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ENVIRONMENTAL MOTION - This is another article about broken promises. A great man once said “If you want to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing” (Napoleon Bonaparte.)
Let’s get to it. I want to start with a special fund in the treasury of Los Angeles known as Citywide Recycling Trust Fund authorized by Los Angeles Municipal Code Sec. 5.497.
What is a recycling trust fund, some of you may ask? In much simpler terms, recycling trust fund is a mitigation fund or community improvement money paid by local trash and recycling businesses that should be spent exclusively on communities impacted by direct operations of major pollutant industries. Now, what do these trust funds mean to Sun Valley?
In 2005, city passed a motion to designate some parts of Sun Valley as Environmental Justice (EJ) Improvement Zone, which in a rational world would’ve almost certainly entailed to take immediate measures in reducing environmental pollution in the affected areas. But then again, it was certainly not the case of Sun Valley. On the contrary, former councilmember Cardenas came up with a way to permit expansion of existing polluters by misleading residents into believing that the community would benefit from $$$ in the form of trust funds, promising people protection from colossal environmental harm and nuisance caused by operation of industrial polluters if they received $$$.
Northeast San Fernando Valley residents have clashed with city leaders before over bringing in more polluters or allowing expansion of existing ones. They learned by painful experience that mitigation money was frequently not used for mitigation, but for pet projects by different council districts. Former vice president of Sun Valley Area Neighborhood Council (SVANC), Ms. Mary Benson rightfully highlighted that when you started talking about millions of dollars coming to Sun Valley, you had to be very careful about how it was accessed. Additionally, SVANC asked the city council set up a trust fund and a citizens’ steering committee to manage mitigation fees and fines collected from Sun Valley waste, mining and auto-repair businesses. Sun Valley community has always grappled with how to ensure that millions of dollars in mitigation funds from massive landfills stayed in the community and were used to benefit the same community. Nonetheless, there seemed to be no centralized system in place to deliver transparency, accountability, and reporting.
Let’s get back on track – the motion. The motion introduced by former councilmember Cardenas stated that during public meetings Sun Valley residents alleged that poor air quality negatively affected the health of residents. South Coast Air Quality Management District modeling indicated that Sun Valley contained one of the top 100 excess cancer risk grids for stationary sources in the South Coast Air Basin. Furthermore, the University of California, Los Angeles Department of Family Medicine was conducting a Sun Valley Asthma Screening and Early Intervention Program, and preliminary results indicated a prevalence of asthma among middle school students in Sun Valley. In addition, the motion also described the responsibilities of city departments in relation to environmental regulation. The EAD regulates permitting and inspection of solid waste and certain recycling facilities within the city; it also provides technical and financial assistance to environmentally impaired industrial sites and fosters the use of green technology. Meanwhile, the planning department regulates zoning and land use permitting decisions in the city. The LAFD regulates industrial use of hazardous materials in the city. Finally, the City Attorney's Office Sun Valley Environmental Task Force, formed in January 2003, was supposed to address environmental issues related to auto-dismantling businesses in Sun Valley.
Oh, by the way, what happened to the task force? No one talks about it; it doesn’t come up in any round table council discussions.
Throughout the process of this motion, planning staff also added that in many cases the industrial uses in Sun Valley were very close to residential areas. So they proposed a system and procedure to allow for review and public hearings on new applications for use to determine if there would be environmental impacts, and if necessary, to propose mitigation of negative environmental impacts. At the end, former councilmember Cardenas assured that as a part of the city's efforts, community meetings would be continued to review proposals related to environmental justice issues in Sun Valley Environmental Justice Improvement Zone. The objective was to keep all the money in district 6, primarily in the areas most affected, which was by far Sun Valley. In councilmember Cardenas’ own words, “Nothing is going to happen without consulting the community.” But what happened was quite the opposite; everything always happens without consulting the community. A good and more recent example of this was the surfacing of a construction and demolition debris crushing operation within 100 feet of a public park and recreation center and 30 feet away from residences in Sun Valley EJ area. By the way, SCAQMD, the agency tasked with regulating air quality in the South Coast Basin and citing violators of environmental laws and conditions under which the permissions were granted, conveniently approved an application to double the load capacity of demolition debris crushing in people’s backyard from 4,500 tons to 9,000 tons a month. Even more shocking was to find out that that a recycling business operating dangerously close to homes and humans, was NOT required to submit an Environmental Impact Report (EIR). I am sure you want to know why. Outdated zoning and land use in Sun Valley was the culprit.
