This pre recorded show furnished by Matthew Matern. You’re listening to Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern. My guest today, Cindy Montañez CEO of TreePeople. Welcome to the program. Cindy.

Thank you. Excited to be here. And hello to everybody that’s listening today.

Tell us a little bit about yourself. And what’s your journey to get involved in the environmental movement?

Okay, I mean, I have, I think the country’s greatest role right now, which is to be CEO of TreePeople, which is an amazing nonprofit that’s headquartered in Los Angeles. And we are out there just Making a Difference Day after day planting trees and caring for trees and doing environmental education in communities all over Southern California.

And how did I get there? I mean, I grew up in Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley out in the northeast part of the San Fernando Valley in a little community called San Fernando San Fernando coma. And quite honestly, it was an area that had a lot of environmental, just pollution, and injustices. But my parents always took us out to parks and state parks, national parks, a local parks out into nature out to hike, and gave us a deeper appreciation for nature.

So I always knew that, that my career at some point or my life is going to be about trying to take care of the environment and help people. So you know, I was involved as a little girl in my community, went to UCLA, locally state again in Los Angeles, and then was very much a student activist.

And when I was 25 years old, I ran for my city council in the city of San Fernando was elected as a youngest council person, they’re focused on a lot of issues to help the community and was talking to back then about the environment and air pollution and planting trees and working on these environmental justice issues, got elected to the state legislature at 28 years old to this day, the youngest woman ever elected to the California state legislature.

And I pushed hard, again on these issues of climate change and environmental justice and addressing pollution and addressing public health issues. And my life just kind of took me to a place where today, I lead, LA’s largest environmental movement, literally, we have tens of thousands of people that are on the ground in communities helping us plant trees, and we have a well over a million people can came to our website last year looking for how they can be involved.

So it’s a big movement. It’s fun, it’s, it’s meaningful. And I just have to say that, you know, that little girl growing up in San Fernando Tacoma that had frustrations with how are my environment looked as compared to other neighborhoods. Now I have the ability to change that. And that’s what we’re doing, we are changing that we’re bringing the environment to areas that don’t have a lot of natural space and trees, communities all over LA, that are hard hit by air pollution and climate threats.

But we’re also taking care of those beautiful national forests that my parents always taught us to have a deep appreciation for. And the just gorgeous, pristine Santa Monica Mountains, which are just such a huge environmental, just benefit to the entire region. So that’s what that’s what we do. And that’s who that’s who I am. I’m just like any other Angeleno who grew up here, you know, in a big city. But no matter how big the city gets, no matter how big of a metropolis that we live in, we are all connected to nature. And we want to make sure that we keep nature alive and healthy and with us.

And that’s, that’s our movement. And so we just, we have grown tremendously in the last few years. So we just invite everybody, everyone is welcome. It doesn’t matter how old how young, you know, net doesn’t matter where you’re from, you are all invited to be part of our, of our movement of treat people.

Well, that’s a beautiful story, Cindy, and thank you for sharing it with us. It’s it’s really a story of, of America and the 21st century of of somebody, you know, coming from, you know, humble beginnings and making a real difference in our community.

And I think that’s a great message for young people. 25 years old, getting elected to the City Council, 28 years old, getting elected the state legislature to make a difference to have our voices be heard. And, and I think that a lot of people out there don’t have that sense that they can contribute. Are they there?

They care, but they’re not sure and I certainly encourage all of our listeners to engage and do Take the first step and reach out to organizations like yours to to be involved and defined a path. And that’s, that’s a beautiful part of the journey.

That’s exactly right. Matt, I’ll tell you a story just over the weekend, we were planting in watts in the heart of South Los Angeles, a community that back in 1965, went through the historic watts of the Watts riots, right. And this is historically a very poor working class community, historically African American, lots of immigrants and Latino.

