On a Saturday morning at Lou Costello Park, several generations of Angelenos and Boyle Heights residents tinkered with strange scientific contraptions. Thermometers with infrared lasers, high-tech thermal imaging cameras plugged directly into their phones, air quality sensors clipped to bags and noise-level monitoring smartphone apps.
Climate Resolve, a Los Angeles non-profit working to implement equitable climate solutions, led the walk around South Boyle Heights. Residents learned about accessible tools used to measure pollution, heat, and noise within the industrial and residential zones around the park.
“Our goal is to get our communities ready for climate change and get them the resources they need,” said Catherine Baltazar, Policy Analyst and Organizer for Climate Resolve. “Without preparing communities and without preparing folks to be ready to make the changes they can at their capacity, we can’t collaboratively combat climate change.”
Baltazar stressed the significance of providing the necessary information to educate community members about climate impacts in a Los Angeles neighborhood surrounded by freeways, interchanges, and industrial corridors.
“They can show up and say, ‘I wanna be part of changing the environment in my community.’ Now, they’re informed, they’re empowered, and they can be part of the change with us,”she said.
Itzel Flores Castillo Wang of Promesa Boyle Heights, a collaborative of the social justice-focused non-profit Proyecto Pastoral, partnered with Climate Resolve for the walk to better educate the community about environmental hazards in the area.
“To them, it’s normal to be hearing sirens all the time, to be hearing trucks. By being here, they can learn how the impacts of different levels of things can have on them. Then they can start to realize that these things they thought were normal aren’t normal and are actually impacting their health,” Flores Castillo Wang said.
On the walk, one of two groups walked down Olympic Boulevard and turned right on Grande Vista Avenue. Almost immediately, the tree cover disappeared. Warehouses and storage facilities lined the quiet streets. Passing Mines Avenue, the group turned again onto E Pico Boulevard to a surprisingly green, tree-lined block in the industrial zone of the neighborhood. The temperature dropped significantly and birds were singing in the trees above.
With the tiny, shaded stretch of street on E Pico Boulevard being an exception, the disparity between things as simple as noise levels is obvious when walking around the industrial area of Boyle Heights. On De La Torre Way, walkers attuned their tools to the air around them, noting spikes in pollutants and noise as semi trucks and bulldozers crawled by.
“In order to cause change, you have to actually know what you have to change. In an area where we’re surrounded by so many freeways, so many factories, landfills, there’s so much trash — it’s not normal,” said Kenya Berganza, a UCLA student from the neighborhood. “It’s important to know how the environment affects your health.”
Because the tools were only on loan to the walkers during the activity, the 18-year-old said she’d likely purchase an infrared temperature gun for herself to measure heat on the sidewalk to protect her dog while on walks.
Andrea Fortanel, 27, came from Pico Union and was interested in learning how to use scientific measurement tools to possibly launch a similar climate movement in her neighborhood.
“I see a lot more initiatives in the Boyle Heights community versus where I live, there’s not a lot,” Fortanel said. Although she acknowledged the grander, systemic polluters in the country are hard to change, empowering community members goes a long way.
“This is giving us some self-determination to be in control of those impacts and maybe lessen the impacts so we don’t see the prevalent rates of asthma or secondary conditions that develop because of pollution,” Fortanel said.
As the event came to a close, walkers returned to the park with a better sense of understanding of what was in the air they breathed and how noise can affect residents even blocks away.
“As long as we can host events in the community, we’re able to offer more avenues for the community to learn and be involved and be part of the change,” Baltazar said.
