11:37am | My son Carter and I have recently found ourselves exploring some local parks suggested by readers responding to Where Are Your Favorite Playgrounds In Long Beach?, a couple weeks ago. One park we visited is located just outside the city, at Edison Park in Seal Beach. The rationale for the park’s name was evident; looking up, we immediately saw the high voltage electrical lines that originate from the Southern California Edison power plant, just south of the Seventh Street onramp to the 22 Freeway. However, these electrical lines and their supporting pylon structures presented surprisingly little visual distraction when compared to the expansive green field and varied pieces of park equipment that lay below.
It turns out that the entirety of Edison Park (and its adjacent community gardens) is situated within a ten-acre parcel of Southern California Edison right-of-way otherwise dedicated to electrical transmission. Such use of electricity transmission corridors for municipal open space is hardly unique to this park. In Long Beach itself, over ten percent of El Dorado Park’s 800 acres exists under the transmission lines. Long Beach’s Parks, Recreation and Marine Strategic Plan identifies dozens more acres of potential park space in east and north Long Beach by using right-of-ways.
Of course, the use of right-of-ways for park spaces is not limited to Long Beach. In over a dozen cities surrounding Long Beach, there can already be found over thirty parks in either Southern California Edison or Los Angeles Department of Water and Power right-of-ways, compromising nearly 1,000 acres of well-used public park space. The cities of Lakewood, Bellflower, and Cerritos use right-of-ways to augment the San Gabriel River greenbelt that extends more than three miles northward from Long Beach’s El Dorado Regional Park. La Palma and Cerritos use the Southern California Edison transmission corridor for a two-mile-long linear park. Right-of-ways make up nearly half of South Gate’s total public park area, including two of its three largest parks.
There are some important issues to consider when developing park space in electricity transmission corridor right-of-ways, due to the sensitive nature of these utilities. Recreational uses tend to be passive in nature, to discourage large crowds from congregating under transmission lines. Baseball diamonds, for instance, are usually not appropriate for these right-of-ways; open fields for soccer or football are more suitable. Appropriate plant species are needed to avoid interference and maintain service access to transmission towers. The California Nature Center in El Dorado Park provides an exceptional example in this regard. Despite the fact that this lushly landscaped California-native wildlife preserve is situated entirely under high-voltage transmission lines, there remain significant opportunities for recreational uses of the Nature Center.
South of the California Nature Center, at the convergence of Los Coyotes Creek, San Gabriel River, and right-of-ways owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Southern California Edison, there can be found dozens of acres of under-used land that would make a nice expansion of the El Dorado Park complex. Possibilities for developing this land include expanding the California Nature Center south of Willow Street, creating more plots for the Long Beach Community Garden, or naturalizing the confluence of Los Coyotes Creek and the San Gabriel River.
On the west side of Long Beach, the Interstate 710 Livability Plan identifies part of a nearby Southern California Edison right-of-way as potentially being used to expand the Tanaka Mini Park. Recently, Southern California Edison ended its relationship with a commercial nursery in this area, making available dozens of acres of land north of Willow Street. In total, there are nearly 110 acres of almost undeveloped right-of-way land in this area. If converted in their entirety to public parkland, this would quadruple the amount of open space on the Westside. This hypothetical park would be a city block wide and over 2½ miles long, providing a badly-needed green space buffer between residents and school campuses in this area, and the port infrastructure located nearby to the West.
All in all, over 500 acres of underused land can be found along electricity transmission corridors in Long Beach alone. Using this land more effectively could both expand one of the nation’s largest municipal parks and create open-space opportunities in some of the most park-poor communities in our city. This land is not free, and numerous criteria for developing parks within such right-of-ways exist, but there is too much to gain to not pursue these possibilities to the greatest extent possible. All we have to do is start the conversation with these utility providers. While the lines are above, the opportunity is below.