And this weekend, we were there, planting with all types of very diverse people that came from all over the last circle of people that I planted with, a young woman had grown up in the area, and remembered, you know, gang activity and lots of police and like the disinvestment in her community, and she was happy that we were now they’re planting trees in our neighborhood, another young woman came in from Orange County, and she was connected to this wats rising project that we have going on, because of her company, another young man came in from the San Gabriel Valley, because he had heard about it.

So he had drove in about an hour to help plant trees in this community of watts, another young woman said, you know, I was living in Minnesota, then COVID hit. And it just made me ask myself, what kind of difference do I truly want to make? At this time in my life, when life is so could be so short, and it’s so precious, and she’s like, I want to plant trees. And there she was. So we had people from Minnesota from watts from the San Gabriel Valley from Orange County, and a little girl who is 10 years old, a Girl Scout that says she had just taken the pledge to help the Girl Scouts plant 5 million trees, and she was going to plant her two trees.

And that is what we do at TreePeople. We bring people together from all kinds of backgrounds to all kinds of neighborhoods, and people are there for that simple act of planting a tree to make a difference in their community. And everyone can do it, just as you said. It’s healing. And it’s very unifying, and it’s tons of fun.

I tell you, what, Cindy, tell us where your next project is going to be. And what you’re doing next.

Yeah, okay, love to invite people to be part of our, again, a growing movement all over all over Southern California. So you can help come help us plant in the Angeles National Forest, which is a you know, just pristine, beautiful forest, that unfortunately has gone through a lot of fires, as we’ve seen throughout the state of California and other parts of the of the country, so you can come help us plant areas that have been fire scarred in the Angeles National Forest.

You could come help us restore these areas in the Santa Monica Mountains. When you go out to the Santa Monica balance, if you haven’t been there, you feel like you are completely outside of Los Angeles. And you are in these just wonderful Chaparral environments, oak trees and walnut trees and you’re just in a whole different area. Or you could come help us in all of the prep plantings that we have in urban communities from the San Fernando Valley to South Los Angeles to southeast Los Angeles. to Now we’re going to be out in Riverside, we are pretty much everywhere.

So look at our website, TreePeople.org. And you will see hundreds of events throughout the year, even last year with COVID, TreePeople was out there at over 400 community events. So there is definitely a way for you and involved. We have no less than 7000 to 10,000 volunteers year after year. So there is plenty of opportunity for you to come help us green communities all over and take care of our forests and our mountains.

Matt 08:57Well that that does sound great. And tell us a little bit about the beginnings of TreePeople and kind of how it’s evolved over it’s its life.

JB was one of the most beautiful stories ever. Andy Lucas, our founder was a young 15 year old that went from Los Angeles out to the San Bernardino mountains. And his camp counselor said Look at these beautiful trees, hundreds of years old that you are standing under. Back then in the 1970s pollution was so bad that the counselor let them know, listen, kids, if we don’t do anything to stop the pollution. If we don’t take care of our environment, these forests are going to be gone.

By the time you are all in your 20s or 30s 10 to 10 to 20 years these trees could be gone because pollution was so bad. So it scared the heck out of Andy and all his other 15 year old camp buddies. So they literally went back Like, with jag hovers with tools, and they started breaking up concrete, and planting trees, those trees continue to thrive and survive in the San Bernardino Mountains. They’re big, and they’re beautiful.

And we have pictures of Andy now with these big trees, you know, almost 50 years later. And that’s the story, you know, TreePeople was founded by a group of teenagers. So our movement is heavily focused on youth. We have programs in LA County that impact a quarter million students, we are working with students in their schools to green their schools, plant trees, capture rainwater, plant gardens, do recycle, recycle trash, we worked with students all the time, because at the heart of TreePeople, it was a it was a movement created by a group of this young, forward thinking, just teenagers that wanted to make a difference. And and that’s, you know, that’s that’s the history of who we are.

We have grown to be the largest environmental movement in Los Angeles, we do high level policy and research. We have environmental education programs, we retreat, we’re planting trees, taking care of trees, we just have a very sophisticated approach to how we are going to take action to address issues of climate change, and help nature. He’ll sit cities and communities all over.

