A $3.5 million Jeff Bezos Earth Fund grant targeted LA’s Concrete Wash in 2023; 3 years later, it became a greenway

The Pacoima Wash Greenway has opened in San Fernando, three years after the nonprofit Pacoima Beautiful received a $3.5 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund to build it.

City of San Fernando officials and Pacoima Beautiful held the grand opening during an intense heat wave. The greenway sits next to Cindy Montañez Natural Park.

The project adds landscaping, shrubs and trees. It also includes bioswale improvements to the bike path that connects to the Pacoima Wash Pedestrian Bridge. A bioswale is a planted channel that slows stormwater and lets it soak into the ground instead of running off.

A 17-year plan to bring green space to a concrete corridor

The Pacoima Wash Greenway opened during an intense heat wave, with officials from the City of San Fernando and the nonprofit Pacoima Beautiful present. It sits next to Cindy Montañez Natural Park and adds new landscaping, shrubs and trees.

Pacoima Beautiful describes the site as a formerly underused concrete channel, now a “vibrant community space.” Executive director Veronica Padilla-Campos said the aim is to let people safely connect with nature there.

She listed safer connections to parks, schools and homes, along with more shade and more places for people to move. She also said children in the Northeast Valley should grow up seeing that they deserve clean, green spaces.

Padilla-Campos said the project began 17 years ago in a vision plan. At first, it was hard to get the community interested in the idea.

The Bezos Earth Fund awarded Pacoima Beautiful a $3.5 million grant in 2023, and that money funded the project. By that count, the grant came roughly 14 years into the effort, after years of work had already been done.

“This project represents what happens when community members lead with love for their neighborhood,” she said. The opening came about three years after the grant.

The upgrades include bioswale improvements to the bike path, which connects to the Pacoima Wash Pedestrian Bridge. A bioswale is a planted channel that slows stormwater and lets it soak into the ground instead of running off.

Padilla-Campos said she wants the tree canopy to grow and young people to help maintain the space. She also wants the greenway to support groundwater and help clean the air.

Those are goals for the years ahead, not results yet. What exists today is the new planting and the improved path. “It’s all connected,” she said, adding that these green spaces mean a great deal to the community’s overall environment.

All about Bezos Earth Fund

As of May 2026, the Bezos Earth Fund had allocated about 28% of its $10 billion, according to Bloomberg. That's roughly $2.8 billion.

The fund says it still plans to hand out the full amount by 2030.

Bezos announced the fund on Instagram in February 2020. He said it would back scientists, activists and nonprofits working to protect the natural world. It's a personal project and doesn't involve Amazon.

The pledge was about 7.7% of his estimated $130 billion net worth at the time. Bezos was also the only American among the world's five richest people who hadn't signed the Giving Pledge.

The first grants came in November 2020. Bezos announced $791 million for 16 organizations. Five of them, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, the World Resources Institute and the World Wildlife Fund, received $100 million each.

The Environmental Defense Fund's grant helps build MethaneSAT, a satellite that locates and measures methane pollution. Methane is a greenhouse gas that traps far more heat than carbon dioxide over short periods.

Some critics weren't satisfied. They said the first round favored groups with less diverse leadership and wanted more money to go to grassroots organizations led by ethnic minorities.

The fund now covers a wide range of work. About $1 billion is set aside to change food systems by 2030, including crops that are more nutritious and handle climate stress better. It also runs an AI Grand Challenge, which paid out $30 million in October 2025.

Ocean work is another area. A $100 million Pacific pledge from 2023 has had two rounds of grants. The latest, announced in September, was more than $25 million. It helps Papua New Guinea create its first large offshore marine protected area and expands protected areas in Tonga.

Smaller community projects are in the mix too. In 2023, the fund gave Pacoima Beautiful $3.5 million, which led to the Pacoima Wash Greenway in San Fernando.

More than $7 billion remains, so grantmaking would have to speed up. Tom Taylor, who ran Amazon's Alexa division, became CEO in 2025. Lauren Sánchez Bezos, the fund's vice chair, has become a more visible public face since marrying Bezos in June 2025.