HealthyCal.org

By Paul Eakins

Gail Hookailo often takes her two young daughters to the playground next to Colorado Lagoon, which is nestled among a golf course and upscale homes on Long Beach’s eastern edge.

But with the lagoon consistently ranking among the beaches with the worst water quality in California, the family draws the line at actually getting in its cool, calm waters.

“I think it is a shame, because it would be a very convenient, sheltered location for kids to swim, but I’d never let kids swim there,” said Hookailo, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mom.

Last month, the lagoon disappointed beach-goers and environmentalists yet again, finding itself with the dubious honor of being on Heal the Bay’s list of “top ten beach bummers” in its 2010-2011 Annual Beach Report Card. At the same time, water quality at all of Long Beach’s coastal testing sites dropped for the first time after three years of improvements.

To create the report card, Heal the Bay monitored the water quality at 600 locations along the West Coast – including California, Oregon and Washington – during the summer dry months of April to October, and at more than 324 locations year-round. Each beach location was issued a grade from A to F based on fecal bacteria pollution concentrations in the surf zone.

Entering waters that have increased bacteria concentrations has been associated with increased risks to human health, such as stomach flu, nausea, skin rashes, eye infections and respiratory illness, according to Heal the Bay.

In California, the Santa Monica-based non-profit group found that overall water quality along beaches was actually quite good. During the dry summer months, Heal the Bay gave 400 of 445 California beaches, or 90 percent of them, A or B grades, signifying “excellent” or “very good” water quality.Year-round dry weather grades were also considered to be good, with 88 percent of beaches receiving A or B grades. Southern California, from Santa Barbara County to San Diego County, scored slightly better than the state average during the summer months.

But that’s where the good news ends for beach-goers in Long Beach and Los Angeles County.

Four of California’s “top ten beach bummers,” those areas that scored an F for water quality, are in Los Angeles County, including the Colorado Lagoon.

The others are at Avalon Harbor Beach on Catalina Island, an hour away from Long Beach by ferry, and at Topanga State Beach in Malibu and the harbor side of Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro next to the Port of Los Angeles.

Just south of Long Beach, neighboring Orange County has two other “beach bummer” locations.

The report highlighted that beaches that are open to the water tend to have better water quality, while enclosed lagoons and bays, such as Colorado Lagoon and Cabrillo Beach, tend to have worse water quality because the contaminants get trapped in the waterways.

Though not as enclosed as Colorado Lagoon, most of Long Beach’s coastline suffers from this problem because of the Long Beach Breakwater, a 2.2-mile seawall that was completed in 1949 to protect the Navy fleet that was stationed there at the time and the Port of Long Beach.

In Heal the Bay’s latest report card, Long Beach water quality dipped by 40 percent from last year, with only four beaches, or 27 percent of the total, receiving an A or B grade. During year-round dry weather, only 33 percent of the city’s beaches had an A or B grade.

The dismal report card doesn’t surprise many local environmentalists and coastal advocates, such as Robert Palmer, the beach cleanup coordinator for the Long Beach chapter of the Surfrider Foundation.

“It clearly shows that we’ve got a water quality problem,” Palmer said.

The poor grades mean that even Long Beach’s ocean-side beaches aren’t acceptable for Hookailo and her family, she said.

“I’ll see large families going down there to go swimming, and I just want to grab them and say, ‘Don’t do it,’” Hookailo said.

During wet weather in Long Beach, as in most other coastal locations that are near urban areas, water quality dips to an F grade because contaminants are washed into the waterways.

In Long Beach, that contamination typically flows down the Los Angeles River from dozens of upstream cities and is then trapped between the coast and the breakwater. Without fail, Long Beach health officials issue a health advisory after any significant rainfall, telling the public to avoid entering the water for 72 hours.

Long Beach city officials do have some solutions to Colorado Lagoon’s water quality and overall coastal water quality in the works, as Heal the Bay’s report notes.
The State Water Resources Control Board has granted the city $5.1 million to improve the lagoon, including dredging and removing sediment, installing pollution reduction devices and planting portions of the lagoon with native plants.

For years, environmentalists have advocated for a more extreme solution for the entire Long Beach coast’s pollution problems – removing or modifying the breakwater.

City officials have finally begun to take action, paying $100,000 in recent years for what’s called a “reconnaissance study” to determine whether there is a federal interest in altering the breakwater. What the study found, and what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers agreed, was that the project is worth pursuing.

“If we got rid of the breakwater and brought the waves back, this would improve the water quality of the entire beach,” Palmer said.

Last year, the city of Long Beach and the Corps of Engineers signed a cost-sharing agreement for an $8.3 million study of whether modifying the breakwater or other measures could clean up the coastal water.

However, the future of the study is in question because federal officials have held back funding at least through September as the Corps of Engineers’ budget has been cut. The president’s proposed 2011-12 federal budget also doesn’t provide the needed funding.

The slow progress in fixing Long Beach’s water issues doesn’t surprise Elise McCaleb, Hookailo’s friend, who often takes her 3-year-old son to Colorado Lagoon as well – but not to play in the water.

“I think it’s a longer way out that they’ll actually improve the water quality,” McCaleb said.

