Residential Retrofits with TreePeople

Preventing Urban Runoff and Making Our Communities More Drought Resilient  

August 4, 2022

As we continue to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, we’re highlighting some of LA Waterkeeper’s most significant legal victories since our founding three decades ago, as highlighted in our Litigation = Impact report. One typical outcome from these types of lawsuits are Supplement Environmental Projects (SEPs), which are financial settlements that force polluters to provide tangible water-quality solutions in the communities affected by their actions.

Hope St. House prior to retrofitting.

For example, LA Waterkeeper filed a lawsuit to address the #1 source of pollution to LA’s waters – urban and stormwater runoff – against the County of Los Angeles. We ultimately reached a settlement to invest $4 million in SEPs to help reverse the impacts of untreated runoff. TreePeople, a Southern California organization that helps green communities, received $1.2 million of these settlement dollars to help 30 families in diverse communities across LA County retrofit their homes with water filtration and stormwater-capture features.

TreePeople and their community partners replaced more than 5,000 square feet of non-permeable hardscape with rain gardens, bioswales and rain barrels. They also replaced thirsty lawns with drought-friendly native plants. These green improvements help capture more than 500,000 gallons of urban and stormwater runoff annually that would otherwise drain into the ocean and contribute to our regional urban runoff problem.

Using these settlement funds, TreePeople also provided educational support to help families understand low-cost ways of maintaining the green improvements. The organization found that the retrofits had a cascade effect and inspired other home improvement projects. Even neighbors who did not participate in the program were inspired to apply green improvements to their own homes, increasing the drought and climate resilience of whole communities.

While utility companies do provide valuable incentives and rebates for residential stormwater retrofits, their assistance is often out of reach for historically under-resourced families who cannot afford the significant upfront costs to implement these projects, or even the gap between the rebate amount and project costs. The average retrofit can range from $5,000-$15,000 or more, with rebates topping out at a fraction of these costs, making such improvements a significant investment that would be out of reach for many Angelenos.

Hope St. house after retrofitting with drought-friendly native plants.

“TreePeople is thankful for the work that LA Waterkeeper does,” said Daniel Berger, Director of Urban Forestry at TreePeople. “The litigation [and resulting SEPs] makes it possible for these types of projects that bring needed, positive solutions and ultimately bring great benefits to people and the environment.”