By Jean-Paul Renaud
The City of San Fernando sits at the epicenter of climate change — vulnerable to the deadly effects of extreme heat as well as the devastating effects of droughts.
But the City also serves as a model of how, if a community works together and applies research-based solutions, the effects of a changing climate can be contained and even reversed.
Since 2019, TreePeople’s Calles Verdes project, an initiative supported by the California State Coastal Conservancy and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, has worked to create a sustainable and green San Fernando – a city ranked in the top 15 percent for exposure to pollution burden.
“We are overhauling the way we think about infrastructure and public health given our new climate reality,” said Cindy Montañez, TreePeople CEO (who also is a City Councilmember). “Planting trees and protecting our groundwater needs to be central for economic revitalization and long-term resilience of our neighborhoods.”
With the help of hundreds of community volunteers, 500 trees have been planted since 2019 and 500 residential fruit trees have been distributed. The project aims to plant a total of 1,000 trees by the end of 2023.
But with severe drought concerns on the horizon, San Fernando is ground zero for not only extreme heat, experiencing an annual average of 54 days above 95°F, but also for water scarcity. The city sits above a critical groundwater aquifer, which is increasingly threatened by climate change.
Volunteers and TreePeople staff have already planted 500 new trees in the City of San Fernando since 2019.
The Calles Verdes project would implement a broad suite of stormwater capture practices to reduce polluted runoff and advance water supply through infiltration to the underlying aquifer. In addition, the ambitious expansion of the City’s tree canopy will promote urban cooling, absorb greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality.
Based on design plans to retrofit key areas of San Fernando, the Calles Verdes project will capture more than 21 million gallons of stormwater each year, and the trees planted by Calles Verdes will remove an estimated 3 million pounds of greenhouse gasses and other harmful pollutants from the air, helping to improve air quality and combat climate change.
Surrounded by three freeways (I-5, I-210 and SR-118), the City is also threatened by poor air quality and public health concerns. The County of Los Angeles’ most recent study ranked San Fernando 90th out of 103 cities for life expectancy.
Effective stormwater management is critical to sustain access to local water supply as well as to prevent polluted runoff to regional waterways — a key priority for TreePeople and the Calles Verdes project.
Every year in Los Angeles, 85 percent of the city’s water is pumped in from the San Joaquin Delta and the Colorado River. As our water sources continue to be impacted by the effects of the worsening drought and climate change, it is imperative that we conserve and protect our water supply.
If the region gets its average of 14 inches of rain in a year, that would mean an equivalent of around 21 percent of the city’s annual water use as rainwater. Unfortunately, this water ends up doing more harm than good as it runs across streets, sidewalks, yards and roofs, it picks up chemicals, waste, trash and debris that pollutes our rivers and oceans.
This is known as urban runoff, and the pollutants that are carried in our stormwater affect all of our communities, especially those already disproportionately impacted by polluting industries which we know are more often in underrepresented communities of color.
The good news: unlike most cities in Los Angeles County, San Fernando is located over a functioning groundwater aquifer, which means that infiltrating stormwater not only reduces polluted runoff to local waterways, but also adds to the region’s water supply, building a sustainable and secure local water source for years to come.
But the recent drought has taken a heavy toll on the City’s water supply, and its traditional independence from imported water from the Colorado River is gravely and increasingly threatened by the changing climate. Effective stormwater management strategies are urgently needed to sustain local water reliability as well as to mitigate polluted runoff to regional waterways.
The Calles Verdes project would provide an abundance of benefits, including carbon sequestration, air quality improvement and stormwater management. Estimated benefits include: 1.8 million kWh of electricity saved and 21 million gallons of rainfall intercepted and captured for future use.
“The City of San Fernando will be the model TreePeople points to as proof that our research-based approach to addressing the effects of climate change can improve lives and help heal our planet,” Montañez said.
Renaud is the director of marketing and communications for the TreePeople nonprofit environmental organization.