In the meantime, children such as Hookailo’s older daughter, 8-year-old Azure Burks, will just have to enjoy the playground, frolic in the grass or even run across the sandy beach, yet steer clear of Colorado Lagoon’s beautiful but dangerous waters.

“I’d like to be able to swim here,” Azure said. “It’s a really pretty place.”

The Chevrolet Volt can be plugged into electrical outlets for recharging. It generally takes about 8 to 10 hours to re-charge the vehicle.

By Derek Walter

For residents of the San Joaquin Valley, buying more fuel-efficient cars makes sense for many reasons. With 57 percent of the region’s pollution from vehicles, according to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, every purchase of a more fuel-efficient car can ease the burden.

And several cars with green technology have recently hit the market. There are hybrids, electric cars, compressed natural gas, and extended range and diesel vehicles – as well as a maze of tax incentives and special programs for consumers willing to test the new technology.

Debra Turner, a representative with the air district in Fresno, said the Valley still struggles with air quality, despite the growing familiarity with some fuel-efficient cars.

Consumers in the area no longer find cars like the gas-electric Prius exotic. But encouraging purchases of newer technology is still an ongoing effort, Turner said. Incentives for buyers willing to take the leap into unfamiliar technology include a $3,000 rebate for buyers of the Nissan LEAF – a 100 percent electric vehicle.

“The incentive is designed to get the consumer on board with those products, and once they get popular, they don’t need to offer them anymore,” Turner said.

Other programs, like the website Drive Clean, created by the California Air Resources Board, help consumers navigate the labyrinth of choices in lower emission vehicles. Dimitri Stanich, a public information officer for the California Air Resources Board, said before the site’s launch, much of this information was scattered across the Web.

The website breaks down the difference between green technologies, calculates savings and locates state and federal tax incentives or grants. “There are no other sources for similar types of information,” Stanich said.

There is also an in-depth description of the Environmental Performance sticker, which is now required on each new vehicles sold in California. Every car is also rated with a global warming and smog score to show potential buyers how the car affects the environment.

While many of the cars listed on the site offer substantial gas-mileage savings, some really excel thanks to new technology.

The Chevrolet Volt, for instance, is an extended-range electric car that can be charged overnight, yet also runs on gas for longer trips. Its EPA rating is 95 miles per gallon thanks to a combination of a gas engine and lithium-ion battery – making it the most fuel-efficient car on the market. Owners can recharge the battery just like any other appliance. Just plug it into an electrical outlet and let it charge for about eight hours for a full battery.

Chad Snapp, a salesperson with Hedrick’s Chevrolet dealership in Clovis, sold the first Volt in the Valley early this year, and continues to see lots of interest. While its expense holds some consumers back (it starts at around $32,000) others consider the potential gas cost savings a worthy investment. The Volt can go about 35 miles without using any gasoline, so those who have shorter commutes or live in a city with short trips could use little to no fuel.

Nissan’s LEAF, the 100 percent electric vehicle, is for those that want to ditch the gas pump altogether. The mileage estimation is only about 100 per day. This is fine if you have a short commute and can identify a charging station – but the central valley, like most of California, is short on those. According to EV Charger News, a site that tracks the location of re-charging stations in the state, there are just over 600 sites in all of California, but only two in Fresno.

J.J. Jackson, the Internet/Fleet manager at Lithia Nissan in Fresno, said this shortage of charging stations as well as a severely restricted supply caused by the Japanese tsunami have made it difficult for Fresno buyers to latch on. His dealership does not even have its own model to let buyers test drive.

“There’s skepticism, and anything that is new, there is a difficult transition,” Jackson said. “That has created some reservation.”

“The technology surrounded by hybrids has generally eased the concern from the public in regards to their willingness to accept change. People are seeing they will be a viable segment in the market and have warmed up to entertaining it,” he said.

While one of only a handful in the valley, the Fresno Nissan dealership’s public charging station is impressive in how quickly it can re-charge an electric car. Unlike a conventional electrical outlet, it will re-charge a vehicle in only about 30 minutes.

For those who want to save fuel costs yet don’t want to risk the edgiest technology there has been one go-to choice: the Toyota Prius. The United States is the third-largest market, with one million Prii sold by April 2011, according to Toyota’s sales figures. At a local dealership in Clovis the sales staff indicated that many customers come in asking about the car and taking it for daily test-drives. While the car is not sold out, sales are “brisk” and it remains one of the most popular options.

There are indications of further interest in these vehicles, as a survey released late last year form The Nielsen company found that the majority of consumers are interested in an electric vehicle. They are held back, however, by the sticker shock—65 percent of those surveyed did not want to pay more for electric cars.

Turner, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District representative, said buying habits are going to have to change to make a further dent in the area’s pollution.

“It’s going to take a change like that to get people to drive pollution friendly cars,” she said. “Especially in the southern valley people, like their trucks and they like them big.”

In part two, HealthyCal looks at businesses that have adopted more fuel-efficient vehicles and encouraged their employees to do so.

Merced City fire department officials want lots like this cleaned up before July 4th fireworks.