Well, that’s, that’s a great story of the organization. And I can connect to it on a personal level in that I remember planting a tree in my parents backyard on the south side of Chicago, and that tree is still there, and it’s grown, you know, to be an adult tree and it’s it’s amazing to watch something grow like that. And it’s just, it’s a piece of myself, I think planted in that ground and part of our family so yeah, it’s I love it.

Yes, thank you for sharing that story. I mean, we have a big movement called We Are All TreePeople. Because we believe that at TreePeople just like what you just said, You are a TreePeople you are definitely a tree person. That story of you connecting back as your that childhood memory, right, those beautiful memories of climbing that tree sitting under a tree taking a nap under tree having a picnic under a tree. All of these different ways we connected trees and trees connect to us. That is exactly what we’re doing is we were bringing people together around something we all connect to and those those are the trees.

You’re listening to Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern and my guest Cindy Montañez, CEO of TreePeople, KABC 790. We’re going to be back in just one minute with Cindy, talking more about the impact that treat people as made in Southern California over the last 40 plus years. So stay with us.

You’re listening to Unite and Heal America. This is Matt Matern, with my guest today Cindy Montañez, CEO TreePeople, we’re talking to Cindy about the impact that this organization has had in Southern California over the last 40 years. Tell us a little bit about the amount of trees that have been planted and how that affects our environment here in California to have additional trees planted.

Yeah, I mean, since TreePeople was founded back in Los Angeles, in 1973, so almost 50 years ago, by, you know, a teenage activist anti Lucas, we have easily planted over 3 million trees and engaged over 2 million people in our in our movement. And, you know, we are definitely about the trees, but we are mostly really about engaging people. Because even if people don’t come directly volunteer in our activities, or they move elsewhere, we want them to continue to take care of and plant trees, anywhere that that they are at.

No, this is the biggest movement of people coming out weekend after weekend, sometimes day after day to plant and care for trees and renew depleted landscapes. So we are establishing rain gardens and we’re planting native plants and we are planting the trees and we’re doing environmental education and we just have a lot of activities. And we know that over 3 million people have been part of this and probably many others that we are not even aware of.

I tell you wherever I go, and I tell people I’m CEO of TreePeople, sometimes people just want to hug me they’re like a TreePeople we love TreePeople or tell me more about TreePeople because I want to become part of a TreePeople. So it’s a it’s a huge, you know, just huge community. We have generations now after 50 years of being around in a big area like Los Angeles.

Having done things in other parts of the world, it’s it’s this generational now multi generational In some families, where kids or adults, you know, remember going up to our park or planting a tree with TreePeople when they were little kids, and now they have their children or their grandchildren as part of as part of our efforts. We are involved in many schools, I mean, year after year, we work on school greening projects and over 200 schools.

So imagine that impact after you know, that many years of of touching that many schools, so yes, it’s a, it’s just a it’s very high impact. And then, and I think sometimes we ourselves don’t realize the kind of difference that we are making in people’s lives. And the and I hope people realize that they have made a huge difference in in our lives and how we are running treat people. Because now we are ready to really launch even in a bigger way to get cities across the United States and communities across the world to join the effort of being true people.

So in terms of carbon capture, I mean, that one of the things that that as I’ve learned more and more about the environmental problems we face that trees are a great kind of a carbon capturing device Oh, fashion? And do you have any like measurement of the amount of carbon that the trees, the millions of trees you planted have captured over the last 40 plus years?

Well, so we know, I mean, that the best technology or one of the best technologies for addressing climate change is that ancient, ancient technology of a tree. I mean, once we planted tree, that tree begins to capture the air pollution and allows us to capture carbon, we actually do do an analysis on every project that we have in community.

