No community support for M Discovery Center at EIR meeting

Project that would demolish existing nature center and destroy wildlife habitat in Whittier Narrows is roundly criticized. Natural Area is ‘my Yosemite,’ says one speaker.

SOUTH EL MONTE, Calif. (June 29, 2009) — Residents of area communities and supporters of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area strongly criticized and rejected a controversial million regional watershed visitor center proposed for the county Natural Area during a public meeting held Wednesday at South El Monte High School to discuss the project and its recently released draft environmental impact report.

No member of the community spoke in favor of the proposal during the meeting.

The project, the San Gabriel River Discovery Center, would dramatically increase the human footprint within the only wildlife sanctuary on the San Gabriel River, located between the Montebello and Puente Hills. It would replace the existing 2,000-square-foot nature center with a building nearly 10 times bigger, and it would destroy important wildlife habitat within a county Significant Ecological Area to build a 150-car parking lot and other manmade features.

The project is being pushed by a four-agency joint powers authority, which consists of two municipal water districts, a state conservancy and the county department of parks and recreation.

After a summary of the project and the EIR given by county staff and employees of the firm that prepared the report, 12 individuals spoke during the meeting’s public comment period.

Citing a wide-range of concerns, the speakers questioned not only the conclusions drawn by the report and its methodology but many of the assumptions and objectives underlying the discovery center project.

Jessica Olive Nava, of Pico Rivera, said she took exception with the characterization of local residents as underserved and disadvantaged. Rather, Nava said, she felt privileged to live so close to the Natural Area.

“I feel the Natural Area is my Yosemite,” she said. “I have found that it is not only a sanctuary for wildlife but for myself as well as many others.”

Nava and other speakers also expressed concern about the possible loss of existing outdoor education and recreation programs and opportunities.

“I have seen beautiful birds, colorful butterflies, flowers and families having lunch” at the Natural Area, Nava said.

Susan McLean said many school-age children visit the Natural Area, “seeing for the first time what wildlife looks like up close.”

They can “walk on a trail, hear an owl hooting high up in the tree, see a hawk circling in the updraft and, if they are lucky, watch one swoop down from the sky to fetch its next meal,” she said.

Other speakers criticized the proposal on its likely high costs for construction, operation and maintenance; its probable introduction of user fees; and the failure of discovery center member agencies to look at more economical alternatives.

Julio Bermejo, of San Gabriel, said that it was unlikely that member agencies would be able or willing to fully pay the costs of the discovery center as claimed in the EIR and that fees likely would be charged, as they are in other areas of the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area and at some county museums.

“If fees are introduced,” he said, “access will be reduced to the community."

Henrietta Correa Salazar and Michael Barba, both of Pico Rivera, said existing water education programs in southeast Los Angeles County and in Orange County showed that the discovery center is unnecessary.

Correa Salazar showed colorful inserts from the local daily newspaper that discussed local watersheds and encouraged water conservation. “All they need now is a mobile exhibit, and you’ve got the discovery center,” she said.

Barba said three Orange County and Los Angeles County water agencies are successfully using a mobile water education program to reach tens of thousands of students in their schools.

In FY 2008, two municipal water districts used the program to provide science education to approximately 90,000 students. In FY 2009, the third water company joined the mobile education program, and the goal was increased to 110,000 students.

The discovery center would see a maximum of 25,000 students annually, according to the EIR.

Other speakers said they did not see the sense in building a nature center that would destroy the nature the facility is supposed to interpret and open to the community.

The criticism echoed the views of the county’s Significant Ecological Areas Technical Advisory Committee, which said “there is an irony in ripping out nature to make it available.”

On May 5, 2008, the committee rejected the discovery center proposal as being “incompatible” with the Whittier Narrows SEA, criticizing the size and location of the project and the apparent failure to consider alternative sites adequately.

Maria Sauceda, of El Monte, told Wednesday’s audience and county and Discovery Center Authority staff that she questioned the joint powers authority’s commitment to meeting the needs and desires of the community.

She said the community had expressed its opposition to the project on previous occasions, but that it appears to be proceeding in spite of the community’s wishes.

