With the school year ending, the Pasadena Unified School District is embarking on a major toxic-soil-removal project over the summer, which will include removing nearly 200 trees, district officials announced Friday.
The project, mandated by the state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control, begins in earnest the week of June 15, while students are out of school, and seeks to be done by the time school begins again in the fall, officials said, looking to reassure concerned neighbors about the project.
“Any time we’re moving toxic waste there is concern from the community on how we do that,’ said Superintendent Elizabeth Blanco. “We want to reassure the community that it’s totally safe and regulated and nothing will be flying out of the tucks on the truck routes.”
District officials couched the $6.6 million effort in terms of “restoring outdoor learning spaces” at 11 campuses and other sites impacted by the Eaton fire in January 2025.
Testing last year found fire-related toxins in soil at the sites, which exceeded state screening levels – a finding that prompted the district to close off the areas where the contamination was found.
The substances detected in these initial tests included lead, arsenic, chromium, Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dioxins/furans.
The sample collected with the highest level of lead was taken from Blair High School at 253 milligrams per kilogram. That sample was taken from next to the tennis courts near Garfield Avenue next to the 110 Freeway.
Blanco noted at the time and on Friday that it would take ingestion of the toxins to be the most hazardous.
The primary concern, officials said, was with bare soil, which is limited across campuses and district properties.
Soil issues have become a point of concern in the area, not just at schools but in residential areas, as parcels and lots are cleared from the ash and debris left in the wake of the January 2025, Eaton fire, which destroyed more than 9,000 structures in Altadena, Pasadena and Sierra Madre.
That concern fueled concerns over how much soil the Army Corps of Engineers was removing as they cleared sites, and in how much was being removed under this summer’s project at the district.
Michael Dunning, director of Facilities, Maintenance, Operations, and Transportation, said the project this summer would remove up to 4 feet deep of soil.
Work over the summer will be at:
–Blair High School;
–The former Cleveland Elementary School site;
–Field Elementary, the Franklin Elementary site;
–Jefferson Dual Language Children’s Center;
–John Muir High School Early College Magnet;
–Longfellow Elementary Magnet, Octavia E. Butler Magnet;
–San Rafael Elementary;
–Washington Elementary STEM Magnet School; and
–The PUSD Education Center.
“Our goal is to replace the soil and landscaping with clean soil and landscaping before students return to school; however, some replacement may occur while students are on site, as this work does not involve exposure to fire-related soil,” according to a district statement.
The mandate to remove the contaminants came from the DTSC, a state regulatory agency.
Blanco acknowledged some community pushback on the removal of trees.
“We have really investigated all the ways we could possibly preserve the trees,” she said. “And DTSC has given us a mandate, directive that anywhere there is impacted soil and there’s a tree we have to remove the soil and the tree.”
On Friday, Blanco lamented any impacts from the work on neighbors at the 11 campuses, saying protocols have been established to minimize the impacts.
They include dust control and monitoring, secured work areas and a secure transport of the materials. The district will notified neighbors in advance of construction work, Blanco said, adding it will be overseen by the state regulator.
District officials said they’ve worked with city of Pasadena officials and the firm West Coast Arborists, Inc. over the removal of trees, noting that under the city’s Tree Protection Ordinance, removing 193 trees from district sites would be classified as “environmental remediation,” a term denoting that the agency is not legally bound to replace the trees. But Blanco and Dunning said they would do “1 for 1” anyway, replacing the trees with new native vegetation once new soil is brought it.
Dunning noted the district’s angst to get the “landscape back to its original form.”
All told, 5,000 trees in total live on district sites. Dunning and Blanco said the goal is to replace the trees with new shaded canopies.
District officials said they were mindful that the project, and the removal of trees, is yet another in a string of bad news for the district’s stakeholders.
Blanco noted the area continues to process the impacts of the Eaton fire, there’s concern about the local environment, and that “anything we have to take away feels like another loss to them.”
Dunning echoed Blanco: “This is not something we wanted to do. This is something we were told we have to do.”
The district set up a website with FAQs, at pusd.us/restoringourschools.
Staff Writer David Wilson contributed to this report.