If Belinda Faustinos gets her way, President Barack Obama will be sitting in the El Monte Community Center sometime in the coming months learning about local endeavors to protect open spaces and reconnect kids with the great outdoors.

Faustinos, the executive officer of the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, knows her wish is a long shot, so she also has a more realistic, but still challenging, goal: getting high level officials from the Obama administration here.

The Obama administration is holding "listening sessions" all over the country this summer to learn from local communities how best to protect the outdoors and get Americans to use them more.

The effort is part of the president's recently launched America's Great Outdoors Initiative.

Faustinos wants one of the sessions to take place in the San Gabriel Valley.

The Valley faces stiff competition for a meeting, particularly from Los Angeles.

Nancy Sutley, who heads the White House Council on Environmental Quality and formerly served as L.A.'s deputy mayor, has expressed interest in holding a listening session along the LA River.

At the least, Faustinos is hoping for a concurrent session in El Monte, perhaps attended by less prominent administration officials and connected with the Los Angeles session using video conferencing.

"I don't want to diminish what is going on in the L.A. River, but when you compare the resource value of the two, there is so much going on over here," Faustinos said. "The LA River has a lot of cache, it gets a lot of attention from activists, from Hollywood, so we have got to be scrappy and fight for ours."

If selected, San Gabriel Valley residents would not only be able to share their experience, but also attract high-level support for conservation projects such as improving the Emerald Necklace area along the San Gabriel River and Rio Hondo and establishing a national recreation area in the region, Faustinos said.

Because the Whittier and San Gabriel Valley have some the most economically and health challenged populations in the state, local representatives are also pushing for a listening session to be held here.

Although the Puente Hills wildlife corridor and the Angeles National Forest provide opportunities for recreation, residents don't use them enough, the politicians said.

Polluted land, abandoned railroad corridors and flood control channels provide some of the only opportunities for new open spaces.

"The San Gabriel Valley has a large ethnic-minority population that is severely underserved by nearby public lands such as the Angeles National Forest," Reps. Grace Napolitano, D-Santa Fe Springs; Judy Chu, D-El Monte; and Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena wrote in a letter to administration officials requesting one of the administration's "listening sessions" to be held here.

The decision about whether El Monte will be one of the dozen or so cities slated for a session is expected to come today, according to Faustinos.

Getting youth from urban areas involved in the sessions is a priority, an administration official said.

"The President made it clear that one of his priorities is to engage young people, especially those who live in our nation's cities, and to find ways to get them to go out and experience this nation's unique natural heritage," said Christine Glunz of the White House Council on Environmental Quality in an e-mail.

The "listening sessions" won't be just any community meetings.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, National Parks Service director Jonathan Jarvis, and Sutley, are among the high-level officials who attended the first listening sessions in Montana earlier this month.

"Today, with 80 percent of Americans living in cities and suburbs, it is more important than ever for people to have access to outdoor space," Sutley said in a statement. "Through this initiative we hope to identify new opportunities to work with Americans on a modern approach to conservation that begins at the ground level, and to reinvigorate the national conversation about our outdoors."

The initiative requires the participating federal agencies to present a report of their findings to the president by Nov. 15.

rebecca.kimitch@sgvn.com [1]

626-962-8811, ext. 2105

http://www.sgvtribune.com/ci_15312913 [2]