“You hear all the public comments: ‘Don’t do this,’ ‘Leave it alone,’ ‘Let it be,’” she said. “Are you really listening to the public, or is it just what the agencies want to do and not hear what the people say who live here?”

The public comment period for the discovery center EIR closes on Aug. 3, 2009.

This article is a bunch of BS written by the ringleader of the anti-discovery center group, named Jim Odling.

The "friends" are a bunch of elderly and generally white people who work or volunteer at the existing center, and are afraid of change as well as losing their own little private sanctuary. I say private because the current center is inadequately staffed, does very little outreach and underserved the urban areas it surrounds. Because of the mentioned issues with the current center, hundreds of thousands of local youth have no clue about the center, including the majority of South El Monte HS students right across the street, and every other school in the area.

The proposed discovery center was created to adequately handle the large amount of locals int he area, the need for local schools to expose their students to nature and watershed education, and to create a level of environmental equity by creating an expanded educational amenity for the local urbanized communities whose resdients are often underexposed to natural resources to visit.

The current center is pitifully small, run by cranky elderly docents who act rude to local teens, and is basically falling apart from neglect. Nobody in the community knows about it, which is exactly why the new center was proposed. The current center is also so small that it often cant handle the amount of students a decent school field trip contains, meaning that local residents from the working class minority communites surrounding the center are actually being denied exposure to nature by the refusal of this group to allow creation of an expanded center that can handle the existing local needs.

BTW, instead of making up overemotional pleas that either dismiss or purposely leave out crucial aspects of the project, how about proerly informing locals abou the issue. Or is this a continuation of the Nature center's tradition of underserving and misleading locals in order to further the agenda of a few elderly docents?

How about letting us know how big the new discovery center will be in relation to the entire nature preserve, instead of making an overemotional and sensationalist plea that this new center will somehow destroy the ability to view nature? The new center will add a couple dozen thousand square feet of badly needed educational space to a nature preserve that is thousands of acres big, on land that is currently degraded and neglected and the least conducive to endangered species in the whole sanctuary.

The new center will replace the old parking lot with a much more ecofriendly porous lot with native trees and landscaping, as well as educational components. The new center will replace the environmentally degraded and neglected area of the property, right behind the exisitng facilities, that is full of invasive species and trash and serves little purpose. The are the new center will expand upon is less than 5% of the nature preserve, on land that is already degraded and currently unkempt, which is indicative of the inept stewardship of the supposed "friends" group.

I am a local resident who is concerned about access to natural resources and environmental justice, and have no ties to either side of this debate. My concern is that the community is adequately served by its resources, and the current nature center does not provide that. In fact, my initial interest onthe issue was raised by the fact that i have frequented just about every part of whittier narrows yet had never heard of or been to the nature center, despite living nearby all my life and actually working in the science dept of the highschool across the street. When I asked my science class kids about the center, they all noted how the cranky elderly doecnts kick kids out all the time for no reason, and that is basically all they know of it, this continued with each class I had.

I actually agreed with the "friends" about the parking lot size and how kids should not be pushed indoors to learn about the outdoors, until I studied the facts from both sides. My first alarm signal was the fact that the "friends" relied on half truths and childish antics to push their agenda. Here are a few (some in this article) half truths or lies:

-The center is a shrine of self gratification to local public institutions, when in reality the new center was created out of a need to create environmental equity, that equity being local residents reciving a center that can adequately serve them and educate them on watersheds and the environment. The goal of the new center is to adequatley serve the educational needs of the local community, i believe the institutional gratification lie is a bit of projection by the "friends", who themselves are trying to stop a project that would expand access of nature to locals so that they may keep their bit of private paradise specifically because the existing facilities are inadequate. Sounds like personal gratification to me by the "friends".

-The new center will destroy natural habitat, that habitat being an environmentally degraded backlot behind the existing buildings, which is overun by invasive species to begin with and is the least natural portion of the entire property. Big half truth there, why not describe what areas will be lost to the new center honestly?

-The ability to view and experience nature will be diminished by the new center. The new center will occupy less than 5% of the property, that includes the area currently occupied by the exisiting center and the parking lot. Over 95% of the existing nature reserve, almost all of the natural area, will be left untouched, and in fact, native landscaping and invasive removal will actually enhance this natural amenity in portions where it has been degraded by the neglect of the docents now fighting this upgrade.

