Creating a New Regional Park by Restoring Degraded Lands

The 1,365-acre Puente Hills Landfill closed in 2013 after 56 years of receiving trash from homes and businesses in over 60 cities and unincorporated areas across Los Angeles County. The L.A. County Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) is working towards transforming 142 acres of the landfill into parkland, creating the first new regional park in the county in more than 35 years. The proposed park will offer a variety of recreational and educational experiences and programming for residents living in the San Gabriel Valley and beyond. The additional parkland that will be created will help to offset the severe shortages for parkland regionally and in the surrounding communities.

The recently released concept plan and renderings offer an exciting vision of the future Puente Hills Regional Park and reflect public input gathered through a community engagement and design process led by DPR with Studio-MLA and the office of Supervisor Hilda Solis. The transformation of a portion of the former landfill into a park for public enjoyment also shows DPR's commitment to restoring degraded lands to advance park equity and environmental justice in L.A. County.

In December 2022, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors adopted the 2022 Parks Needs Assessment Plus (PNA+) final report as the county’s 30x30 plan to achieve the goal of conserving 30 percent of lands and coastal waters by the year 2030 to fight climate change and protect biodiversity. Led by DPR, the PNA+ reimagines conservation through an equity lens to highlight the urgency and importance of restoring degraded lands like landfills, oil fields, and other brownfields. While there is certainly a need to conserve additional natural lands, the restoration of degraded lands is of great importance and a matter of environmental justice in L.A. County where numerous underserved communities are plagued with environmental burdens with respect to groundwater threat, hazardous waste, poor air quality, pollution, etc.