By Minerva Perez

Last year, the Merced City fire department colored in maps by hand to identify potential fire hazards from owners who don’t clear their property of weeds during the dry season. This year, the department is putting away the colored pencils and starting to gather GIS data. The city of Merced is joining counties across California that use GIS to track properties that don’t meet weed abatement requirements. The maps let fire departments get a jumpstart on intervention when owners don’t act to protect property from the ever-present threat of summer wildfires.

But the shift to GIS mapping doesn’t mean that all fire-prevention has gone high-tech. Counties continue to use tactics from homeowner education to dispatching herds of munching goats to tamp down fire risk through weed abatement.

Weed abatement is an annual maintenance requirement on many properties in fire-prone areas, to protect homes – and the neighboring area – by removing dry vegetation. Even though fires can start in any season, the summer is a particular concern to fire officials because the leaves, needles, dead grass and weeds become dry enough to burn.

California saw 13,088 reported natural vegetation fires in 2010, according to the Office of the State fire Marshal’s California All Incident Reporting System. The Merced County Fire Department responded to 891 vegetation fires last year. Merced City Fire Department responded to 56, including one near the wastewater treatment plant that burned 260 acres, and was caused by sparks from an electrical transformer that ignited overgrown dry grass and thistle.

Merced City Fire Department Fire Inspector Tracy Staiger said the GIS information is already speeding up the usually laborious process of identifying plots of weeds gone wild.

The maps are more sophisticated, and so is the database that keeps track of non-compliant owners. The department used to find ownership information by turning to multiple databases. Now data specific to weed abatement compliance is in the GIS program, and when fire inspectors are out in the field, they can quickly look it up.

Oftentimes citizen complaints identify offenders. Staiger had to drive around the city herself to confirm the complaints. She’d write each confirmed violator’s address on a piece of paper. Then she’d come back into the office and look it up on the parcel map, to see if the owners were already notified.

The shift to GIS has made for a huge leap in efficiency, Staiger said, describing a called-in complaint about weeds she got a few days ago. She didn’t have to leave the office to check it out before taking action. “I asked ‘what is your address let’s look it up real quick,’ I was able to see it on the map.”

In addition to identifying parcels and sending out first and second notices to property owners more quickly, Staiger said that they now they are able to track repeat offenders, those who don’t usually maintain their property or clean it up after they are notified, and the locations of troublesome areas.

Repeat offenders, Staiger said, are targeted first for abatement efforts. Owners who don’t clean up their property are charged for the cost of cleaning and a $605 administrative fee.

“We can now keep that data,” Staiger said of the simple but very important advantages mapping provides. “Before you couldn’t do anything with the information (after) you typed it into the computer. It would print out an abatement notice and then it was gone.”

The department only has about $18,000 for its cleanup efforts, half of what they had last year because of budget cuts, so they started the inspection program later in the year to give property owners more time to clear their weeds before they clear the properties themselves.

Merced County is also looking into using mapping to better serve his department’s efforts, said Don Thrasher, fire inspector for the Merced County Fire Department.

While Staiger and Thrasher are new to mapping weed abatement, other cities and counties throughout the state have used GIS for years.

Mapping has helped field operations in the location, identification and property boundaries of declared parcel with hazards, said Dan Papilli, Deputy Agricultural Commissioner for the Los Angeles County. He said community residents benefit from the mapping tools as well, because they show the precise areas that need to be cleaned up.

“We are able to provide residents with aerial images with overlaying assessor parcel boundaries and showing required clearance areas,” Papilli wrote in an email.

The city of Roseville, near Sacramento, also uses mapping for weed abatement, said Rob Arnett, Senior Fire Inspector. Although he’s happy with the results, he said GIS does have its limitations.

“Nothing takes the place of a firsthand visit,” he said. “The mapping program is very helpful but the (satellite) imagery is usually several months old.”

Other agencies in the state prefer old-fashioned education year-round, so that when the dry season starts, there will be fewer properties to identify. FireSafe Marin, for instance, improves awareness by educating agencies and homeowners on proper vegetation maintenance.

The non-profit organization has created a fire preparedness monthly planner for residents, a fire prevention guide available for schoolchildren and has been instrumental in coordinating vegetation reduction projects around the Marin County area.

Hilly cities such as Los Angeles and Oakland have used more down-to-earth approaches to help prevent fires by using goats to clear brush, a concept that some are trying to bring to the Central Valley.

Goats are quickly becoming a popular tool since the animals are small, easy to handle, do not make as much impact as cattle would, and also will eat a lot of vegetation that other livestock normally won’t, like brush and other weedy species, said Theresa Becchetti, Farm Advisor for the Stanislaus and San Joaquin Counties UC Cooperative Extension.

But despite the technology and education in fire prevention, Staiger and others still have to clean up what property owners and goats don’t to prevent a the very real threat of wildfires.

In the city of Merced, Staiger has already sent out 2,600 first notices to landlords. The properties that need a second notice will be identified soon. Then she’ll assign contractors to clean up the fire hazards before Fourth of July fireworks.

“It’s not our property and it’s actually not our obligation to do this,” she said. “We do it because we try to save lives and property.”

Brandon Woodson White getting Asthma education refresher at The Children's Clinic with Asthma Coordinator Carolina Sanchez.