-My initial concern was over the expanded parking lot, until I learned that it is being expanded in order to provide parking for school busses, meaning more kids will gain access to nature. The new lot will also replace the old asphalt lot with permeable pavers, native landscaping and educational signage. When i discussed turning the red street curb in fornt of the center into streetside parking with the project's proponents and the city of South El Monte, they all noted how the docents had fought to keep that curb as a no parking zone, which seems counterproductive in terms of reducing the parking lot size.

-The "freinds" claim this project is being rammed down their throats, yet project proponents have repeatedly tried working with them to create a more palatable center to no avail in numerous meeting. The docents preferring an "all or none' strategy, which again is indicative of no real interest in creating a better nature center, but merely keeping the status quo so that this underused resource continues to be underused.

- the"friends" claim to represent local communities, but up until VERY recently those who opposed the new center were virtually all elderly white people from Downey and Claremont, look up the organization and who is in it. In order to validate their agenda they have been agressively using public resources that should be used to educate visitors on nature, on stopping construction of the new project, which is highly unethical and illegal. they also use scare tactics and half truths to coerce support from locals, which I have detailed in this post. Even with all that lying and usurption of resources for natural education, they are still only able to get a few elderly locals to "represent" the local communities, and act as if that is a public mandate. Ironically, when local youth from El Monte and Pico Rivera as well as environmental stewardship groups like the SGVCC have shown up to meetings to voice support for the project, they are dismissed or attacked as being gang members or vested interests by the friends. The friends actually did not rely on educating the public on this issue (outside of usurping nature tours to push their agenda) until very recently, and preffered to misinform local politicos with half truths and gather support from other groups of elderly white environmentalists who were not made up of ANY local residents and were quite dogmatic in their positions, meaning they could care less about connecting working class minority communities to nature.

I could go on and on, but the truth speaks for itself. i challenge Odeling or any other "friend" to directly address the points i layed out. and not some BS tangent about John Muir, My goal is not to attack your group, my goal is to get the best result out of this situation for the community, not soem old docents or bigwig government agency. Address the facts por favor!!!

Sincerely,

A local resident genuinely concerned about the Nature Center doing its job

I was at some of the early meetings of the FOWNNA and it's not all a bunch of elderly white people. It was a little more than half Latino, mostly from Pico Rivera, a fe connected with Audobon. At the time, I lived in South San Gabriel. I'm Asian.

One activist was from around Claremont, an elderly white man, but he was a scientist of some kind, and an expert at working within Sierra to push them toward a more eco position. Jim Odling is an older white guy, but, he's not from Downey or Claremont. I think he's from El Sereno or that area near Cal State LA. I met him through a peace vigil in Alhambra.

The initial conflict was happening within the Sierra Club, and if you want to see a group of older white people, look at Sierra. When FOWNNA went to Sierra (and FOWNNA members are also members of Sierra), it was like the eastside taking a field trip to the westside, if you catch my drift.

Now, as far as conflicts between the docents and young visitors to the center - that's probably got to be worked on.

Likewise, I think public awareness of the nature center needs to be raised, but that's more an issue of making visitors to the other parts of the park aware of the nature center.

The natural area is a natural/restored preserve within an urban area. The concept is probably well known in the eco-enviro universe, and maybe to scientists, but I doubt if other people "get it". I didn't know about the nature center until I stumbled on it. I didn't "get it" until I visited a couple times. At first, it seemed like the area was basically a park, which it isn't.

I'm not sure a larger building is the answer. It's more a problem with promoting the idea of a nature preserve. It's also about expanding our desire to restore the native ecology.

I believe that race and color is not what dictates my environmental concerns. I can only write about my experience at the nature center and connection with the friends of Whittier Narrows Natural area. I am a resident of Pico Rivera, volunteer at the Nature Center, and am a member of the friends group. I do not agree with the Discovery Center being built in the Wildlife Sanctuary. Yes, it may currently have non-native species but that is up for more discussion. I haven’t made up my mind if it’s a bad thing. I’m not sure if non-native plants and animals should be removed if they already exist there. Who will go around catching the rabbits left over from Easter?

