Los Angeles Ecosystem Restoration
Volunteers have convinced Los Angeles to restore its ecosystem, by using a sustainability model that gets government agencies to look at the big picture and work together to solve urgent environmental problems.
Andy Lipkis and T.R.E.E.S. - a volunteer group in Los Angeles have convinced the city to install a citywide system of cisterns and urban forests to help capture water runoff and recharge the aquifer while educing the amount of pollution that reaches creeks, rivers and oceans. The group met with resistance at first as it tried to convince L.A. to replace plans to build concrete levees, that would send stormwater into the ocean, with ecosystem restoration. They had to convince decision makers that storm water management was a multi-purpose issue and would require government agencies to work together and see how their territories overlapped. Eventually the project was funded and is now transforming hardscapes of hot, glaring blacktopped surfaces into landscapes of trees, shrubs and grassy playing fields. Cisterns collect stormwater after it flows through treatment units that remove pollutants.
Andy Lipkis, the volunteers with T.R.E.E.S., and the city of Los Angeles are demonstrating that large cities can restore their ecosystems by working together towards sustainable practices that lead to multiple solutions, more jobs and funding for emerging green technologies.