By Jessica Portner

As surfers cruise on blue-green surf and seagulls perch on the soft sand, it’s hard to see Long Beach as anything other than a picturesque beach town, especially when it’s teaming with summer tourists. But some of the city’s 450,000 residents say that their environment is less than idyllic and that the air they breathe is making them sick.

Diesel fumes from the Port of Long Beach—one of the busiest in the nation—mingle with a constant stream of exhaust from the 710 and 405 freeways, hiking the region’s ozone smog and fine particulate matter levels, which pose serious health risks to residents.

Air quality in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area was rated among the worst in the American Lung Association’s 2010 State of the Air Report.

Poor air quality in this beachside city has translated into high rates of asthma. A chronic disease characterized by inflammation of a person’s air passages, asthma can temporarily narrow the airways that carry oxygen to the lungs. In Long Beach, 21.9% of children suffer from asthma, compared to 15.6% in Los Angeles and 14.2% in the U.S., several studies show. Low-income and minority residents are hardest hit.

But a closely connected network of local government agencies, medical clinics and community groups in Long Beach have been dogged in their efforts to identify and treat every person with asthma who may not have access to care. The Children’s Clinic and the Long Beach Health and Human Services Healthy Homes Program are ramping up existing efforts to provide needy residents access to health care providers. They are also offering asthma education and management techniques to low-income communities nearest to the port.

The Children’s Clinic was recently awarded a $825,000 grant from the Port of Long Beach as part of the port’s long-term effort to mitigate the effects of pollutants as well as reduce dangerous emissions generated by cargo ships, equipment, tugboats and trucks. The Port’s Clean Air Action Plan funds a wide-ranging number of approaches to improve health care and treatment for residents in certain high impact neighborhoods. The newly funded The Children’s Clinic’s “Bridge to Health” program is a time-tested collaboration between health educators, physicians, community health workers and families at six clinic sites around the city.

In a well-lit exam room at The Children’s Clinic one recent summer morning, Carolina Sanchez, the asthma coordinator, asks a genial, athletic 13-year-old to demonstrate how to use the peak flow meter, which measures how well someone can push air out of the lungs. Earnest Brandon Woodson White has had asthma since he was a baby. He carries an inhaler wherever he goes and sleeps with an air filter in his room. Brandon says that most of his friends at school have asthma, too. He loves sports, but often has to modulate how hard he runs or jumps on the basketball court.

“Now that I know how to control it, when I am wheezing, I just stop playing for a while or take a rest…that way it doesn’t hurt,” he says. His school is located near two freeways and the air feels heavy. “Sometimes you can smell it in air,” Brandon said. “It kind of sucks. I want to move the school somewhere else away from pollution.”

Sitting besides her son Brandon in the exam room, Rene Woodson says she’s grateful to the clinic for helping her son manage his illness. They provide his medicine for free and offer useful household tips, she says. One suggestion was to use non-toxic cleaners like Murphy’s Soap for instance, instead of a multi-purpose cleaner that can irritate the lungs with its a pungent odor.

“They are doing wonderful thing in my community,’’ said Woodson. “I feel comfortable coming here and asking questions and I’m so thankful for them for helping people in need.”

Sanchez, who has been at The Children’s Clinic for ten years, has helped hundreds of families like Woodson’s. However, many asthma suffers might never enter the clinic doors, so a group of community health workers canvass the neighborhood to find them.

The Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma (LBACA) is a partnership with private clinics that runs a community health worker home visiting program and an asthma resource center. They train doctors in asthma management and team up with schools, after-school programs, parks and recreational centers to develop asthma-friendly environments.

Dr. Elisa Nicholas, both the CEO of The Children’s Clinic and the Project Director of LBACA remembers when, during her medical training at Yale University, she saw a 6-year-old child with asthma die.

“Childhood asthma is treatable and it’s tragic when people die from it,” said Dr. Nicholas, a pediatrician. When she worked as a doctor in Kenya and Haiti, Dr. Nicholas was impressed at the power of the community health workers there to educate populations about managing chronic diseases. She saw how the same techniques could work serving low-income, minority residents in Long Beach who are disproportionately affected by asthma.

“We know it’s treatable,” she said, “We knew we could do better in our community.”

Whether the community health worker is from LBACA or The Children’s Clinic, a home visit generally involves a flip chart, a pile of pamphlets and a long talk. In her office at the clinic recently, Sanchez holds up the trusted educational tools she has used for years. When Sanchez knocks on the front door, the parent of the child—who may have been identified after a visit to one of the six clinic sites—is generally welcoming.

The first time she goes to a child’s home, she does an environmental assessment and looks for the presence of common triggers for asthma: Smoke, pets, mold, dust, cockroaches and other pollutants.

