response to the problematic nature of the San Gabriel River Discovery Center water museum project--destructive of the very thing it was supposedly intended to showcase, driven by agency agendas rather than community needs. But since then, Jim continued, the mission has evolved to prioritize also the public's access to outdoor recreation and to protecting the public's money from wasteful spending. 

Many on the group's board and among its supporters are longtime volunteers at the Whittier Narrows Natural Area and Nature Center, or simply enthusiastic visitors. Yet much of the group's work has extended to uncovering and bringing to the attention of government officials the more troubling details of the project that its proponents, perhaps out of their own enthusiasm or perhaps at times from more cynical motives, have glossed over.

For example, the Friends alerted State Parks officials to the grave inaccuracies in the Discovery Center Authority's application for $10 million in bond money for nature education projects--which would have thrown away on the ill-conceived water museum. Jim and others believe that it was the Friends' communication with State Parks--in combination with the Friends' lawsuit at the time--that convinced State Parks to reject the application and send the money to other, more worthy and promising projects.

Today, because of the efforts of the Friends, as well as others,the public still enjoys free access to the natural area and to the cherished nature center. The wildlife sanctuary, recognized by groups like Audubon and the county as a rich and important biological resource, is, as Jim says, "close and free, and the trails available to the public as long as the gates are open."

It's important for people, especially kids, "to get dirty, to see things that are not repeatable," Jim says. Judging by the numbers of student groups--including even preschoolers--that have been visiting the natural area and nature center recently, the community may be experiencing just those things.

As for the future, Jim said that the group is continuing its efforts to protect the natural area. A proposal made by the volunteer docents association for a renovation of the existing nature center or a new center of the same size was well received by county recreation department officials, he said. And the group continues to communicate with local and state officials about the problems with the current Discovery Center proposal.

And the group is also engaged in the processes surrounding other proposals tied to nature and outdoor recreation that could have significant impacts on the local community. These include the Emerald Necklace trails project and the National Park Service's San Gabriel Watershed and Mountains Resource Study.

Involvement on the part of the Friends in such conversation is the common thread that ties the organization and its priorities to the community and its well being.  

It's not just about bicycle trails and horse paths -- it's about democracy and accountability too

A scoping meeting April 3 reintroduced Southern California's proposed Emerald Necklace project to communities near the San Gabriel and Rio Hondo rivers. According to environmental reporter Steve Scauzillo, the proposal was greeted with some skepticism.

The project is a plan for "interconnected bike, running and equestrian paths along the two rivers, from Peck Road Water Conservation Park in Arcadia on the north end to Whittier Narrows Recreational Area on the south end," Scauzillo writes. 

Such greening of heavily industrialized areas it can be agreed is, in and of itself, a good thing. So, Scauzillo asks, "how can people be against connecting bike lanes to river trails? Or adding a small park near the San Gabriel River?" 

He wonders whether the resistance he observed was a matter of "people conditioned to being against everything in CEQA." 

We at the Friends have tremendous respect for Steve, his reporter's eye, and his great writing. But in this case we wonder if he missed the larger issue at play -- that of concerns about democracy, transparency and accountability to the people.

People have come to understand -- rightly, in our experience with the Discovery Center project and other environmental matters -- that the CEQA process and other such meetings are often little more that ways in which government serves the interest of the powerful while either taking advantage of communities or tossing them a few easy scraps.

The Emerald Necklace is a project of the Watershed Conservation Authority, one of four supposedly independent agencies all run by the same individual. The state's department of finance criticized such arrangements in 2009 in these same agencies but the situation hasn't changed. Except to show a lack of accountability and consequences.

But the WCA and its parent Rivers and Mountains Conservancy are only two examples of power getting farther and farther away from the people. As Kevin Uhrich, of the Pasadena Weekly pointed out regarding the powerful county MTA, it is "but one of many such boards that make monumental decisions, recommend spending lots of money and forward critical recommendations to other governing boards, yet are populated by nothing but already elected officials, who are paid stipends and other perks for their 'extra service.'"

More paths along these rivers is a good thing, but you could hardly do further damage to the rivers at this point, encased as they are in concrete for much of their courses.

Not so for natural stretches of the Santa Clara River in the north, which developers and their allies in government want to channelize so they can build more houses, make more profit, and exchange more campaign and lobbying dollars for access and influence.

The question isn't "Why are people opposed to bike trails?" The question is, as Uhrich wrote, "how to use the instruments of democracy that we have available to make our present system stronger, more inclusive and representative, and better.

We wish the Emerald Necklace project great success. And we wish the communities it is supposed to serve the representative and responsive government that is so often lacking.