So if we’re going to plant 1,000 trees, or we’re going to plant 10,000 trees, we there’s actually a tool that we use, depending on the tree, you know, we can we could use that, that that tool to quantify how much carbon will be captured in the life of that tree. I don’t know what the total amount of carbon that we have captured in our trees, but just imagine, you have easily 3 million additional lungs of the Earth that we have planted that are out there, helping us breathe and capturing carbon from all the trees that we have planted, we take care of our trees.

So I have to say there’s a lot of movements out there that just plant trees, those trees die, because no one’s taking care of them TreePeople’s trees survive at rates of 90%, sometimes 100% of the trees we plant and communities survive. And the reason for that is because we connect people directly to that tree. So every tree that TreePeople plants, has a name. And every single tree, that TreePeople plant has its own kind of ceremony we baptize it, we do, we get around in a circle, we hold hands, and we say repeat our motto, which is trees need people and people need trees, then we welcome that tree with its name.

So that christening ceremony that baptism, you know that whole process is something that we do, why because again, we’re trying to connect people directly to that tree. So that tree can survive and capture carbon, capture water, and help us with you know, bringing in new wildlife or, you know, other critters and like all these benefits are enormous amount of benefits that trees provide.

So, we absolutely do quantify all of that. And because we know that there’s incredible benefits from that comes from again, that simple act of planting a tree is is one of the greatest actions or acts that a human being can take to leave a legacy and make a difference.

Well, in terms of the survival rate, that’s, that’s amazing. And because as I had read a bit about, about this process, that it it doesn’t help to plant trees and just cut them down because then you’re releasing all the carbon that you just captured. So you want to keep them alive and and keep them growing. So that’s important part of the process, just planning them wouldn’t be enough you really, it’s great to hear that the organization is there to try to help them thrive.

Exactly, and it’s really simple. So in addition to the work that we’re doing, we offer we offer workshops, so if anybody wants to become a community forester, so you want to plant trees in on your block in your neighborhood, in school, your park, then we train you as three people, and in training you we help you and your neighbors or your friends, your family, learn the process of how you take care of a tree.

So watering a tree, trimming a tree, mulching a tree, making sure that the tree gets, you know the the love and attention it needs to, to establish itself its roots really well and survive for hundreds of years potentially. So it’s really simple. You know, sometimes people think that watering the tree is really expensive, we’ve done research, and it shows that, you know, for less than, like, $15 a year, probably about $10 a year, you can maintain a tree by just giving it the three buckets of water that it needs once a week, to have it to make sure it gets the water it needs. It’s really easy.

And it’s inexpensive. And it has huge benefits, just by making that simple investment. And, and we teach you, we teach you how to do that. That’s why our trees survive, because we don’t just plant it and turn our backs on it, but we plant it. And we continue to bring community to it. And we engage the community members and people with it. So that that as I said, that little 10 year old girl scout that was with us in watts over the weekend, she she committed she took her pledge and said I’m taking care of this tree.

Emily May was the name of her tree, she’s like, I’m coming back to take care of Emily may for the rest of my life. And I believe it because a girl scout said it, that tree will survive. And that’s why you get 90% 200% of our trees surviving wherever we plant them.

Matt 21:32What about in terms of biodiversity in how do how does the organization address that? Because I certainly heard that we want to have a diverse forest, we don’t want to have a monoculture. What what does your organization do to to address that concern?

Yeah, look, we are working on one of the areas that has the greatest biodiversity in the world, the Santa Monica Mountains, this Mediterranean ecosystem that we are blessed and fortunate to live in, in Los Angeles has the greatest biodiversity in terms of just plants and trees and other species. So what we do is we do we do a lot of research on what are existing native plants, but then also how is the climate changing to then allow us so that we get information and research and science so that we’re planting trees that are actually going to survive with the changing climate, we know that we’re going to experience more days that are hotter.

And then we know we’re going to go through periods of extreme drought as we’re beginning to live now. Then we’re gonna go through periods where it’s really wet and rainy. And then we’re gonna continue to see these wildfires. So we have all of this that we need to plan for now. So what we do is we partner with research institutions, with universities with other nonprofit organizations to actually look at and do that.

The analysis of what are the right species, trees and plants to plant in certain areas. We have gotten very deeply into fire resilience, because of the amount of wildfires that we see throughout the area. We live in an area or we we as TreePeople have our headquarters in areas that are very prone to fire, but they’re very biodiverse areas.

So you will see us in our nursery, we have many, many different species of native plants that we actually grow locally, we have acorns we collect to grow our trees and we take those plants and we take them back in to these areas where we were where we need to continue to maintain biodiversity.

We do this with the US Forest Service. So there’s a really specialized way of actually collecting seeds, propagating the seeds and returning them to US Forest Service lands. There are only two nurseries in the entire county of Los Angeles County have over 10 million people that are certified to actually grow trees that are that are taking back taken back to the US Forest Service lands we a TreePeople have one of those nurseries.

So this is something that we are very, very involved with. And we have a group of interns, so any community member that wants to get to that skill set of knowing native plants and trees, please reach out to us because we are we have one of the best teams in the region working on this exact issue.

Well, that is that’s exciting stuff. We’re listening to Cindy Montañez of TreePeople, CEO of TreePeople on Unite and Heal America. This is your host Matt Matern. And when we come back, we’re going to be talking about how to plant a bio diverse forest to prevent fire and or survive a fire was Sunday. So we’ll be right back in one minute.

You’re listening to Unite and Heal America. This is Matt Matern with my guest Cindy Montañez, TreePeople CEO. And as we said, the question, Cindy, is how to plant a biodiverse forest to either prevent fires or survive of fire, because obviously, we have that fire risk here in Southern California and in Northern California as well. And all across the West, we’ve seen these horrendous wildfires, and what can we do to plant forests that are less likely to get engulfed by flames?

Yeah, so I mean, increasing the plant diversity, but the appropriate plant diversity and tree diversity in, in the region or in forest, even sometimes, we don’t realize in our in urban areas, we can have these urban forests anywhere, right? It doesn’t have to be the traditional US Forest Service lands or national parks, these open space. This also happens in urban areas where we have to look at our ecosystem and look at plants, plant diversity, tree diversity, so that we can be more resilient to the changes that we’re seeing from climate change. But then also extreme heat.

As we see these get hotter droughts, we won’t have as much water. So we have to be really careful what kinds of trees and plants we’re planting. But then, as you just mentioned, one of the scariest aspects of this changing climate is fires, and the potential for increased wildfires, because of these very drought, drought are very dry, and then wet years, that create a lot of just this, the fuel plants that shouldn’t be there that are that have that are very flammable.

So what do we do? So we have program, one of our most popular programs is a program called forest eight. And this was a program that we read launched a few years ago with a very significant legacy gift from the Boeing company, who itself was really is continues to try to make a difference worldwide on sustainability. So with the Boeing Company and other partners, we, we developed a program called forest aid, where we are looking at areas that have been burned by fires and going in and replanting native plants and other entries to make that area less prone to fires.

So we remove a lot of invasive plants that have really high fuel. And just imagine, you know, when you’re when you’re at a campfire, if you have a lot of when you want to get your fire started, you added leaves and twigs, and all of these things that catch fire really quick. So we tried to remove all of that, we remove all of that with volunteers, literally hundreds 1000s of volunteers, hundreds of interns, 1000s of volunteers that are going in and more more properly managing these areas, then we go in and working with the US Forest Service and other partners, we identify the type the types of plants or trees that need to go in there.

We plant numerous amounts of plants in different species of trees. So that as you said, we don’t have a monoculture. We’re not farming out there, we’re not doing agriculture, we are creating a forest and the forest has many plants, many trees, many species, because they all live off it off of each other, they feed off of each other, they help each other. And they in a way they work together to try to prevent those invasive plants, two from actually dominating and taking over the landscape.