One of the educational charts she uses shows patients the signs of asthma in English and Spanish and also in clear illustrations. The brightly colored drawings show people experiencing chest tightness, shortness of breath, wheezing, and coughing. She always dispenses a “healthy homes kit” that includes a hypoallergenic shower curtain, pillowcase and bed liner. She suggests other simple lifestyle modifications: Opening the window when taking a shower can reduce mold and use cotton blankets instead of comforters, which are magnate for dust mites. Perfumes, plug-in air fresheners and strong candles can also trigger an attack. Home health workers will follow up with the doctors who have a variety of effective medications to help patients manage their symptoms. Inhalers with the medication albuterol can relieve symptoms almost immediately. There are many brands of maintenance drugs taken orally and steroids for emergencies. Once the patient has an action plan, the community health workers follow up with an asthma control test to make sure the patient is sticking to the program.

The Children’s Clinic and LBACA compliment similar work by the city’s health department, which is thwarting asthma’s grip on families in West Long Beach one house at a time through their healthy homes program. While The Children’s Clinic focuses on kids, the Community Asthma and Air Quality Resource Education Program targets adults. With a new, $1.5 million grant from the Port of Long Beach, CAARE is also ramping up patient enrollment.

All of these combined efforts have led to fewer missed days of school, less missed work, and fewer trips to the hospital for asthma patients. A recent report on the City of Long Beach’s efforts alone found that 32% fewer clients relied on emergency room care since 2008 and 20% of them reported missing one or more days of work during that period.

Kathy Estrada, public health educator for the city’s healthy homes program, says she has done countless visits to homes to help adults manage their asthma and conducted numerous workshops. But one mother’s story stuck. The woman had a child with asthma and vowed to make changes in her home. She attended four workshops and at the end of the last one told Estrada that her son’s asthma was finally under control.

“That was wonderful to hear,” Estrada said recently. “We want people to make minor changes in their home that can better their health.”

Keith Woodcock, 60, community development director, tries out some of Delano's new public playground equipment. In his four years with the city, Woodcock has devoted himself to improving residents' health.

By Kellie Schmitt

On a recent afternoon, Keith Woodcocks, Delano’s community development director, drove through the dusty Central Valley streets, passing Mexican restaurants and bungalows draped with pink roses.

He pulled over to point out freshly-widened sidewalks and colorful new playgrounds. When he neared the empty field where a Wal-Mart will be built, he paused to explain local sentiments. Even though constructing the big box retailer was controversial, many residents wanted somewhere to buy plentiful, low-cost goods.

“You have to look at the community,” said Woodcock, 60, who is tall with ruddy cheeks and a white beard. “Government does a lot of talking and not a lot of listening.”

Listening has defined Woodcock’s role in this small agricultural town, 35 miles north of Bakersfield. In his four years working for the city, Woodcock has taken to the streets, engaging residents at street fairs or chatting in the grocery parking lot. He’s incorporated those insights into the city’s general plan, revisions he hopes will make Delano a healthier place to live.

“He involves everyone he can and is open to listening to folks,” said Lupe Martinez, the Delano-based assistant director of the Center on Race, Poverty & The Environment. “There is a real, sincere effort to get the community involved. They are beginning, in a big way, to start participating.”

Drawn to the Central Valley

Woodcock grew up in the Bay Area town of Los Altos, but he’s devoted his career to the Central Valley. His first planning job was in Fresno, and he worked his way around the state’s flat middle, in agricultural communities such as Soledad. There, he saw a pregnant woman living in a chicken coop, and realized the importance of providing affordable housing. Later, he got involved with building a mobile home park for farm workers that succeeded despite a NIMBY attitude.

“It felt really positive, to provide safe, affordable housing and see a difference,” he said.

Stints working for cities such as Firebaugh, Mendota, Merced and Wasco heightened his awareness of the Central Valley and the distinct challenges it faces – from air quality to water to lackluster community involvement.

Woodcock, who describes himself as quirky, once tried to convince Wasco to market itself with the nickname “Whimsical Wasco” and install twirling light poles. He wears expressive ties such as one designed by “Save the Children,” a bright sketch of a rainbow and sunshine. The former Boy Scout is an avid hat collector – from a fedora to a sombrero to a floppy hat that “could tell many stories”—and is known for having a messy desk.

Throughout most of his Valley jobs, Woodcock and his family have resided in Fresno, where he received a master’s degree in city and regional planning at California State University Fresno.

“I’m a Valley-ite,” he said. “I love the Valley and its open spaces. California needs to pay more attention to the Valley – the state is only as strong as our weakest link.”

Broadening Influence

When Woodcock took the Delano position in 2007, he studied the community’s history and current challenges. The city of about 50,000 had grim health stats, and its economic figures were equally disturbing.

In his experience working in the Central Valley, Woodcock had noticed that community involvement was too often limited to the usual suspects. People who were already informed, enfranchised, and empowered would dominate the discussion.

As he helped revise the city’s development blue print, or general plan, Woodcock wanted to broaden residents’ input. But holding meetings wouldn’t be enough.

“People here are hardworking, dedicated people who want the best for their families,” he said. “They’re so involved with family income that when you talk about the general plan, what does that mean?”

He sought the advice of community leaders such as Martinez, who told him, “You’re not speaking their language and I don’t mean Spanish.” Woodcock got involved with Martinez’s organization, and tapped into farmworkers who heard their news on the Radio Campesina Network. He went door to door and invited residents to a city walkability workshop.

