Hermosa Beach Receives $410,000 Environmental Grant

The City of Hermosa Beach has received a $410,000 grant from the State’s Strategic Growth Council to create a long-term plan toward reducing and eventually eliminating the city’s carbon footprint, Jeff Duclos announced today.

“Winning this grant will enable the city to create a needed legal framework to guide and sustain us in making the transformative changes necessary to fulfill the city’s commitment to be carbon neutral,” Duclos said in a statement. “The plan elements the city will develop with this funding will ensure a comprehensive and unified approach to implementing our vision of the future.”

The funding will be used to hire experts who will update and integrate the city’s General Plan and Coastal Land Use Plan to create a “Comprehensive Blueprint for Sustainability and a Low Carbon Future.”

The grant will fund a three-year planning effort that will seek to advance the objectives of new California environmental laws SB 375 and AB 32, which seek to reduce greenhouse gases and lower carbon output in the future.

The majority of the South Bay’s carbon output is due to transportation. As a result, the City of Hermosa Beach will work with other cities and governmental organizations in the area to develop transportation strategies to reduce greenhouse gases, according to a statement from city officials.

In an effort to create a comprehensive system linking sustainability with economic vitality, the plan will connect the city’s evolving plans for the PCH corridor, strategic city facility and downtown planning, and upper Pier Avenue improvements.

Grant money will also be used to create an interactive online E-Plant, linking policy and budget action tools, and craft climate adaptation strategies to help protect against sea level increases that could threaten the city, according to officials. Steps will also be taken toward integration of general plans and coastal plans to protect the watershed and marine environments.

The City of Hermosa Beach received one of 93 individual awards that were made by the Strategic Growth Council to cities, counties, regional and local agencies, and nonprofit partners. The awards are funded through Proposition 84 bond allocations.

“These important planning grants are local and regional in scale, but the outcomes and economic impacts of sustainable communities are truly statewide, benefiting all Californians,” said Secretary for Natural Resources and Strategic Growth Council Member John Laird, in a statement. “These projects will go a long way to help create cleaner water, more open space and smarter growth in California.”

"Hermosa Beach has long been a leader in environmental protection, becoming one of the first cities in Los Angeles County to pledge to become carbon neutral in 2010. It was the first South Bay city to sign onto the 'Cool Cities' pledge and to make the city’s operations carbon neutral by reducing its carbon dioxide emissions and supporting other efforts that take carbon dioxide out of the air, such as planting trees," according to statement by city officials.