During her January of 2024 get-together with the Sun Valley community, Senator Caroline Menjivar was asked if she intended to introduce a legislature to relocate this specific recycling plant and other polluters operating within close proximity to residential areas to more suitable zones. Her response was very unsettling. Senator Menjivar implied in so many words that it would be unfair and impossible to relocate these polluters since they have been there for a long time, which was, of course, not true. The oldest house on the block was from 1939. Her comment left all present feel more vulnerable, degraded, unimportant, and succumbing to finite disappointment – little people with no voice, falling prey to unfair and life altering decisions made by powerful men and women they cast their votes for, because they wanted to believe again. In other words, being “unfair” (senator’s own words) to introduce legislation to help bring environmental justice and improve quality of life in Sun Valley (campaign promise), I guess justifies the complete disregard and pleas of thousands of constituents for better protections and basic services. It is “quite alright” to subject an entire population to environmental harassment, discrimination, and maltreatment on every step of the way. She also mentioned at that time that she intended to organize a tour around around the area with AQMD and EPA representatives in February of 2024 to come up with mutually beneficial solution. Once again, that tour never happened. For the sake of clarification and possible conflict of interest, I want to state, that AQMD’s role is twofold: on the one hand the agency is tasked with air quality regulation in the South Coast Basin, on the other hand, part of its revenue is generated from large permit payments received from recycling and other industries for applications to operate, expand, and increase load capacity, maybe more. Thus, it’s not in the best interest of AQMD to help resolve environmental pollution in Sun Valley. The community has reached out to AQMD countless times, but there has never been a response. The same folds true for Cal EPA, and all city and state agencies that have jurisdiction. City Attorney was also made aware of this very recycling plant and asked to help.
Construction and demolition crushing open facility within 30 feet of residences (photo taken from a house in the street)
Between 2016-2017 several Sun Valley trash and recycling businesses were already planning expansions that could’ve brought in 17,200 tons of rubbish per day, and former councilmember Tony Cardenas happily supported only those projects that included $$$ for unsubstantiated community improvements and mitigation. He agreed with the concept and introduced a motion to create a Sun Valley trust fund. Under the proposal, money from the fund could only be spent within the Sun Valley Environmental Justice Improvement Zone and could not be diverted by city council members or the mayor. In other words, Sun Valley leaders reassured residents that as long as polluters paid a fee for polluting operations, it was quite alright to allow them to expand thus contributing even more to already existing environmental nightmare in areas within the EJ Improvement Zone. In other words, expansion and establishment of new mega polluters in the area was certainly justified by the same Sun Valley leaders who pushed for a trust fund to keep the moneys close to home, and even then, they failed to follow through. Funds come and go with no trace.
On March 23, 2021 another resolution was adopted to establish a new account in the Real Property Trust Fund entitled Sun Valley Recycling Park Trust Fund to be used for the purposes of transportation, health care, environment, and other measures to benefit the Sun Valley community under the conditions described in the motion.
Thus, the recycling trust fund was born. Sold!