“A lot of times, folks in government are intimidating – they think they’re the experts and know best,” Martinez said. “Keith is open, humble and easy to approach, which is difficult for community members to do.”

When Woodcock held a meeting, he’d bring balloons. Once, he brought in a search light to attract curious onlookers. He attended local fairs, and spread the word at a City Walk that attracted 1500 people.

When Woodcock is staffing a city outreach booth, he’s not just sitting on the sidelines, said Martin Tracey, the city’s community services director. At a police department safety fair, Woodcock sponsored a contest at his booth which threatened to steal the show.

“A lot of the participators commented: ‘You’re hogging the traffic,’” Tracey said. “Keith’s become someone who is easily recognized. He’s very consistent in working events and talking to people.”

Woodcock also worked with the PhotoVoice project, which gave local youth 150 disposable cameras and asked them to take photographs of things they considered healthy or unhealthy. The young participants pointed to areas where there were no bike racks, or convenience stores that only sold processed foods.

“We found our touchstone and that was the children,” Woodcock said. “We got the kids involved and that started a dialogue.”

Two years ago, Woodcock started working with 30 planning students at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The students drove the “plan van” through town seeking input for the city’s general plan. They stopped at grocery store parking lots on Saturday afternoons and sponsored free picnics to attract onlookers.

They heard from residents who couldn’t speak English, who were struggling with hunger, or who had lost their jobs.

“We talked to people who would never have talked to someone from the city,” said Kelly Main, the Cal Poly professor working on the effort. “Planners will often just expect people to come to them, but Keith will go out where people are, to find out what they want and need.”

Building a Plan

Along with resident feedback, Woodcock layered research onto mapping software to look at the city’s populations and how they corresponded to park access. Parks were noticeably absent in several areas of the city, but school sites were distributed more evenly. If he could find a way to allow public access to schools’ green space, all areas of the city could be served. The city and school districts currently are developing an after-school policy that would allow public access to their spaces.

Woodcock amended the general plan to raise the city’s park requirements from three acres per 1000 to five. New city developments will have more park acreage, and parks will be linked by pedestrian and bike paths.

He also used mapping software to look at residents’ access to fresh foods, charting the types of options available by neighborhoods. He found the southwest area of the city had limited access to fresh foods, with mostly convenience stores that didn’t offer healthy options. Woodcock and the city are working with existing stores to add fresher items, such as fruits.

The same mapping analysis found that bus schedules for access to health clinics should be adjusted. Overall, there was a lack of medical care providers in poorer areas of the city. Now, the city is looking at properties to see if services can be brought to the communities there.

The revised general plan calls for improving overall bike access, with about 30 miles of streets newly classified for bikes. The plan will also create a new design for the central 11th Avenue, which will include more provisions for pedestrians, bike lanes and wider sidewalks.

Woodcock has also been a key player in bringing a farmer’s market to town.

Beginning to Participate

This summer, the city is voting on sections of the revised general plan. But, observers say Woodcock has already accomplished the hardest part: getting the community to care.

“In Delano, he has been able to reach out to the community, and they are beginning, in a big way, to start participating,” Martinez said. “I would like to think Delano is very progressive.”

Residents are already enjoying the fruits of Woodcock’s health efforts. On a sunny spring afternoon, Monica Garnica watched her son Izaya, 5, explore one of the city’s newest playgrounds.

“I think it’s awesome,” she said. “We saw the jungle gym, and we just had to come over. The climbing wall is great for exercise.”

At another new park on the tour, Woodcock pulled over the car, got out, and demonstrated the green exercise equipment himself – despite the fact he was wearing a button-down shirt and tie.

“This has been a very big community success,” he said, pointing out the lack of vandalism. “Planning can play a vital role, but you’ve got to get the people engaged.”

By Jenn Walker

Charles Mason Jr. is helping to turn a South Sacramento desert into a verdant oasis.

In September 2009 a flare was thrown into the front yard of Mason’s Oak Park home. Though no one was harmed, Oak Park is a neighborhood beleaguered by a reputation for drugs, violence and prostitution, and this might have seemed like a good time for a family man to move on.

But Mason had something else in mind. He repaired the damage to his home and remained in Oak Park with his then-girlfriend and son.

Instead of using fiberglass to reinsulate the wall that had been burned, he used recycled blue jeans. This is just one of the many ways he had been making his home more environmentally sustainable since he moved there in 2008.

Rafael Aguilera and volunteers arranging plants into a garden box. Clockwise from left to right: Bonnie Villaneuva, Rafael Aguilera, Miguel Marmolejo and Ming Lai.

While tearing out his front lawn he lifted sex paraphernalia and at least three gun shells from the soil. The lawn was replaced with mulch and native, draught-resistant plants. His walls are painted with non-toxic paint and the floors are made of bamboo. There is a large shade tree planted in his front yard and several garden boxes filled with vegetables and flowers built during gardening demonstrations he held there in 2009.

By making his own home an environmentally-sustainable structure, he is striving to set an example within his neighborhood. He invites conversations with curious neighbors who stop to admire the waist-high flowers growing in the front yard. He sees this as a golden opportunity to create bonds with neighbors and encourage them to plant their own gardens.

