Part 119: Land Battles and Influence in California – People Power and Civilization Failures

Published October 13, 2024.

Oct 13, 2024

Photo of the Altadena Wild billboard over Lake Avenue against the proposed Poly Fields development by Pasadena Polytechnic School by author (GoPro Hero 11 Black).

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

The atmosphere was celebratory! After two years of organizing, the residents of Altadena and fellow environmentalists had stopped the proposed Poly Fields development by Pasadena Polytechnic School, the toniest private school in the well-to-do city. Poly Fields was to be the solution to its need for more sports facilities and outdoor education, the former a long desired goal of the educational institution. In its public statement, Poly cited construction “requirements drove the development costs to levels that were much higher than anticipated, and far beyond what we believe to be reasonable.” Two organizations had formed to oppose the project, which would have included a 200-car underground garage: Altadena Wild and the Chaney Trail Corridor Project. The latter group had led a protest outside the school next to the California Institute of Technology, which was attended by 60 black-clad Altadena residents plus one person in a bear costume. Altadena Wild had helped organized residents to attend a night time meeting at the Altadena Community Center hosted by the Altadena Town Council. Half of Altadena had heard about the proposal, was the word in the packed meeting room.

The representative from the Los Angeles County Planning Department stayed late to answer questions about the proposal. The Chair of the Town Council Executive Committee explained that Poly had only met with them once, behind closed doors, before announcing that they had engaged with the community. Perhaps the project was never quite viable, with the proposed development sited on 13 acres of land currently used for a flower nursery. Altadena, which has only just over 42,000 residents compared to Pasadena’s more than 138,000, was not going to be the primary constituency for Poly, which enrolls relatively few students from the neighboring city. Even if the school had somehow managed to muscle through a second entrance and emergency exit point beyond the narrow two-lane road, which leads to Sunset Ridge and Millard Campground, it would have faced an uphill battle to get through the complex California Environmental Quality Act process, CEQA (see-qwa).

The developer-dreaded Environmental Impact Report, much less any opposition to the potential for Native American artifacts to be on the site of the nursery, which dates to 1935, would also be a potential encumbrance on any future proposed project, for say housing. California law in recent years has become more favorable to such projects, but by developer standards the property is relatively small for the construction of any full-scale subdivision, or even a few luxury homes such as those that line the ridges going up the front face of the rugged San Gabriel Mountains. Altadena Wild had just put up a hand-painted billboard in opposition to the project, which towered over Lake Avenue, which cuts across both the City of Pasadena and Altadena, before the project tanked. Altadena is unincorporated Los Angeles County land, represented by Supervisor Kathryn Barger. She had taken no official position on the controversial proposal. As part of its public pressure campaign, Altadena Wild was able to get 7,000 online signatures in opposition. Both groups had begun entering away furiously into iNaturalist, documenting plants and wildlife in the area.

I had joined Altadena Wild on a hike along the Altadena Crest Trail, which passes closely by the upper edge of the rugged, undeveloped portion of the 68-acre parcel above the nursery. At one point, a red-tail hawk had flown above. Altadena Wild insisted they weren’t against the school, but that essentially no one would want such a development next door, which would have added a traffic signal to the intersection of Chaney Trail and Loma Alta and required significant grading to accommodate the dramatically increased usage level. The facility, had it been built, would have been a significant risk for wildfire starting and response. Alec Hudnut, Chair of the Board of Trustees of Pasadena Polytechnic School, and John Bracker, Head of School, wrote about the debacle: “Our experience with the Altadena site has been invaluable in guiding our future efforts,” further noting that “our commitment to securing quality athletic fields continues to be an important priority.” Because who doesn’t love sports? At the Chaney Trail Corridor Project protest, one Poly father, wife, and student in tow had come to engage the protestors in confrontation before walking away laughingly scoffing at the opposition.

Was this just a case of NIMBY? Not in my backyard thinking, or simply a case of wrong place, wrong time. Only time will tell what happens with the property, but the first option to cash the entire parcel out to a wealthy private school is seemingly now off the table. The question, though, of who such places truly belong to is far from settled. As recent battles over other locations, such as the campsites and buildings at Henninger Flats above Eaton Canyon, which belongs to the LA County Fire Department, have shown, spurning a potential suitor of any type generally just disengages stakeholders and leads to greater risks from fire and vandalism. Had Poly simply wanted to build a nature center for outdoor education, that probably would have been welcomed versus a sports complex, which would have had greater potential environmental impacts. Similarly, unfounded fears that a casino would occupy Henninger Flats based on unrelated legislation have led to only cultural conflict, without any actual forward progress that shepherds natural resources while teaching the next generation how not to repeat past environmental management mistakes. After all, this is the state that killed off the grizzly bear on its flag.

