Below is one story that highlights the kind of change that Streetsblog's reporting supports.
For more than two decades, pollution-burdened communities of color along the 710 Freeway have opposed Metro's plans to widen the freeway. The Coalition for Environmental Health and Justice (CEHAJ) has long pushed for a 710 project that would be limited to the existing freeway footprint, truly advance zero-emission transportation, and include local hire.
Nonetheless, Metro continued to push a plan to spend six billion dollars to add two more lanes to the freeway. The lower 710 project would displace hundreds of homes and businesses.
Earlier this year, Metro Highway Program staff kept repeating that there was just one federal partner that needed to better understand the lower 710 Freeway project, and that the project would then move forward. Streetsblog L.A. Editor Joe Linton followed some hunches, and in early May, got his hands on letter from the Environmental Protection Agency. It laid out the EPA's determination that the 710 Freeway widening would worsen air pollution in an area that already has the worst air quality in the United States.
Not every project Streetsblog reports on has fierce and capable community leaders who have fought for decades to lay the groundwork for last month's 710 pause. Not everything Streetsblog reports on gets such quick results. And the last chapters in the 710 story are still being written. That zombie project is suspended, but it's far from dead.
Frankly, though, we're pretty proud of our contribution to the taking down of this zombie.
And Streetsblog's role in this wasn't just limited to Linton's reporting.
The 710 is not the only harmful freeway project that Streetsblog has reported on in the past year. When most mainstream media outlets have declined to cover the harms of freeway building, SBLA has provided key coverage of:
Metro's 605 Corridor Improvement Project, which would demolish hundreds of homes, mostly along the 5 in Downey and Santa Fe Spring. Streetsblog's initial 605 CIP story, amplifying local voices opposed to demolitions, was our most-read story of the year
And Communities Editor Sahra Sulaiman has spent many years reporting on how freeway construction both facilitated white flight and allowed the city to isolate, contain, and repressively police the Boyle Heights and South L.A. communities once racial covenants were struck down. See some of those stories here:
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