Pasadena Unified School District announced this week that multiple protected trees at Longfellow Elementary School need to be removed to remediate contaminated soil, rekindlng pushback from protesters who have resisted the broader felling of campus trees all summer.
About a dozen protesters gathered at the campus Tuesday morning, Sept. 1, in opposition of the decision, continuing a months long battle between tree advocates and the district over how PUSD has handled soil remediation across its sites.
According to a district statement, before deciding to remove the trees, PUSD attempted to remove the contaminated soil around the six trees through air knifing — using compressed air and vacuum excavation to expose soil and roots.
PUSD said it evaluated the six trees with air knifing at about six inches and in some locations as deep as one foot.
Additionally, the district said it considered using alternative methods including bioremediation and soil capping before ultimately moving forward with the removals.
“If there were a safe and workable alternative that allowed us to preserve these trees, fully remove the contamination and return the property to unrestricted educational use, we would take it,” the statement read. “After additional testing, air-knifing, arborist review and evaluation of alternative remediation methods, our environmental and tree professionals have concluded that there is not.”
PUSD cited a Monday, Aug. 31, letter from the Department of Toxic Substances Control that said that after attempting alternative remediation methods a significant quantity of contaminated soil remained within the critical root zones of the trees.
“Therefore, to remove contaminated soil, standard excavation methods requiring tree removal will be necessary,” the letter read. “Any contaminated soil remaining at the Site will require long-term institutional controls, such as a land use covenant (LUC) to manage.”
In addition, the letter said that further air knifing would likely result in tree failure.
Jessica Richards, one of the local tree advocates who gathered at Longfellow Tuesday, questioned the district’s explanation of the alternative methods it used before moving forward with removal.
“While we knew there was no guarantee it would be successful on all of the protected trees, to hear last night that it failed on all trees is heartbreaking, disappointing, and frankly, a little bit hard to swallow,” Richards said in a text message. “I was at the site last night and this morning and the soil and grass around all but one tree appears to be intact.”
Longfellow, located near East Washington Boulevard and North Catalina Avenue, is closed this school year for construction and modernization work, which allow soil remediation work to continue as the new school year has begun. Students have been relocated to the Allendale campus while the modernization work is completed.
Over the summer, more than 100 trees were removed after the district’s initial plan called for nearly 200 trees to be taken down in order to remediate soil that was found to be contaminated following testing done in the wake of the Eaton fire.
Local residents rallied at multiple PUSD sites throughout the summer to delay and block the removal of trees. In addition, the City of Pasadena intervened in attempt to stop the removals prompting legal action between the two agencies.
When the school year began, some areas of district sites remained closed off where contaminated soil had not been removed.
PUSD did not provide a timeline of when the six Longfellow trees would be removed.