Between South Pasadena and Highland Park is a tiny wilderness of Mexican fan palms and even some oak trees. Some locals say they love it the way it is, graffiti, fire hazard and all. <\/p>\n
But the city of Pasadena says it needs the place to filter out E. coli bacteria and zinc pollution that ruin water quality in the Arroyo Seco, which then flows into the L.A. River. <\/p>\n
The Arroyo Seco is born in the Angeles National Forest and winds through through La Ca\u00f1ada Flintridge, Altadena, Pasadena and South Pasadena and finally Los Angeles. The water-cleaning project has been drawing protests from several community groups and some elected representatives for the area. Neighbors have organized a lawsuit against the city and there\u2019s a growing social media campaign to bring the project to a halt<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pasadena plans to remove some of the densely clustered trees in the two-acre wood next to San Pascual Park to make way for a new wetland ringed by native plants and walking paths.<\/p>\n The city would remove thousands of cubic yards of soil and plants \u2014 six dump trucks\u2019 worth each day \u2014 over about five months<\/a>. It would make infiltration basins and widen the stream\u2019s path over them to maximize water filtered by the soil as it slows and is drawn by gravity underground to recharge the aquifer.<\/p>\n In 2010, a resolution by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board set maximum bacteria levels allowed in the watershed. In response, Pasadena and South Pasadena secured close to $15 million for the water reuse project<\/a>. Pasadena has said it faces fines of up to $10,000 a day from the board for not reducing bacteria, but those haven\u2019t been imposed yet.<\/p>\n At first glance, it might seem like a lot of commotion over a parcel that is about the size of two football fields. But to community members, unpaved and unmanicured areas such as the verdant tangle of vegetation in the San Pascual site are an invaluable part of the city\u2019s limited green space<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re going to go in and bulldoze that whole thing, wipe it all out, and then they\u2019re going to put in these pools that will store water, and then they\u2019ll put some vegetation around the side of it,\u201d said Tim Brick, executive director of the group Stewards of the Arroyo Seco. He described the site as a \u201clittle environmental gem.\u201d<\/p>\n Andrew Salas, chair of the Gabriele\u00f1o Band of Mission Indians \u2014 Kizh Nation, called for a \u201cfull avoidance\u201d of the area. In a letter to city officials<\/a>, he wrote that the project risks permanently damaging fragile and tribal sites within the Hahamongna Watershed, and includes a \u201chigh probability of encountering ancestral human remains.\u201d<\/p>\n The place is used. <\/p>\n \u201cPeople will go down there and sit, because it\u2019s like 10 to 15 degrees cooler there by the stream,\u201d said Clara Solis, a member of Save San Pascual Park. People nearby don\u2019t all have air conditioning, she said. \u201cIt\u2019s valuable to us.\u201d<\/p>\n She said her appreciation of trees comes from growing up in unincorporated East L.A., near the 60 and 710 freeways. She saw trees in her neighborhood cut down to make it easier for cars to exit the freeway, resulting in more freeway noise and pollution. The trees had been a shield.<\/p>\n When Solis learned that close to 140 trees were to be removed in the Arroyo Seco project, she jumped into action.<\/p>\n She led a lawsuit against Pasadena in 2024, alleging it didn\u2019t carefully consider the effect the project would have, prompting the city to do a full environmental impact report. <\/p>\n Grassroots organizers also say the first wave of notices did not reach many residents who live on one side of the arroyo and were distributed only in English.<\/p>\n Though the objections to the project are diverse and heated, what unites almost everyone is the desire for a cleaner Arroyo Seco.<\/p>\n