I hope that the Discovery Authority will really consider alternative locations for the building, reducing the amount of money they are going to spend on the project, and how effective the center will be. I understand that some people may consider 11 acres to be a small portion of the 419 acres of natural area. However, there are many animals and plants that exist in the 11 acres and those that pass or fly through it. There are signs that call the area a wildlife sanctuary and it should remain so. I’m sorry if I sound emotional but it’s hard not to be passionate about things you love.

I don’t understand how a building will serve my watershed educational needs. In fact, I don’t want the area to serve my needs at all. I would like the area to remain a wildlife sanctuary and serve the needs of the local animals (native or non-native) but that is only my view. I like the idea of nature being left alone or being restored. Since I’ve been going to the nature center and volunteering I haven’t had a bad experience with the docents elderly or not. Everything can use improvements and so can the current nature center. If you don’t like the way it is then volunteer and try to change it that’s my motto.

If the proposed Discovery Center actually included a significant expansion in educational programs, it might be worth looking into. But it doesn't expand those programs, it only expands meetings, special events, receptions and VIP tours for the same bureaucrats and water agency officials who are pushing to spend our money to get it built.

Don't take my word for it. Just look at the draft EIR and compare Table 2-2, Existing nature center programming (page 2-18) , to Table 2-4, Proposed project programming (page 2-31). The DEIR is available at http://discoverycenterauthority.org/env_doc/DEIR.html.

Compare those tables and then decide for yourself why two government agencies and two water districts really want the Discovery Center built.

I think the points raised by the last 2 commenters are good, and should be part of the project's dialogue, but how exactly is disrupting meetings and dismissing others' concerns the strategy of a group genuinely concerned with keeping this land for the most beneficial use?

As a local resident, i agree about the EIR and planned agenda, I was under the assumption that the expanded educational spaces were more for students than meetings. And although I can see the needed capacity for local meetings outside of city hall (especially if it has to do with watersheds), believe me the folks at the RMC (who is the proponent I assume is the best venue to vent concerns with) will hear plenty about this issue from me, just like they did regarding the parking lot.

Do the proponents refuse to budge on the size of the buildings? If so than the "friends" DO have a valid point, and I apologize for the misunderstanding. But it is easy to feel slighted by your group (the friends) because for the most past much of their strategy has been half truths and dismissal. In fact, i would support the friends' fight to create more students space in the building.

Back to what I said (and that pontificating BS about "not getting it" regarding nature, I am a science teacher) about dismissive behavior regarding valid concerns. The point of this expansion, and the existence of many of the institutions backing it, is to createsocial equity in areans where it has been very rare. Social equity in the USA often involved race, as income is often dictated by race. This project is (from what Ive been told) an example of an attempt to create social equity of natural resources and exposure to them for residents of nearby communites that are underexposed to nature and park poor. From what Ive seen, the majority of those against this proposal are old and white, and this project is intended to create some equity in natural resources and educational tools for the working class generally Latino areas around the WNNRA. because of this, race and class are definitely important aspects of the story, and for someone to dismiss them as the "race card" is both offensive and counteproductive to your cause. Dont even start me on the "you dont get it like I do" BS, which is totally untrue beyond the author's head, yet disturbingly is a recurring theme amongst the "friends".

I agree abotu keeping wild sanctuaries wild, but you have to look at the context of this project. First of all, it is the 2nd biggest city in the country, within the largest greenspace in the gigantic urbanized San Gabriel Valley. The land in question is far from pristine, and even amongst degraded spaces is in pretty bad shape, and because of its mismanagement is probably more detrimental to native species than helpful. the land to be used for the new center also is along the current nature center, meaning most of it is not natural habitat but the backyard portion of the facilities, backyard meaning neglected dumping grounds. I am still wondering how specifically that is more important than expanded educational facilities about watersheds in a nature starved area? I would also take this opportunity to ask AGAIN for any one of the "freinds" to directly answer the questions i laid out in a rational manner. If you guys want to talk EIR's than making easter bunny debate positions will not cut it. Comprende? BTW, is this the ONE person under 50 who is part of the "friends", who was also one of the few Latinos in the group before? Just curious...