Unquestionably, land should be relinquished when possible, not only for conservation but also for community cultural practice where feasible, and even with state support. Such efforts are already underway 5 years after California formally apologized to its native tribes. The person using the land responsibly is far more important than the person who leaves the land abandoned, much less those who abuse and waste natural resources. Case in point: Eaton Canyon, despite most likely being among the top waterfall destinations in Los Angeles County, the well-traveled locale has no comprehensive wildlife or recreation plan drafted yet, though the former is in progress. At Eaton Canyon, LA County Parks administers everything below the Chuck Ballard Memorial Bridge, and the U.S. Forest Service above the eroding structure, under the U.S. Department of Agriculture, governs everything upstream, with the City of Pasadena Water Department having an easement for subsurface water extraction above its flood basin facilities. The 1993 Kinneloa Fire destroyed the Eaton Canyon nature center, which has been rebuilt, and it recently hosted the well-attended 40th anniversary celebration for the San Gabriel Mountains Chapter of the California Native Plant Society. Still across the suburb, grasslands predominate home yards.

Unofficial volunteers have stepped in to handle the trash situation at Eaton Canyon, which is quite absurd, and officially to develop a native plant nursery with modest assistance with water and soil along with facility space. The future of recreation management in the San Gabriels is clearly collaborative and also culturally sensitive. Recently, in 2022, a single acre of land was given back above Eaton Canyon, which captured major headlines, including from the Los Angeles Times and LAist. Local News Pasadena journalist Phil Hopkins would find out that things aren’t always so simple though, even within the Native American community, and respect for everyone matters, as well as for the land. Recently in Eaton Canyon, a man was spotted taking frogs away in a water bottle. When challenged that this was essentially poaching, he simply yelled back that he had “kids to entertain.” Similarly, despite mobilizing code enforcement from the City of Pasadena, illegal vendors are still present beneath the bridge, with operations bringing in revenue even as none is collected from parking.

This summer alone and now into autumn, I’ve sought like My Eaton Canyon journalist Edgar McGregor to clamp down on the trash situation, and although I’m pleased to report that increasing trash pickup does in fact leave the trail in better condition, with thousands of visitors weekly and no trash cans along the trail, much less visible law enforcement, it’s a chaotic situation. One day I was actually asked if I gangbanged at the waterfall, only to explain that I was green-banging in hauling out the waste of civilization. “I respect that,” the young man said with a nod of the head. Similarly, at the much maligned East Fork of the San Gabriel River, the access point to the Bridge to Nowhere, some are actually happy that the Bridge Fire has forced the closure to an unmanaged situation, without even a gate to close down the area. Something has to change in Los Angeles County at how we are managing these open spaces, including securing funding and working together towards common goals both as government agencies, nonprofits, tribal groups, private schools, and average citizens. The fierce opposition of a bungee jump operator apparently stalled picnic area redevelopment.

Change doesn’t come easy. For example, I recently adopted 5 miles of Angeles Crest Highway through the Caltrans Adopt-A-Highway program, which just might be the most successful government-public partnership ever. This permit didn’t come easy, though! I had to power through the application process, overcome a little bit of technology, and even pick up trash without a permit to force the issue, which is “ILLEGAL.” Now though, thanks to follow-up and the great efforts of the Chilao Mountain Crew, I’ve been able to successfully adopt Mile 41.4 to 46.4, which roughly corresponds to Barley Flats just before the junction with Upper Big Tujunga Canyon Road and short of Charlton Flats near the big burnout, turnout out at Windy Gap. One of two such places with the name in the San Gabriels, and less famous than its counterpart above the Crystal Lake Recreation Area. Previously along Angeles Crest Highway, I’ve found things like spent ammunition, and on the first official pickup, illegal dumping of wood with nails still in them was simply beyond my capability without a flatbed truck. Government has a job, but do citizens, and to what extent?

For the most part, our society has reached a civilizational tipping point. Perhaps it’s always been this way, but the tragedy of the commons remains accurately construed. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “Men pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what is common." This basic hypothesis was later taken up by English economist William Forster Lloyd in 1833 in “Two Lectures on the Checks to Population” in regard to pasturelands. Later being crystalized in 1968 by American ecologist Garrett Hardin, who published an article with the phrase in Science journal with that exact name. “Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons,” Hardin wrote, and he wasn’t talking about freeway traffic in Los Angeles County. The abuse of our natural resources is something that we as a society have yet to find a way to deal with, much less prioritize. Economists described the outcome, such as trash on the Angeles Crest Highway, as a negative market externality, defined by the Corporate Finance Institute as the outcome, “When the product and/or consumption of a good or service exerts a negative effect on a third party outside the market.” Someone is making good money off it all and not returning any profits.

Ironically, it’s actually quite difficult to find out even what sections of our state highway are available for the Adopt-A-Highway program. After being asked multiple times whether I was just in it for the stipend or to get my name on a sign, I had to explain that for many years I’ve been a quite avid outdoorsman and was a park ranger in the past, accustomed to picking up trash as a profession. As I told the Caltrans top official in Sacramento for the AAH program, my job as a journalist is to get the story. To explain to people in Los Angeles why their highways look so trashed, and why when they get to so many of their favorite destinations, they simply find more trash. Some have tracked the production of the goods that form the litter to a select number of corporations, but the truth is more elusive. This is about production as much as it’s about human behavior. However, no one in Sacramento is proposing an upfront trash tax that would add to the cost of goods in order to fund enforcement and removal. Instead, our society is encumbered by a sort of capitalist malaise, and to be fully on point; Los Angeles County just might be one of the most capitalistic places in America. But is capitalism the concept to blame, or is the enemy simply ourselves?

