Overview

Welcome to the T.R.E.E.S. Project. In these pages you will learn of some innovative, inexpensive solutions to many of Los Angeles' most persistent environmental and social problems. Until now, drought, flooding, air and water pollution, landfill closures, high energy costs, youth unemployment, and urban blight have appeared to be unrelated and virtually insurmountable challenges. And the problems have been addressed by separate agencies, often working at odds with each other. The T.R.E.E.S. Project was created by an unprecedented coalition of government agencies and environmentalists, and it offers the first truly integrated approach to resolving all of these issues.

In 1997, T.R.E.E.S. held a design charrette that brought together dozens of city planners, landscape architects, engineers, urban foresters and public agency staff members to design the retrofit of Los Angeles as a living watershed. Together they developed a series of best management practices (BMPs) for industrial sites, commercial buildings, schools, apartments and single-family homes. The resulting planbook is a blueprint for an ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable Los Angeles, and an implementation plan proposes public policy and financial strategies that can facilitate the widespread use of the BMPs.

As you will see at our demonstration site in South Central Los Angeles, several of these BMPs are making it possible for a single-family residence to function as a miniature urban watershed. Implemented citywide, these and other BMPs could

• Decrease our dependence on imported water by 50% and still keep the city green;
• Reduce the threat of flooding and the quantity of toxic runoff to beaches and the ocean;
• Cut the flow of solid waste to landfills by 30%
• Improve air and water quality;
• Decrease our energy dependence; and
• Beautify neighborhoods in ways that would create up to 50,000 new jobs.

The interactive computer Cost/Benefit Model also developed for this project will help policy-makers understand the economic, social, health and safety benefits to be derived from employing the BMPs described in Second Nature.

This is the T.R.E.E.S. Project - our vision of a healthier Los Angeles.