And he shares what grows in his front yard, offering greens and peppers to passing neighbors or the family with the tamale business across the street.

This is part of the community-building process as Mason sees it, and it is the fundamental concept behind Ubuntu Green, the non-profit organization he founded in 2009.

Local agencies have deemed South Sacramento a food desert — a region deprived of access to healthy and affordable foods. Mason describes it as an area lacking in adequate public transportation, scattered with vacant lots and corner stores selling junk food and liquor.

He sought to address these problems by creating Ubuntu Green, with the mission of transforming South Sacramento into an equitable, politically active place with interconnected communities, a cleaner environment and healthy food access.

To accomplish this, Mason has recruited likeminded staff and advisors over the past two years to join him in reviving South Sacramento through various projects that involve building edible gardens, training youth in leadership skills and forging cooperative relationships between the community and powerful local decision makers.

Since 2009, Ubuntu Green has also organized Green Oak Park and South Sacramento!, an event held annually to educate and encourage people to “go green” by reducing energy use, consuming organic food and participating in community gardens and farm stands.

Building gardens, harmonizing people

By 2013, Mason hopes to turn the South Sacramento food desert into a green food oasis with the creation of 6000 edible gardens.

Why gardens?

With each garden planted, one or more families have immediate access to fresh, healthy food. Garden access means one less trip to a grocery store, resulting in less carbon emissions. It means less reliance on produce that is sprayed with pesticides and requires mass quantities of water. Each garden planted results in direct relationships between people and their food. And, as gardens are planted, people foster relationships through sharing their harvest with each other.

“Gardening is the simplest thing in the world,” said Ubuntu Green’s gardening subcontractor Rafael Aguilera as he guided an audience through a gardening demonstration in Oak Park early this month. Within minutes, he and several volunteers had drilled together pieces of lumber into a rectangular garden box, filled it with soil, and planted an edible garden filled with tomatoes, peppers and squash behind Old Soul Café.

Ubuntu Green holds these demonstrations in order to teach people how to plant and maintain their own gardens. This demonstration was held at the launch of Grow Together Sacramento, a newly-formed coalition of Sacramento organizations striving toward healthy food access within the region. Ubuntu Green was one of the many organizations involved.

The organization has already been contracted by the California Endowment to build 60 edible gardens by September 2012 in part of the Sacramento Building Healthy Communities project. As of June 1 of this year, 27 gardens have been built on the organization’s behalf.

Ubuntu Green has also partnered with other organizations on the Edible Garden Campaign, which establishes a goal of 350 gardens planted in the Sacramento
area by February 2013, targeting a minimum of 150 low-income households.

Within that same timeframe, Mason hopes to have encouraged the community to build an additional 650 edible gardens, bringing the number of garden installations to 6000 within the region.

This is an impressive goal for an organization with a staff of four. But Ubuntu Green has a large support base, including Aguilera and 14 others on the advisory board, in addition to about 50 volunteers that offer their support at any given time.

The organization receives funding for its projects from the CA Endowment, in addition to groups such as UC Davis, SMUD, CA Wellness and Sierra Health.
Meanwhile Aguilera has and will continue to facilitate garden builds throughout the year. Like Mason, Aguilera sees edible gardens as a solution to social problems, in addition to environmental and health problems.

“[Gardening] is probably the most multi-layered solution,” he said.

It allows engagement in a human economy, returning people to natural awareness rather than relying on food that comes from as far as 15,000 miles away, he said. Gardening has the potential to harmonize communities and bring a city together.

Creating leaders and building bridges

Planting gardens is just one approach the organization has to reviving South Sacramento. Inspiring youth to become leaders within their communities is another.

Each year Ubuntu Green recruits youth between 12 to 17 years old to participate in the Green Youth Leadership Team under the guidance of a program director. A new team is being assembled this month.

The program is focused on environmental justice, providing leadership skills and training on how to become advocates of the environment and communities, with the expectation that participants will influence fellow students and family members.

And they have, Mason said.

In addition to installing community gardens, participants join forces with youth across the state to advocate the environment and work on organizing events within the community like Green Oak Park and South Sacramento!

In addition to empowering youth, Ubuntu Green also strives to affect legislation involving the environment, healthy food access, transportation and equity on both state and local levels, acting as what Mason calls bridge between communities and power structures.

Many of the challenges faced by disadvantaged communities like Oak Park and surrounding areas involve decisions on how land will be used, he said.

“And 90 percent of the time, when those issues are addressed, decisions are made without the input of the residents.”

On the state level, the organization has been an advocate of AB 650, which would create a task force to examine obstacles preventing accessible public transportation in the state.

On the local level, the organization has encouraged the City Council to support an ordinance that allows use of vacant lots for building community gardens, said
Alvin Vaughn, the organization’s policy and communications director.

It also pushed the Council to approve the installation of 8,000 solar panels on buildings throughout the city, he said.

The organization is working to increase community awareness and involvement in local politics as well. This includes using mapping tools and a geographic information system, conducting surveys and identifying community leaders.

South Sacramento residents know first-hand which places lack traffic safety or healthy food access, Mason said, and the objective is to engage them in a dialogue,
asking them important questions like, “what do you want to have happen here?” and “how do you want to see change?”

