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- Rep. Friedman said the Trump administration’s efforts to freeze funds previously approved by Congress threaten the L.A. River revitalization effort and other projects.
- An Army Corps’ spokesperson said the agency recognizes the importance of the L.A. River project but can’t speculate on future levels of funding.
Cyclists sped past on a trail overlooking the Los Angeles River near Dodger Stadium as a group of city officials and members of Congress walked to a neighborhood park filled with native plants, trees and picnic tables — an example of larger parks and green spaces that are planned along the river with support from federal funds.
U.S. Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) was there along with Rep. Rick Larsen, (D-Wash.), the top Democratic member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, to call attention to federally funded projects that they believe are now at risk as President Trump and his allies seek to make widespread cuts to government programs.
Local officials have been working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on a river revitalization project intended to restore natural habitats and expand parks along miles of the waterway between Griffith Park and downtown L.A.
“This is a big, transformative project for Los Angeles,” Friedman said. “It would just be heartbreaking to see the Trump administration pull all the federal funding that we’re relying on.”
Melanie Winter has long advocated for change along the L.A. River. As she undergoes cancer treatment, she remains focused on healing L.A.’s relationship to water.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Dena O’Dell, chief of public affairs for the Army Corps’ L.A. District, said in an email that her agency “recognizes the importance of the Los Angeles River Ecosystem Restoration Project and remains committed to its partnership with the City of Los Angeles.”
“We can’t speculate on future levels of funding for the project,” O’Dell said.
Friedman said during the visit Thursday that the bike path and parks that have been built so far in Elysian Valley have turned a stretch of river that was once seen as nothing more than a concrete channel into a natural amenity.
“There were these communities that backed up to the river, where really all they had was blight and chain-link fences and overgrown weeds,” she said. “Now with the restoration, you see the promise that the river gives.”
Under the Biden administration, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law authorized $28 million for the project, the latest in a series of joint investments.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers just opened up two California dams. A spokesperson says the flows are ‘controlled’ and being coordinated with local officials.
Now, however, Friedman said the Trump administration’s efforts to freeze funds previously approved by Congress threaten those investments, as well as future financial support that will be critical to complete the effort. She said Trump and his allies, including Elon Musk, have made clear they want to defund such projects, along with many other government programs.
“The things that they specifically called out that they want to defund is anything to do with climate, anything to do with habitat, anything to do with ecology,” Friedman said. “They’ve called these ‘woke’ projects, and so they consider creating parkland to be ‘woke’ and not something that’s important.”
The benefits of the planned projects along the L.A. River, Friedman said, include creating new parks and trails for communities that have long lacked access to recreational areas, as well as restoring natural habitats for birds and other wildlife, improving water quality, and re-creating stretches of natural floodplains that capture stormwater and recharge groundwater.
Friedman said Trump administration officials have signaled they don’t support projects such as bike paths — or “anything that’s not burning fossils.”
She pointed out that efforts to revitalize the area with paths and riverside parks in recent years have already brought new businesses including cafes and shops, and attracted residents who walk, jog and bike along the river.
If the federal funds were to be slashed, she said, that would leave the project dependent on state and local funding, and would make the effort go more slowly, while also putting a larger economic burden on L.A. taxpayers.
Larsen, who describes himself as a birder, said he enjoyed spotting a great egret in the river. Seeing this stretch of the river, he said, helped him “better understand why that ecosystem restoration is important to this region.”
Friedman and Larsen also toured the nearly completed Wilshire/La Brea Metro subway station, part of the Purple D-Line extension project, which is slated to connect downtown L.A. to UCLA and the VA Medical Center. Friedman said the project is sorely needed because “there’s a huge hunger for better mobility around L.A. to get traffic off the road and lower people’s costs.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars that the federal government promised toward the expansion have not yet been delivered, she said, and if the Trump administration were to pull out, “that puts the whole project in jeopardy.”
