Board of Supervisors Does Not Act on Arcadia Woodlands, Trees to Fall Wednesday

Barring a last minute miracle, 11 acres home to 179 oak trees will be cleared starting Wednesday so that the county can place about 250,000 cubic yards of sediment from the Santa Anita Dam on the land.

During public comment at the L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, opponents of the county’s plan made their last pleas to save the beloved oak trees.

David Czamanske, Vice Chair of the Pasadena Sierra Club, presented the board with an online petition signed by more than 1300 people who were against the plan. Czamanske requested a one-week moratorium on the project, but the board did not discuss the matter because it was not on the meeting's agenda.

Around 20 concerned Arcadia residents and environmentalists attended the meeting in the hopes of convincing the board to save the trees.

Construction will begin Wednesday on the Santa Anita Dam Riser Modification and Reservoir Sediment Removal Project. Department of Public Works (DPW) officials confirmed that removal of the vegetation will be the first step the contractors take in the project.

Supervisor Michael Antonovich and the rest of the board did not act despite receiving a letter Tuesday morning from Don Penman, city manager of Arcadia, which questioned the county plan. In the letter, Penman expresses concern that “…  it appears that one of the primary reasons for removal of the woodlands is to create long-term added capacity that can be used to potentially haul hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of debris and sediment from off-site locations to this area rather than preserving this site for future Santa Anita Dam sediment removal projects.” Penman's letter is attached to this article.

Chris Stone, assistant deputy director of the DPW, addressed Penman’s letter, telling the board that the site would only be used for the sediment from the Santa Anita Dam and seven other area debris basins.

Stone said the county had been required to take the action by the state’s department of dam safety and the department of water resources due to the seismic safety of the dam as well as the capacity of the dam’s decreasing ability to conserve water because of sediment buildup behind the dam.

Stone said that if the sediment was left untended, “Ultimately the dam would be decommissioned. We’d lose all of the drinking water of Sierra Madre and a portion of the drinking water of Arcadia. We’d lose all of the ability for flood control in this area affecting 56,000 residents of the state.”

Environmentalists and concerned residents are expected to hold a protest outside the sediment site gates Wednesday morning.

The proposed project area is located within the City of Arcadia on land owned by the county. Both the Angeles National Park and Arcadia’s Wilderness Park are north of the area, while single-family residential homes are to the west and south of the area. To the east is open space owned by the City of Monrovia.