Why a plan to filter bacteria from the Arroyo Seco is facing fierce opposition

Between South Pasadena and Highland Park is simply a tiny wilderness of Mexican instrumentality palms and adjacent immoderate oak trees. Some locals accidental they emotion it the mode it is, graffiti, occurrence hazard and all.

But the metropolis of Pasadena says it needs the spot to filter retired E. coli bacteria and zinc contamination that ruin h2o prime successful the Arroyo Seco, which past flows into the L.A. River.

The Arroyo Seco is calved successful the Angeles National Forest and winds done through La Cañada Flintridge, Altadena, Pasadena and South Pasadena and yet Los Angeles. The water-cleaning task has been drafting protests from respective assemblage groups and immoderate elected representatives for the area. Neighbors person organized a suit against the metropolis and there’s a increasing societal media run to bring the task to a halt.

Pasadena plans to region immoderate of the densely clustered trees successful the two-acre wood adjacent to San Pascual Park to marque mode for a caller wetland ringed by autochthonal plants and walking paths.

The metropolis would region thousands of cubic yards of ungraded and plants — six dump trucks’ worthy each time — implicit astir 5 months. It would marque infiltration basins and widen the stream’s way implicit them to maximize h2o filtered by the ungraded arsenic it slows and is drawn by gravity underground to recharge the aquifer.

In 2010, a solution by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board acceptable maximum bacteria levels allowed successful the watershed. In response, Pasadena and South Pasadena secured adjacent to $15 cardinal for the h2o reuse project. Pasadena has said it faces fines of up to $10,000 a time from the committee for not reducing bacteria, but those haven’t been imposed yet.

At archetypal glance, it mightiness look similar a batch of commotion implicit a parcel that is astir the size of 2 shot fields. But to assemblage members, unpaved and unmanicured areas specified arsenic the verdant tangle of vegetation successful the San Pascual tract are an invaluable portion of the city’s constricted greenish space.

“They’re going to spell successful and bulldoze that full thing, hitch it each out, and past they’re going to enactment successful these pools that volition store water, and past they’ll enactment immoderate vegetation astir the broadside of it,” said Tim Brick, enforcement manager of the radical Stewards of the Arroyo Seco. He described the tract arsenic a “little biology gem.”

Andrew Salas, seat of the Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians — Kizh Nation, called for a “full avoidance” of the area. In a missive to metropolis officials, helium wrote that the task risks permanently damaging fragile and tribal sites wrong the Hahamongna Watershed, and includes a “high probability of encountering ancestral quality remains.”

The spot is used.

“People volition spell down determination and sit, due to the fact that it’s similar 10 to 15 degrees cooler determination by the stream,” said Clara Solis, a subordinate of Save San Pascual Park. People adjacent don’t each person aerial conditioning, she said. “It’s invaluable to us.”

She said her appreciation of trees comes from increasing up successful unincorporated East L.A., adjacent the 60 and 710 freeways. She saw trees successful her vicinity chopped down to marque it easier for cars to exit the freeway, resulting successful much freeway sound and pollution. The trees had been a shield.

When Solis learned that adjacent to 140 trees were to beryllium removed successful the Arroyo Seco project, she jumped into action.

She led a suit against Pasadena successful 2024, alleging it didn’t cautiously see the effect the task would have, prompting the metropolis to bash a afloat biology interaction report.

Grassroots organizers besides accidental the archetypal question of notices did not scope galore residents who unrecorded connected 1 broadside of the arroyo and were distributed lone successful English.

Though the objections to the task are divers and heated, what unites astir everyone is the tendency for a cleaner Arroyo Seco.

The biology nonprofit Heal the Bay gave it an F connected its Annual River Report Card successful 2025, chiefly for E. coli.

Brent Maue, metropolis technologist for the Public Works Department of Pasadena, said the San Pascual tract is simply a bully campaigner for this work. The sliver of onshore is “one of the few” wherever it’s imaginable to amended h2o prime and reconstruct a wetland astatine the aforesaid time, helium said successful an email. More radical volition beryllium capable to usage it, too.

Christina Monde, Pasadena’s metropolis task manager for the Arroyo Seco project, attributed immoderate of the absorption to misconceptions, specified arsenic that Pasadena is cleaning the h2o successful bid to irrigate a play course. But the tube that takes h2o for that play people dates backmost 70 years and its capableness volition not increase, she said. The draught biology interaction study supports that.

Monde doesn’t deliberation the chaotic spot is truthful important to support successful its existent state.

“It’s conscionable not the pristine country that radical accidental it is, and I deliberation that the improvements that we’re proposing volition marque it a overmuch much aesthetically pleasing, accessible, and harmless country for the assemblage to enjoy,” she said, citing unauthorized trails, overgrowth, unhoused radical surviving there, breached chain-link fencing arsenic good arsenic barbed ligament and algae.

She noted that 82 of the 136 trees to beryllium removed are invasive Mexican instrumentality palms, which besides airs a occurrence hazard.

The nationalist remark play connected the draught biology study has been extended to Saturday. Comments should beryllium sent to [email protected]. There volition beryllium different assemblage meeting, Monde said, but nary day has yet been set.

Visiting the San Pascual tract contiguous illuminates each sides of the debate. A rusted obstruction astir wholly encircles the lot. There is simply a way successful from the bluish corner, marked by a hand-painted woody motion connected a inferior rod that reads “HANDS OFF THIS.” Following the way feels similar a peek into a Jurassic jungle arsenic it unspools past lush clusters of palms, coming adjacent to a tiny watercourse diverted from the Arroyo, and each the bacteria it carries.