So we, you know, we do this as a team and what’s wonderful why the US Forest Service and others, other entities like working with us is because we bring out a lot of people we’re educating so it’s not again, we’re not just doing the work to do the work, we’re doing the work to educate people, engage people, so that we have a whole culture, a movement in in Los Angeles and really in the United States of people knowing that they too can be part of the solution and protecting ourselves from future from these future impacts of climate change.

So that’s that’s what you see your we have these natural or natural forest potentialities that are that are going to be recreated in urban areas. We that will increase habitat it’ll help us again with with with with water. It’ll help reduce pressure sometimes on how on development helps with mental health and mean, all of this is just, you know, bottom line comes into comes down to we want to just improve life, and we want to improve our ecosystem?

Well, that’s, that’s a very important question is kind of how, and I heard it spoken about before. I don’t say I’m no expert on it, but how trees and plants are related to water and how having a healthy forest can help rivers and streams and, and also change weather patterns in in some situations. Tell us a little bit about the tree peach TreePeople’s work and how it can help all these related areas.

Yeah, so TreePeople’s work, we look at the ecosystem as a whole. So we’re looking at the soil, right to start off with. So even sometimes, before we even plant the tree, we want to look at that soil and see is that soil healthy enough?

And how do we get that soil healthier, sometimes you can have a really healthy tree and give it lots of love and attention. But if you don’t have the right soil, a healthy soil, that you then we won’t be able to really that tree won’t be as healthy as it as it is. We also know that soil, even more so than trees, is can capture carbon. Right. So having healthy soils and healthy urban soils, especially is critical to our long term resilience on climate change, and then also being able to capture carbon. So when we start, we start looking at soils. We look at, you know, the trees, we look at what’s around we look at native plants, we look at the potential for water capture.

So we were designing berms and we are designing sometimes we do rain gardens, so gardens, you know, when it rains, the water actually stays to help, you know, plant take care of certain plants that are plant planted and those plants help clean up the soil. They also the rain gardens will help water infiltrate back into groundwater tables that are important that then we’re you again, we’re recycling we’re, we’re going through a natural, we’re trying to mimic how nature works. So with water, trees are a very important piece of capturing rainwater runoff.

So when it rains, we’ve all seen it, it rains, and the rain will hit our rooftops, it’ll go down our rain gutters, into our streets, you’re down our driveways into our streets and sidewalks, it’ll be picking up pollution all kinds of contaminants, goes usually into the storm drain, that storm drain will go directly into the ocean and ends up contaminating our ocean. So when it rains, from, you know, in the urban area, you drive down 2030 miles, and you get to the ocean. And in the end, the oceans, the beaches, the rivers, the streams are contaminated and polluted.

So what we want to do, and we’ve been talking about this now for over four decades, for at least half of the time we’ve been around is create it create a whole network of very localized to regional systems and approaches to transform communities so that we are actually preventing that urban water runoff and capturing the water locally using trees as part of that because the tree as we’ve all seen, in the roots of a tree, in the leaves of the tree in the trunk of a tree, you can literally capture 1,000s of gallons of water.

So trees sort of like a sponge. They literally are they’re one of the best natural sponges available. So as part of like our work, you know, we are working throughout Southern California, with different partners to make sure that we move from what was historically what we call grey infrastructures. So lots of concrete to green infrastructure. Infrastructure now where our streets and our sidewalks and our parks in our schools are actually capturing water. And we are greening these areas and they’re contributing to a positive impact and positive benefits for our community.

That’s what our work is about. And that’s why we’re very different in our approach, because we really are looking at how we transform how we have have we have traditionally built environments and built communities to actually now making them greener and healthier and more resilient to the changes from the changing climate and threats like extreme heat and wildfires.

Well that’s great work and I’d love to hear more about that because it to me that is a huge problem and a challenge for all of us because this urban water runoff, as you just eloquently stated just is a funnel, funneling all these chemicals down from our streets and highways threatened straight down to the storm drains out to the ocean.