After all, despite the best efforts of even the most ardent environmental idealist. Opting out of capitalism, much less transcending it, isn’t so easy. If we could simply shed goods, much less the ineptness of the government, like a snake sheds its skin, we would all do it. So while Poly Fields may have been an example of overreach, the proposal of a wealthy private school that caters to the children of rich people, the truth is that our society at large is short on common spaces, and many of the locations that we do have are underfunded and neglected. I’ve been told that 88% of the budget of the Angeles National Forest, which covers the San Gabriel Mountains as well as the Sierra Pelona range north of suburban Santa Clarita, is devoted to firefighting. No one dreams of funding the Forest Service like we do the U.S. military or the police, much less social service systems such as public schools or healthcare. We simply accept that this is the way things are because it’s an easy answer and because, as a society, we’ve concluded that this is a volunteer responsibility.

Somehow, I don’t think the battle over development in the Altadena foothills is fully over. Nor is giving land back ever so simple; rather, what has to happen is a renewed sense of societal ownership, of collective caretaking. Long overdue is a statewide ban on single-use plastics. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed a lawsuit against Exxon Mobil for “allegedly deceiving the public about the potential for plastic recycling and creating an environmental blight that has cost the state billions of dollars to clean,” as Los Angeles Times journalists Tony Briscoe and Susanne Rust recently wrote last month. The lawsuit is the result of a two-and-a-half-year investigation into the problem, but Californians, much less the world, shouldn’t have to wait for a court order to do what we already know and take the problem out of the hands of the market. I’ll be the first person to admit I was skeptical when the University of Southern California moved to do the same on its campus, but the school has adapted to the dictate. People will always lose things, but this is our choice to be deceived in large part, and it’s our failure to adapt that creates such conditions.

A consortium of environmental groups has also joined together in a separate lawsuit, including the Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Heal the Bay, and Baykeeper, against Exxon Mobil. According to the Times report, “Since 1985, more than 26 million pounds of garbage has been collected from California beaches and waterways — roughly 81% of it plastic.“ Bonta’s lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, will undoubtedly be opposed by the powerful corporation in the court of law. Just as it has all arguments about its role in climate change despite the scientific consensus.

Recently, I watched as volunteers prepared for a political canvass; cases of water bottles sat out roasting in the sun, and I could only remember how, as kids at AYSO Soccer, we would all bring our reusable waters. What has changed from such simpler times? Moreover, why is water, the most abundant natural resource next to clean air, so hard to find for drinking in Los Angeles? The truth is that some people simply push too hard for one thing and not for another. California can and should wisely regulate its consumer marketplaces just as it does land development, and doing so is a step forward, not backwards. What’s needed so much is not micro-battles, but social transformation and greater dialogue. Many would welcome a new nature education center in Altadena, which itself feeds into a continually growing green jobs industry, even as they would oppose a sports complex and underground parking garage.

Now there has been one-step forward at the state-level; beginning January 1, 2026, California will totally ban plastic bags in stores after passing a prior measure against so-called thinner bags. The City of Los Angeles did this in 2013 at large grocery stores before expanding it to “drug stores, convenience stores, and other types of smaller food markets in July 2014.” Why has it taken 10 years for us to get to this point, greenwashing? There have been a slew of medical studies that have found that microplastics are quickly making their way into all of our bodies. Living in big cities has never been unhealthier, and it’s not the plastics alone, or even the fossil fuels.

Rather, it’s the failure of our civilization, our refusal to change despite an abundance of scientific evidence; a glaring unwillingness to look in the mirror at ourselves. Social media and even traditional media feed into this cycle, providing only a short-term, flashing look at such problems and trivializing the consequences. People have always wanted distractions, and even as we’re more connected than ever, creating the world’s influencer economy, we’ve failed to make meaningful changes fast enough, including adding more park/play spaces in cities and stewarding our environment.

Link: Polytechnic School Scraps Altadena Sports Complex Plan, Citing Unexpectedly High Costs

Link: Altadena Wild

Link: Chaney Trail Corridor Project

Link: Nonprofit to Unveil Billboard Opposing Proposed Sports Complex in Altadena Foothills

Link: Pasadena Poly Fields Website

Link: Poly...Gone

Link: Series: Tribal Knowledge

Link: California Native Plant Society—San Gabriel Mountains Chapter

Link: California to return historic amount of land to Native tribe

Link: An acre of land in Altadena has been formally transferred to L.A.’s first people

Link: Why A Property Worth Millions Was Returned To The Tongva Tribe

Link: Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy