For over 20 years, a group of West Carson residents have dreamed of converting a polluted land tract located by two superfund sites into a safe and welcoming community park.
That dream is edging tantalizingly close to reality as the 8.5-acre Wishing Tree Park nears completion almost four years since its groundbreaking.
Members of the Del Amo Action Committee – the community group that advocated for the park – said the grand opening is currently earmarked for late November.
The park is located at 204th Street and Budlong Avenue in unincorporated West Carson, a park-poor area where residents must trek around two miles to reach the nearest public green space.
Soon they will have access to a park of their own with a playground, gazebo picnic area, walking path, a baseball field, a basketball court and two futsal courts (a smaller variation of soccer).
“Kids need to have a place to play,” said Tracy Baughn, a 55 year neighborhood resident, who is eager for the park to open. “They have no place to ride their bikes, because people don’t care in this neighborhood, they’re speeding all the time.”
The park also brings environmental benefits to an area that contains two of the most toxic sites in the region – the Del Amo and Montrose superfunds.
The Del Amo superfund is the site of a former 280 acre synthetic rubber production facility that operated from 1943 to 1972. The EPA has identified over 20 contaminants of concern in the nearby soil and groundwater, including arsenic, benzene and naphthalene. From 1947 to 1982, the Montrose superfund was a production site for the extremely toxic insecticide DDT, which also contaminated the nearby groundwater.
The Del Amo Action Committee was formed in 1994 due to community concerns with environmental conditions and rates of local illness. The organization is currently headed by a powerful duo known as the two Cynthias – Cynthia Babich and Cynthia Medina.
Babich, who used to live atop the Del Amo superfund on 204 St., is the founder of the organization. She first became alarmed when she found a bloody tissue in her bathroom and realized that her husband was also experiencing unusual nose bleeds. Her alarm intensified when she discovered this wasn’t unique to her household, learning that neighbors were experiencing similar issues.
In 1997, Shell Oil Co. and Dow Chemical Co. agreed to buy 67 homes on a three block stretch of 204 St., which were subsequently demolished. In 2003, the DAAC sampled the buyout area for heavy metals and found lead, chromium and arsenic. Though the committee continued to advocate for a park, development on the land stalled for many years.
In 2015, the land was sold by the Shell Oil Company to the LA Neighborhood Land Trust. It is currently leased by Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation, who is in charge of park maintenance.
Since then, extensive remediation work has been completed. Layers of contaminated soil and buried pollutants were removed before the ground was sealed with a brightly colored barrier and topped with two feet of clean soil.
Construction has been slow and expensive, costing around $15 million dollars in total – $5 million more than was estimated at the November 2018 groundbreaking.
It has been funded through grants from the California Coastal Conservancy, the California Natural Resources Agency, California State Parks, Los Angeles County and Shell Global. It received a final $500,000 boost in August 2021 through state funding secured by Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance.
The name Wishing Tree Park was selected by local residents and has a symbolic backstory.
There were two little girls who lived just down the street from the park site, said Margaret Manning, DAAC head of community outreach. They used to visit the dirt area frequently in 2015, said Babich, which at the time had little development other than a few saplings left sitting in boxes. During these visits they would write down their wishes on slips of paper and tuck them into one young tree.
Seven years later, the girls are no longer so little and neither is the namesake tree; it has since spread its roots and is almost ready to shade eager residents under its leaves.