FungiFix: Regenerating LA from the Ground Up

Green space, park access, and trees

Central LA East LA South LA West LA Gateway Cities County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit) City of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a citywide benefit)

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

Many neighborhoods in LA, especially those affected by wildfires and historically industrial areas, have lost access to safe, usable green spaces and the ability to redevelop land due to contaminated soil. Parks, lots, and even public housing courtyards sit on land contaminated with heavy metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, and fire residue. This creates a silent environmental justice issue where residents can’t safely interact with their own outdoor environments. These conditions are most concentrated in BIPOC and low-income areas and are worsened by wildfires and climate change. Traditional cleanup methods are slow, costly, or carbon-intensive. LA urgently needs scalable, regenerative, and equitable tools to restore the land and reintroduce it as a safe, interactive green space for public use.

FungiFix uses mycoremediation (cleaning up polluted soil with fungi) to regenerate contaminated land in Los Angeles. This grant will support 5 new sites in different wildfire-impacted and industrial areas, where contaminated spaces remain unused due to toxic exposure risk. Our fungi-based solution breaks down hydrocarbons, absorbs heavy metals, and rebuilds soil structure. After remediation, we harvest the biomass of the mushrooms and transform them into a sustainable concrete biofiller.
Our circular approach does more than heal soil. It restores access to outdoor space, creating opportunities for public use, tree planting, or sustainable development. Many of our sites are underutilized parks or community lots that could become assets again if contamination is addressed. Our work expands the possibilities for creating parks in frontline areas that currently lack safe green spaces.
We also use our remediation efforts as a platform for community education and engagement. Through public workshops and pilot site visits, we invite nearby community members to interact with living fungi and learn about ecological restoration. Our youth interns and community volunteers will help lead this engagement by transforming science into a creative, cultural connection with the land. We prioritize stakeholder involvement at every step, especially among those traditionally excluded from environmental decision-making, to ensure each site reflects the community’s vision for restoration and reuse.

FungiFix will make once-contaminated green spaces safe, usable, and regenerative. Communities in wildfire burn zones and post-industrial corridors will regain access to outdoor lots and community space that had long been hazardous. We envision a Los Angeles where toxic soil is no longer a barrier to public health or outdoor engagement.
Our approach doesn’t just remove risk—it transforms land into a community asset. Remediated lots can host parks, gardens, urban forests, or nature-based art installations. Residents will no longer fear contact with soil in their own neighborhoods. Our sustainable concrete enables green development across LA, turning cleanup into a launchpad for climate-smart infrastructure. By bringing fungi into the public imagination—as both a cleanup tool and design material—we foster a creative, inclusive relationship between people and place. The result: more accessible green space, safer soil, and a new pipeline for creative green jobs rooted in care for the land.