In 2016 Sun Valley Paper Stock, Inc. had been contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the fund to be used for community benefits in council district 6 pursuant to an agreement with the city for the processing and marketing of residential single-stream commingled recyclable materials for the East Valley Watershed. It had agreed to pay up to $90,000 a year into a community benefit fund in exchange for permission to expand. Waste Management, which owns Bradley Landfill, had offered $100,000 a year if given permission to open a 7,500-ton-per-day transfer station, and $2 per ton if the landfill expands. Waste Management District Manager at the time Doug Corcoran expressed willingness to dedicate company dollars to a community trust fund as long as it was for legitimate and authentic improvements in the community. He emphasized that he did not want the money spent on pet projects that weren’t specific and meaningful to Sun Valley. Other trust funds followed suit. In 2005 Bradley Landfill Community Education and Assistance Fund was created followed by Bradley Landfill Community Trust Fund in 2006. There were sufficient funds available to Sun Valley. Unfortunately, there is not enough information to put the pieces of puzzle together about funds collected, detailed expenditures, what’s left over, reports on completion of projects due to lack of transparency, integrity, reporting requirements, and accountability. After all we are talking about millions of dollars! Sun Valley clearly did not benefit from these funds per se, because if it did, who would notice it better than the residents? All you need to do is to drive or better yet, walk around Sun Valley park and surrounding areas, which fall within the EJ Improvement Zone, you could not help but take in the baffling and twisted zoning and land use, intolerable living conditions, broken or non-existent sidewalks, potholes, roads and houses buried under thick layer of dust, jammed with diesel trucks, cracked and melting asphalt, lack of trees, lack of shaded bus stops to protect people from scorching sun, poverty, barrenness, vandalized and graffitied traffic signs, carcasses of abandoned vehicles, broken roads, faded curb zones, gang graffiti, freeway underpasses clogged with dismantled and inoperable RVs and filth, widespread illegal dumping, littering, uncared for oak trees in the park - hopeless wretchedness throughout the community. Trust funds could be a life saver for Sun Valley community, it would have saved so many problems that the city council has been swiping under the rug for decades, hand in hand with state agencies tasked to protect people and not lobby for recyclers.
Bus stop under a baking sun with no shred of shade to get cover from scorching heat. A pothole with no sidewalk reported to the city countless times
It’s not snow – it’s dust!
To cut a very long story short, councilmember Cardenas allowed expansion of polluters as long as they mitigated, overriding a simple fact that Sun Valley was a designated EJ Improvement Zone. A rationale would have been to approach it differently – take the risk to pass a motion or introduce a bill to relocate major environmental polluters dangerously close to people and schools out of Sun Valley to more suitable areas outside of city limits. But then again, maybe the city had other plans for the funds, who knows? Hard to tell.
Since the formation of recycling trust funds there were also violations and abuse of these funds. One of them was former City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo’s earmarking of $50,000 from an environmental settlement with Bradley Landfill for a children’s nonprofit that offered no services in Sun Valley. Residents were furious over the settlement between Delgadillo and Waste Management to rectify long-standing odor violations from Bradley Landfill. The company agreed to make on-site improvements and pay $75,000 to two charities. Some $25,000 went to Communities in Schools for gang intervention and job fairs in Sun Valley. But $50,000 went to Para Los Niños, an educational nonprofit serving low-income children families – a non-profit that had no programs in Sun Valley or the northeast San Fernando Valley, but Delgadillo had served on the group’s honorary advisory board. Delgadillo tried to justify this move by stating that the city attorney chose Para Los Niños because it was a reputable charity that purportedly expected to introduce some services into the San Fernando Valley in the future. What a nonsense.
Even though the city ordinance requires that the money be reviewed by an oversight committee and spending of moneys from funds within the specifically impacted community, when former councilmember Alex Padilla took office, he began overseeing the fund himself, doling out dollars for the Pacoima Christmas Parade, a Hansen Dam fireworks show and development of an open-space park when asked about the community advisory committee, in his own words: “The community makes a request and I say yes and we fill it. Do we need an extra bureaucracy? I can’t recall a time when there was a reasonable request that we didn’t fill”. Today, the same community is pleading for more reasonable basic requests for funds to address countless environmentally sensitive and long neglected issues mentioned earlier in this article. Residents have urged the council to resolve the issue of major zoning and land use discrepancies as well as ongoing violations in the area, but the councilmember office is reluctant to pick up the fight, they are fearful of being slapped with a lawsuit. In other words, why Imelda Padilla doesn’t volunteer to fill these wishes after so many residents’ requests.