And that’s it, we try to treat it I believe as much as we can. But a lot of times it over whelmed our systems in place. Because our mountains are a great blessing, but they also accelerate the flow of water very quickly.

So as we’ve all seen water running downhill, it’s moving fast. And so that is a that’s a big question. It’s like, how do we channel that water? How do we slow it down? And so we don’t lose really, with this very valuable resource is being washed out to the ocean, Southern California needs that freshwater. So how do we how do we capture it when it does rain so we can use it?

So it doesn’t just all run out into the ocean and not only run off into the ocean and run off into the ocean polluted? So it’s a loss on two different levels?

Well, you’re going to hear the tell us more about that when we come back from the break. You’re listening to Unite and Heal America. I’m Matt Matern, and our guest, Cindy Montañez from TreePeople the CEO. So we’ll be back in just one minute.

You’re listening to Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern. Again, our guest Cindy Montañez, the CEO of TreePeople and former state legislature tell us a little bit more about what we were just talking about with the urban water runoff and creating sponges slash trees to soak up that water.

And how are we going to do that, because we have this vast network of roads, and that act as funnels funneling all the water down through our streets versus hitting green spaces, which would slow it down. How can we slow down this torrent of water coming off of our mountains and capture it?

Yeah, so this is one of truly one of the greatest opportunities we have right now. So let’s just take Los Angeles County, okay, so Los Angeles County now, voters passed about two years ago, one of the largest investments in what what’s called stormwater capture or just capturing this water runoff that we’ve seen anywhere in the country.

So now LA County, just LA County alone will forever have at least $300 million a year. So again, $300 million a year going into different communities every year, to get us to look at how we create a system that will no longer waste. What is about 100 billion gallons of water every year in LA County that gets wasted exactly by what you just said. It rains, it runs off into the streets and sidewalks into storm drains and ends up into into the ocean.

And I mean water is gold, right? Water is so precious. And with droughts, extended droughts, we can’t continue to let that precious resource be just ignored, or literally thrown away as if it was trash. So what we’re looking at now is like an opportunity to work with directly with communities. We as TreePeople, last year alone went into 107 Different communities in LA County to ask people, What are your water needs?

And what would you like to see in your community, an overwhelming amount of people said we want to see greener streets. And we want to be able to make sure that we don’t have so much of this polluted water or runoff going down into storm drains because there’s a consciousness now people realize more and more all over the world with droughts, we need to do more to capture water and reuse it. So what we are now working on Los Angeles County has a program called the safe clean water program.

So the safe clean water program is program that is now working directly with communities and municipalities to design these steps projects. So what can it be? It could be a park for example, you have a baseball field on top or you have a soccer field on top. But what you really are what you really see is underground, there might be an infiltration basin, right?

There might be a system for cleaning up water, which three people helped designed one of the first ones ever in Los Angeles honor school, many years ago 30 years ago almost now, where water runs into an infiltration basin. It gets cleaned up. Right so once it once it gets cleaned up, it literally can be recycled back up to take care of that soccer field. The baseball field, the plants, the trees in the park are in the neighborhood.

The potential for us to do that in streets and sidewalks and communities all over is enormous. And this is what we’re pushing. So when we say green infrastructure, when people are out there, think about that as your, you know, as a person, as a person, you know, walking in your neighborhood, what can the city do to make my street greener, and capture rainwater. So instead of just having a regular sidewalk, then why not create bioswales, so a bioswale.

So imagine a Bio, a bioswale, would be like, imagine this beautifully engineered ditch with plants that are functioning as a cleanup technology. So instead of that water running off on the side of your sidewalk, that water can actually you could have a curb cut out, so you would cut a piece of the curb. So when the water comes down the street, in that little curb cut out, it will go into your bioswale it’ll look like a little beautiful little stream.

And then a lot of that water, particulate back into the groundwater, and whatever is still left, you then have another curb cut out, and then it keeps going. So you basically create these, these these streams in your front yard and a street that you walk down. What does that do it obviously beautify the neighborhood, but it helps reduce stormwater from running off, down that down that street into gutters and into the ocean.