It's not only the Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area that is opposed to the Discovery Center. Environmental experts, educators and many members of the community are concerned that the project is a bad idea.

In May of 2008, the county's Significant Ecological Areas Technical Advisory Committee--made up of environmental experts and educators--deemed the Discovery Center "incompatible" with the Whittier Narrows SEA. You can read the committee's criticisms of the project in the meeting minutes, available at http://planning.lacounty.gov/assets/upl/agenda/sea_20080505-minutes.pdf

I think it says something about the Discovery Center Authority that, while it includes in the DEIR a discussion of SEATAC's review, there is no mention of the central fact that SEATAC rejected the project. The DEIR says only that two members recommended that the project wasn't compatible with the SEA and one member recommended that it was compatible.

Again, don't take my word for it. Compare the "Action taken" on page 8 of the SEATAC minutes with the authority account of SEATAC's review on page 3.3-1 of the DEIR, available at http://discoverycenterauthority.org/env_doc/DEIR.html

Finally, most of the people from the community who spoke at two recent public hearings on the Discovery Center DEIR opposed the project. Project opponents came from Pico Rivera, Montebello, Hacienda Heights, Whittier, El Monte and other communities. There was also diversity in age and ethnicity among project opponents.

Out of the 30 - 40 oral comments made at the June 24 and July 18 hearings, only two people said they supported the project. One of these people has been on the project payroll for much of the last decade (but he neglected to mention this fact in his comments); the other appears to be (I don't know this for a fact) the husband of the Discovery Center project manager.

Disruptions are the tool of the people with less power.

If you look at the people attending meetings, and even the "stakeholders" lists, they're all connected with political interests. They attend these meetings as part of their career. The FOWNNA group do not.

That's how I read the situation.

As far as the race card - I wasn't the one bringing the issue up. If this were a situation where it was white people with power versus minorities without power then the racism is obvious.

In this situation, however, you have a political region which is primarily represented by Mexican Americans, with an old guard of Anglo old timers, and some Asian politicians. So there's racial diversity in the seats of power. Things get complicated, because you can't know what a politician's going to do by their race.

On the activist side, you have another diverse group, but it's a eco group. There may be a racial division of power, but, if anything, that's a residual effect of institutionalized racism from the pre-Civil Rights era, combined with the simple fact that older people have a lot more experience than younger people. (In the 1960s, when these older guys were getting college educations, Chicanos were fighting to get decent high schools. The beneficiaries of that struggle were the children, not the people who forced change. So the inequalities persist in the older generation.)

That's a whole other thing to deal with, and it's a complex issue.

Now - as far as my saying I know something that you don't - I said scientists know. My point was that I didn't "get it" until I was an adult, and that I learned it through experience, and got that experience largely by luck. Part of that luck was due to proximity and luck that I'm from SSG. I'm not in the environmental movement, nor a member of Sierra Club. I've read a few "eco" articles, done my share of camping, and have been to Yosemite, but, that's really it. (Well, that and living near a landfill that was a toxic superfund site.) I'm just a guy who grew up going to Legg Lake and bicycling around the area. Maybe I'm being unfair, but I think there are a lot of people who are as ignorant as I was.

I think there are still people learning about environmentalism through experiences like mine, and I think it's important to preserve these spaces for these experiences.

Now that I don't live there, I feel fortunate that I grew up near all that stuff and experienced it.

As for me - I'm a Japanese American guy. I'm 40 now. I don't participate in the friends group but talk them up and when they suggest writing a letter, I sometimes do.

I wasn't totally anti-Discovery Center, which is partly why I haven't been a strong partisan. Certain things about it, I don't like - like the scale of the center and the push-button "educational" displays or the artificial wetlands, but I like the native plant nursery aspect. I also like this Emerald Necklace plan that the RMC is pushing.

The one thing I'm learning in my advancing age is that it's pretty hard to get rid of a building once it's up. In LA, it seems to be harder to keep open spaces empty than it is to build something.

The other thing I've learned is that politicians love new construction. :-)

PS - thanks for taking time to reply.