Inaugural Watts Earth Day event celebrates green initiatives in the community
Watts plans to go green with a community garden and solar panels for its residents
Sitting outside with a child whose eager hands were already covered in dirt, Jess Guidel, master gardener of the Watts Towers Gardens, held up a seed to show her captivated audience of one.
“By taking this you’re saying, ‘I’m going to take care of you,’” she said.
Taking care, not just of the garden but also of each other, was a consistent theme at the first annual Watts Earth Day on Saturday, April 21. The event was open to the public but in Watts, it felt more like a family get-together. Most of the approximately 50 attendees were active members of the St. John’s United Methodist Church, one of the organizers and the host of the festivities.
The Sierra Club and the Watts Clean Air and Energy Committee teamed up with the church to put on the event. One of the main attractions was the display of solar panels to show the community what will be installed on the roof of the church’s education building later this year.
Kent Minault of the Sierra Club has been working for years with residents eager to create real environmental change in the Watts neighborhood of South Los Angeles.
“We wanted to show the community that there was something physical happening in the community as a result of our efforts, and we felt that solar panels on the church would be the perfect thing,” he said.
For Minault, and those he works with at the environmental organization, this small solar project is part of a larger goal that would provide benefits beyond the church to the surrounding neighborhood.
“What we would like to do is create a program so that other churches and community-based organizations in Watts can put their own solar project up,” Minault said. “Maybe the long-term fantasy would be to start a [solar energy storage facility] and reduce the utility rates for everybody in that particular area.”
The Department of Water and Power and the nonprofit organization TreePeople participated in the Earth Day event as well, informing community members of the work they are doing to make Watts a more environmentally sustainable community.
Watts Rising Collaborative, another group that presented at the function, is dedicated to reducing greenhouse gases in the neighborhood. They are largely credited for securing a Transformative Climate Communities grant for the city of Watts. The $35 million in cap-and-trade funds, awarded by the state legislature earlier this year, will go toward many green initiatives in the area.
“There are several initiatives including free solar panels for home owners, electric busses — there will be a fleet of electric busses for the Watts area — electric vehicle sharing [and] there will be over 4,000 trees planted,” said Watts Rising representative John King. “There will be cool-paving done at the schools and additional trees planted at the schools, and there will be community gardening support.”
At the event the United Methodist Church leadership announced plans to grow a community garden of their own by transforming an empty lot on the property. It will be a long process, Gudiel said, but it will be made easier with the help of residents.
“This [event] is sort of a groundbreaking for the garden, and that is also true for our solar installation, the MegaWatts installation,” Minault said. “We are not really putting up the panels [at the Earth Day gathering] but we have the funding. The whole project is a go, and it’s not just a pipedream either. It is truly happening, but this is just a ceremonial weekend.”
Grid Alternatives is a nonprofit partnering with the coalition in Watts to install the solar panels. The organization’s Outreach and Partnerships Manager, Stella Ursua, said their team is working “to connect with as many families as possible” but some Watts residents have expressed hesitancy toward the group.
”They don’t realize that we are a non-profit and we have been in the South LA area for years,” she said.
The Earth Day event was put together, not only to demonstrate green efforts in Watts, but also as a gathering for people in the neighborhood to promote caring for the environment and for each other. United Methodist Church finance chair Wilma Frazier-Vega said support and compassion are two of the most beautiful attributes of the community.
Frazier-Vega said her family has been part of the Watts community for more than 90 years. At the Earth Day event, she greeted her fellow Watts residents, asked them about their kids and invited them to help develop and tend the coming community garden.
“It means a lot to me, the community,” Frazier said. “This is something I have always longed to be a part of, to partner with other community members to enhance our community, to have better things for our community, to educate our community on who they are.”
The United Methodist Church in Watts hasn’t announced yet when the new community garden on its property will be up and running. But introducing their plans at the first annual Earth Day event was the seed to set the process in motion, and with care from the community, the hope is that it will thrive.
