The City of Los Alamitos held its official ribbon cutting ceremony earlier this week in honor of its grand opening of the Coyote Creek Park behind Oak Middle School. The area chosen for the park was on a piece of land that is owned and operated by the Edison Electric Company, and was a joint venture between several local organizations and neighboring cities. Overall, the project was a major event that was 14 years in the making.
The City of Los Alamitos held its official ribbon cutting ceremony earlier this week in honor of its grand opening of the Coyote Creek Park behind Oak Middle School. The area chosen for the park was on a piece of land that is owned and operated by the Edison Electric Company, and was a joint venture between several local organizations and neighboring cities. Overall, the project was a major event that was 14 years in the making.
“It took me three whole terms to fight to get this thing to go through,’ says Troy Edgar, who is a Los Alamitos board member. “The year 2005 was the year in which I officially got this project fully funded and approved.”
The City of Los Alamitos wound up receiving a $1.4 million dollar financial grant from “The Rivers and Mountains Conservancy.”
Edgar also serves on the board of “The Rivers and Mountains Conservancy,” and is Orange County’s main representative.
“The Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, Orange County Flood Control, Edison Electric Company, and The Water Conservation Agency, all partnered with the City of Los Alamitos to make this project happen successfully,” said Edgar. “50 years ago, this small patch of land was known for high flooding. We wanted to put our minds together and change that.”
The Los Alamitos City Planning Commission and the Parks and Recreation Center also lent a hand to the project, and dealt with all of the boundary issues. Still, it was the local citizens of the city who voted to help push this idea into fruition. “It was the faithful citizens of this city who voted for both Proposition 50, and Proposition 84 who made this happen,” rejoiced Edgar. Now, the Los Alamitos City Council are focusing on Proposition 1.
The concept behind Proposition 1 is to utilize recycled water to water the plant life within the Coyote Creek Park.
“The idea is a water bond proposal that teams up The City of Long Beach, and the Deep Roots Organization, with our own City of Los Alamitos,” explains Edgar. “The mayor of Long Beach (Robert Garcia) will use this water recycling system from their Water Purification Center, and will use revitalized waste water to help nurture our plants here. Of course, the water cannot be drunken by humans, but there is no need to let that water go to waste.”
This is a rather brilliant and tactical idea in means of both combating the drought that is consuming various West Coast States along America’s Gulf Coast and Pacific Ocean, while also preserving much of California’s natural wildlife.
One of Coyote Creek Park’s main and heartfelt objectives is to strive to preserve plant and animal life that is native and indigenous to the California region.
“Everything green that you see here, is all plant life that California is best known for,” explains Los Alamitos Mayor Richard D. Murphy. “We are working on things down here like this, and other cities 20 miles upstream are also striving to do the same. When it comes to preserving water, plant, and wildlife, we are all in this together. We are also just trying to work hard to create things that are beautiful to our citizen’s eyes, and are something to get them excited about while they are on their run or ride to the beach.”
Coyote Creek Park does in fact offer a lot to the public in means of how vibrant and bright it looks. Various hues of red, orange, and yellow are sprinkled over the vast landscape which contains drought resistant plants and flowers like California Wild Roses, Sky Lupine, Blue Eyed Grass, and Black Sage. Blue Wild Rye is also a favorite within the area.
“The park showcases regional and trademark greenery that is great in withstanding the dry climate that we have here, because of the drought,” Murphy said. “They do not need a lot of water to survive.”
The Los Angeles’ Sanitation District will also be providing recycled water to not only Coyote Creek Park to help out with the conservation effort, but will be utilizing the water to help water Oak Middle School’s athletic fields.
“The plants that we chose had to live in a drought environment like the desert, mountains, of even salty areas like the beach. They had to fit this criteria of staying healthy in dry conditions,” states Edgar. “The Coyote Creek Park is a passive park, but we still had to do all that we could to complete the tough architectural design.”
Both Edgar and Murphy have plans to further beautify the city, and are now looking into fixing various sections of the bicycle path. They also have other projects that they are looking into in means of collaborating with other surrounding cities in the area.
“For right now, I’d advise all tourists as well as our own citizens to give our new Park a stroll through, and to start your fun bike ride to the beach from right here. It’s a 5.5 mile run or ride from our trail to the beach,” says Edgar.
In the meantime, the citizens of Los Alamitos will just have to wait in anticipation of what other awesome projects that Edgar and Murphy have in store for the city.