On multiple requests of community members, in April, SVANC sent a written request to councilmember Imelda Padilla’s office inquiring about trust funds. They asked in that letter to set up a citizens’ advisory committee consisting of residents and SVANC members to oversee these funds to make sure they were used in Sun Valley for Sun Valley. The availability and proper allocation of these funds would have solved many problems and challenges for a small low-income community of color, but the city chooses to look the other way. As has always been the case, councilmember’s office did not acknowledge the receipt of this request. Nor did it respond. Members of SVANC and Foothill Trails requested a meeting with council office to discuss these funds, but they were turned down. Once again, Sun Valley was slapped with negligence and bureaucratic red tape. I guess city council is carefully keeping these funds out of public eye.
Nothing has changed in the last 40 years in the life of Sun Valley residents. Politicians come and go, new environmental policies are introduced and implemented throughout Los Angeles. Other communities benefit and are thriving as a result, but the city still picks the funds for the poor community of color with language barriers like Sun Valley, because they are an easy target and little to no push back is expected. Only recently Mr. Cardenas presented $3M to San Fernando Gardens in Pacoima, which is a sister community of Sun Valley, but Sun Valley being the most impacted by heat and environmental pollution will receive no penny from that $3M. Pacoima will be getting new energy-efficient air conditioning units and cool roofs to help combat the effects of climate change, which disproportionately impacts low-income communities. How about the neighboring low income housing community that is amid a mega demolition crushing operation on San Fernando and Vinedale in Sun Valley, right across from recycling plant, where people are breathing colossal amounts of dust every day, they live in a nightmare but they can’t wake up from it, they have no air conditioning, no drivable roads, no peace and quiet from diesel truck traffic noise and nuisance of crushing concrete around the clock; these people don’t get a single penny for their sufferings and/or improvements, energy efficient upgrades, cool reflective asphalt, cool roof, canopy trees to provide shade, to name a few. In Mr. Cardenas’ own words: “I’m thrilled to bring back over $3M in funds to the northeast San Fernando Valley as part of our continuous effort to combat climate change and save lives in the process.” “These funds will … [ensure] that the residents of San Fernando Gardens have access to a more comfortable and sustainable living environment. This is not just an investment in infrastructure; it’s an investment in the health, well-being and future of this community.”
How about Sun Valley residents? Who drew this invisible demarcation line between Sun Valley and Northeast San Fernando Valley?
Why is Pacoima always the first in line to benefit from lifeline funds? Is it because of city council’s selective decision making or family relationship, nepotism or playing favorites? Pacoima and Sun Valley are both low-income disadvantaged communities, but Pacoima always get the biggest or even the only piece of pie. And this pattern is not happening on the city level alone. Neglect towards Sun Valley is on all levels of government.
Ironically, among so many sensitive environmental issues and priorities impacting Sun Valley, that could have been solved by using trust funds, district 6 volunteered to use over $568,000 from Athens Community Trust Fund to build a statue of Hon. Ruth Ginsburg in Van Nuys, district 7 of Monica Rodriguez - not even in the city of Sun Valley! While Ruth Ginsburg deserves a monument, the expenditure did not fall under authorized categories for the fund. The fact that this expenditure was a violation of a recycling trust fund is very disturbing. There is long list of urgent uses for ever growing priorities in Sun Valley. Heartbreakingly, the funds ARE indeed for Sun Valley because Sun Valley residents are the hardest hit and suffering as a result of polluting industrial operations, and most vulnerable during summer heat waves. Was this even legal? Will I be wrong if I asked why these funds are used to benefit Van Nuys, Pacoima, and every other community but Sun Valley? Didn’t Sun Valley deserve the monument of Hon. Ruth Ginsburg? Sun Valley would have been deeply honored to have Hon. Ginsburg’s monument. What a shame!
