L.A. County gets a 'C+' from UCLA on environment

LOS ANGELES, April 7, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- UCLA issued the first comprehensive environmental report card for Los Angeles County on Tuesday, marking the region as an unimpressive "C" student overall for air, water, waste and other key areas.

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After nearly two years of gathering and analyzing data, researchers at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (IoES) produced the first thorough analysis of the state of the county's environment in what is believed to be the most comprehensive environmental report card in the nation.

"Despite a strong recent history of environmental improvements, the County has a long way to go before joining the honor roll. There's tremendous room for improvement in all six environmental areas," said Mark Gold, acting director of IoES, the project leader on the report card, and the assistant vice chancellor for UCLA's Sustainable LA Grand Challenge.

Gold and his IoES colleagues Felicia Federico and Stephanie Pincetl headed the project, in collaboration with the Goldhirsh Foundation and the LA2050 initiative.

"As a region we need to decide what the most important environmental measures are that we want to track, and determine how we will do so regularly. We hope this report sparks that conversation," said Federico, the program manager for partnerships and translational science at the IoES.

UCLA's Sustainable LA Grand Challenge and city-level plans such as Los Angeles' Sustainability pLAn, are timely efforts that could guide those discussions, develop solutions and improve L.A.'s grade, the researchers said.

"Climate change is starting to be felt, so we know that there is no more 'normal' going forward, which is why it's so important to find a baseline now," said Pincetl, a professor and director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA.

Over the coming years, UCLA's Sustainable LA and the city's plan are in a position to measure and hopefully improve the region's environmental baseline, and to determine where more action is needed, the researchers recommended.

"UCLA's report card fills a yawning gap in what we knew about the county, and gives the public and policy makers clear evidence of where environmental improvement is needed as well as a framework to talk about it," said Tara Roth, president of the Goldhirsh Foundation. "Our hope is that it leads to much broader policy development and decision making on how to improve the county as a whole, not one community at a time."

SOURCE UCLA