Most importantly, Mason emphasizes that the organization is striving to create partnerships between community members and those empowered with making decisions, whether they be politicians, Regional Transit or the housing and redevelopment agency.

“We want to cooperate with agencies, not be at war,” Mason said.

The meaning behind Ubuntu

When asked why he is doing all this and why he left his career to take on Ubuntu Green as a full-time job, Mason responded with a laugh.

“Some people think I am trying to save the world,” he said.

Others have been skeptical, telling him it was a big risk to take during the worst economy in 60 years.

“But I knew it was something that needed to be done,” he said.

Rather than viewing Oak Park as nothing more than a neighborhood of vacant lots, poor transportation and corner stores selling terrible food and booze, Mason said he saw it as a place of ethnic and economic diversity. Instead of removing himself and his family from the neighborhood due to its challenges, he chose to immerse himself into the community and focus on how he could make a lasting impact.

This is the meaning behind the African philosophy Ubuntu, to approach life with a sense of shared existence rather than focusing on the individual’s journey through life alone.

It is a philosophy Mason has chosen to embrace wholeheartedly.

Note. An earlier version of this article referred to Mason’s housemate as his wife. She was his girlfriend.

By Paul Eakins

Since she was a child, 17-year-old Sundance Medina has lived across the street from Drake Park in a low-income neighborhood north of Downtown Long Beach.

However, after two shootings at the park when she was younger and frequent gang activity there through the years, Sundance hasn’t been able to enjoy the park much, staying cooped up in her home.

“I wasn’t allowed to go outside.” Sundance said.

That is, until last year, when a new program in Long Beach called Summer Night Lights began. The program organized activities for youths and families at three parks – Martin Luther King Jr. Park and Admiral Kidd Park, along with Drake – throughout every summer evening, working with community organizations, local police and the city’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine.

Sundance was among the volunteers who helped spread the word about the program, but she also got something out of it by taking a photography class and doing other activities.

“Sometimes there’s a lot of violence going on, and we’re trying to fight that because there’s many teens getting into gangs,” Sundance said. “Many people are afraid to go out there and take their kids to the playground.”

Jessica Quintana, executive director of Centro CHA, one of the non-profit groups that helped organize Summer Night Lights, says that’s one of the main issues that the program was meant to address.

“That’s what we find in unsafe communities – (residents) don’t go out,” Quintana said. “When you have a safe community, you have a healthy community because it provides safe places that people can go to and be active.”

The Summer Night Lights program was created last year based on a similar program in Los Angeles. Long Beach’s Community Partners Council worked with the California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities Collaborative to design and run the program.

Building Healthy Communities is a statewide program by the California Endowment that is expected to distribute $100 million in grants over 10 years to 14 communities where poverty, crime and other issues affect people’s health. (The Endowment was also the initial funder of www.healthycal.org.)

A case study of Long Beach’s program showed that neighborhoods around the parks where the summer programs take place tend to have overall higher crime rates.

The study also found that students who attend schools near the three park sites are mostly minority, with Latinos making up the largest group. At Drake Park, the student population is 74 percent Latino, with all but 28 percent speaking languages other than English as their primary language.

Students enrolled in schools near the parks also have a disproportionately lower income, from 74 percent classified as socio-economically disadvantaged at Martin Luther King Park to 90 percent at Drake Park. The students served by Summer Night Lights also have mixed results on standardized tests, particularly among middle school students, who scored far below the average for Long Beach Unified School District.

The program tackled some of these issues by providing classes in leadership, drama, karate, photography and more. Among activities was a tutoring program that not only helped students, but also taught parents how to get involved with their children’s education.

The program also made youths such as Sundance feel more comfortable in their own neighborhood and more comfortable with the police who are there to protect them.

“We don’t have that much of an interaction with the policemen,” Sundance said. “We would see them pass by when something happened, but we never got to know their name or anything.”

Long Beach Police West Division Commander Joe Levy said the program allowed police officers to take on a non-traditional role by getting involved with the community.

“When youth have an opportunity to interact with police in a positive light, that breaks down a lot of the prejudices and stereotypes and barriers that the community has with police,” Levy said.

That effort will continue when the program resumes in July, and Quintana said that organizers have learned from last year, when the funding was approved at the last minute and left little time to implement the program.

“We didn’t think we’d accomplish that, given the time that we had, given that the money wasn’t there,” Quintana said. “The check didn’t even come until the end of the program.”

Now, there is a Summer Night Lights advisory board, a system for collecting data on program participants and a better outreach plan. The program will also provide some much-needed jobs, by hiring 10 youth interns at each park to help run things.

Hundreds of youths participated in last year’s program, Quintana said, and she expects hundreds again this year.

Sundance said she and many other youths in her neighborhood are excited to see the program start up again.

Since last year, she said she has already seen a change at Drake Park. More families and children use it now, which seems to be pushing the gangs out.

“I think (gang members) get scared more because I think that they had that idea that they had control of the park,” Sundance said. “If they come up here, they probably got scared that we have more control now.

“Now I feel more comfortable,” she added. “Now it is my park.”