Sun Valley in pictures (illegal dumping)
Recycling trust funds are a grey area, a dark hole swallowing money. Every council office wants to have a piece of the pie, to get their hands on millions of dollars intended for a struggling and continually violated and neglected low income community of color. I can say with confidence that Sun Valley has yet to see a shred of improvement in air quality, quality of life, environmental beautification, health studies, local health care issues, tree planting, implementation of green technology and fleet, storm water management, adding green space, flood control, and the list goes on.
I was having a hard time understanding, why the city didn’t even honor and comply with its own resolutions when it concerned Sun Valley. It took me some time to process and finally, the lightbulb went on - Sun Valley does not have representation. It’s a fact that today we have an incompetent city council engaged in nepotism. Major community affairs are discussed behind closed doors. There is no transparency and accountability. Despite assurances that the community would be made aware of any decisions, projects, available funds, changes and new polluting applications coming to Sun Valley, the community is still in the dark. Requesting a meeting is not easy, and it is even harder to have an open line of communication without feeling humiliated and frowned upon when it comes to major issues such as environmental pollution as a result of major zoning discrepancies in Sun Valley. One of many requests sent to councilmember Padilla was to set up a new recycling trust fund for a major polluter in the Sun Valley park area discussed above. Never heard back. “Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings”, (Charlotte Bronte).
At the end of the day, Sun Valley community wants transparency, accountability and accurate public reporting of all funds and affairs that concern Sun Valley. There’s got to be a centralized system that is tasked to manage, track, publicly expose violations, create citizens’ advisory committees to oversee operation and expenditure of these funds, and to report back to Sun Valley Area Neighborhood Council (SVANC), which should be the first to be notified and involved in this. Alas, Sun Valley is the last in the long list of councilmember Padilla.
Decades later, nothing has changed; Sun Valley community is still left beyond outreach and is not involved in decision making in its own community. What we do know is that the community is downright deprived of essential government services, funding, and resources it certainly qualifies for as a low-income community of color in an environmental justice improvement zone. It is and has historically been underrepresented and underserved. There has always been promises by all elected officials that things will change, life will be safe, and then you see the consequences. There has never been a commitment behind campaign promises. See what you promise: what harm is there in promise? In promises anyone can be rich. No councilmember in district 6 has delivered what they promised during their campaign when it comes to Sun Valley. One of the most critical projects of Sun Valley, if not the only one at that, known as Rory Shaw Wetlands Park is proudly listed as one of the council district 6 major infrastructure projects, but the councilmember has taken no steps whatsoever to bring this project to life; it was never even mentioned during campaign either.
Sadly, only people who have been chronically discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain of rejection and neglect in their own way, each has their own scars - an irony that seems to elude most of todays elected officials. So, I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice in Sun Valley, as anybody. City’s slogans of improving quality of life and protecting human health in environmentally challenged communities are but a dog and pony show.
Decades later, the fact that the community is not informed about recycling trust funds, still bothers residents of Sun Valley who would like to ensure that the dollars aren’t misappropriated, and the community actually benefits from these funds. Their concerns are based on past battles with city council over mitigation money. There is no doubt that the money should be kept within the same area that is impacted, and any citizens’ advisory committee that is formed should be made up only of neighborhood residents to oversee the trust fund spending. But who is there to enforce and control the comings and goings of these funds? The elected do as they please living Sun Valley in the dark again and using and transferring funds for their pet projects. Although, when the size of the group supporting your cause reaches a critical mass, any legislator or elected official has to pay attention.
Regrettably, history repeats itself.
(Mariam Moore is a resident of Sun Valley, community and public health advocate, and an environmental activist.)
(Mihran Kalaydjian has over twenty years of public affairs, government relations, legislative affairs, public policy, community relations and strategic communications experience. He is a leading member of the community and a devoted civic engagement activist for education spearheading numerous academic initiatives in local political forums.)