So you now we now collect all of this, you know, pollutants or trash or water before it ends up contaminating our oceans. Because what we see right now, we’re losing a lot of water. We’re wasting a lot of water, but we and our streams and our rivers and our oceans are highly contaminated. But we can stop that by just reengineering and rethinking through how we address this issue. And quite honestly, it’ll make all neighborhoods look a lot more beautiful.

Well, it sounds like a great solution. It’s just, you know, I guess I have a question as to, you know, the plan and the cost of rolling it out there and, and getting it done. I I can see that being a great investment for infrastructure for at the local level and something we should all be thinking about. I guess, just asking kind of the tough questions of what’s the plan? How can we do that effectively, quickly, cost efficiently? And where are we doing it now? And how much money is it going to take to do it all over?

So how, what’s the plan? Right? So we do have, there’s, there’s a lot of planning that’s occurring and communities throughout the region, I invite you as community members who are interested in being part of that process. Definitely reach out to us again at TreePeople.org. Reach out to TreePeople. And we will help connect you to those efforts happening locally.

There are city councils or town councils, there are nonprofit organizations, some engineering firms, there are lots of advocates that are now pushing for this, we need more people engaged, I think the more that our local representatives hear from us, the more that that we are going to be able to truly make a difference there and get these projects designed and implemented in neighborhoods all over the region.

And this is something that does it isn’t just contained to urban areas, this can happen anywhere. All over the country. There’s there’s a big movement on this in cities throughout throughout the throughout the United States. So we just we invite you to reach out to us, and we will get you connected to those to those local efforts.

I wanted to ask you, Cindy, we have a $75 billion surplus right now. And how much of that is targeted to be used to help environmental issues? And in particular, the ones that you just talked about as far as the urban water runoff? And are there any bills in particular that are winding their way through the state legislature that you’d particularly support and think would help with our environmental problems here in the state?

Yes. So right now California, as many other states are seeing an influx of new resources or new dollars? Well, we have to make sure all of us is people wanting to see our communities be clear. We need to be stronger advocates for urban forestry. The state of California does not spend anywhere near what we should be spending on urban first forestry to get trees planted in the ground.

So we as TreePeople are pushing for An increase in the dollars going into Urban Forestry and Fire Restoration and resilience efforts in our forested lands and our mountain areas. So yes, please do part of become part of our movement, you can get more information on our website at TreePeople.org. We want to make sure that the governor and state legislators put attention to this, we are also pushing for increased dollars into urban greening.

And you know, this is the the urban greening is what we’re talking about. This is where we can get stormwater capture projects, infiltration projects, bioswales, rain gardens into parks and schools and neighborhoods. So we have a growing movement of organizations and resident groups and individuals from across California that are helping us being advocates. And so we are going to push hard, we know that these are investments that will pay for themselves over the long run.

So it makes financial sense for the state of California to invest additional dollars into into these types of efforts. Because more money needs to come into our neighborhoods, you know, a lot of our neighborhoods have been disinvested in for a very long time.

So what better way to really move tax dollars into the actual neighborhoods and get people the resources that they deserve, and that they quite frankly, are probably paid for many times over and green our neighborhoods green our streets screen our parks?

Well, absolutely. This is this important work that you’re doing, Cindy, and I applaud you for for doing it. I’m a strong proponent that we should be capturing this 100 billion dollars of water that gets wasted every year. That is, as you said, a precious resource for California and and as we potentially get into even greater drought conditions as we go forward. We’ve got to figure out a way to capture that.

And what better way to do that then have these urban water runoff projects that what you just described, which are great investments in our future, for our health, for the health of our communities, great work that you’re doing and wonderful to have you on the program.

You’ve been listening to Cindy Montañez, TreePeople CEO, this is Matt Matern, Unite and Heal America on KABC 790 And we look forward to having you all back next week. Have a great week everyone.