Amidst an intense heat wave, officials from the City of San Fernando and the nonprofit Pacoima Beautiful held the grand opening of the Pacoima Wash Greenway, meant to transform the corridor into something greener and more climate-resilient for the community.
Located right next to Cindy Montañez Natural Park, the greenway comes with new landscaping, shrubs, trees, and bioswale improvements to the bike path that connects to the Pacoima Wash Pedestrian Bridge.
The project was funded through a $3.5 million grant awarded to Pacoima Beautiful by the Bezos Earth Fund in 2023.
Veronica Padilla-Campos, executive director of Pacoima Beautiful, said the project began 17 years ago in a vision plan, and at first, it was hard to get the community interested in it. But after years of work, they have transformed what she described as an underused concrete channel into a “vibrant community space” where people can safely connect with nature.
“This project represents what happens when community members lead with love for their neighborhood,” Padilla-Campos said. “It means safer connections to parks, to schools and homes. It means more shade, more beauty and more places for our bodies to move and more opportunities for our children to grow up, seeing that they deserve clean, green, welcoming spaces right here in the Northeast Valley.
“This is part of our vision to see the tree canopy increase, to see our youth contributing to the maintenance … and be able to also support the groundwater and then help clean our air,” she added. “It’s all connected. These green spaces mean so much to the overall environment of our community.”
City of San Fernando Councilmember Mary Mendoza said that as they celebrate their progress, they must also remember the loss of Elias “Eli” Rodriguez. In February 2017, the 14-year-old student who got swept up and drowned in the rushing water moving in the Pacoima Wash during a horrific storm that would last for days, making the search difficult.
Students used the wash as a shortcut walking back and forth from school to their neighborhood homes.
The teen’s body was found a week later, miles away in the Los Angeles River in Los Feliz. After his death, efforts were made to build a bike path and install fencing along the Pacoima Wash, as well as the construction of the Pacoima Wash Pedestrian Bridge.
“Eli’s tragic passing in the Pacoima Wash reminds us why making this corridor safer, greener and better connected is so important,” Mendoza said. “His memory continues to live on through the work and improvements taking place here. … We are grateful for the investment that has already been made, and we hope to continue building on this progress together for future generations.”
Norma Edith García-Gonzalez, director of the LA County Department of Parks and Recreation, said the Pacoima community experiences at least 50 days of 100-degree heat annually. If we want to fight climate change and create green spaces, she continued, then it has to be done one project at a time, one community at a time.
“This is a reminder that we can do it if we all come together,” García-Gonzalez said. “We need to make sure that other projects throughout Los Angeles County … don’t take 17 years.”