Arroyo Seco Foundation Submits Settlement Offer to County in Sediment Removal Lawsuit

Pasadena Now has learned that Arroyo Seco Foundation has submitted its final settlement offer to the LA County Flood Control District on Tuesday.

The two sides are at odds over the scope of the county’s sediment removal process in the Devil’s Gate Dam. The removal process will see up to 450 truck trips a day into the Lower Arroyo over the next four years, and could impact the habitat in the Hahamongna Watershed Park.

“The agreement will include a lot of improvement in the county’s program that will minimize a lot of the negative impacts on the environment and on the local neighborhoods up there,” said Tim Brick of the Arroyo Seco Foundation.

Brick would not discuss the details of the settlement, but said he was “hopeful” because most of the details of the settlement have been worked out so far.

The construction phase of the project is scheduled to resume on Thursday, a county official told Pasadena Now on Tuesday.

The two sides were originally scheduled to meet on Thursday, but that hearing was scheduled after the coronavirus outbreak forced courts to close.

The county wants to remove 1.7 million cubic yards of sediment from the dam to help with the flood control system which has been compromised by sediment from the 2009 Station Fire. The fire burned more than 160,000 acres in Altadena, Pasadena, La Crescenta and nearby areas.

Subsequent storms brought in more than 1.3 million cubic yards of sediment into Devil’s Gate Reservoir, according to a county fact sheet on the project.

Activists and preservationists have no issue with the sediment removal, but they do take issue with the pollution, noise and other impacts the project would cause.

The county was forced to redo its Environmental Impact Report (EIR) after a judge ruled it deficient. The county Board of Supervisors then scaled down the project from 2.4 million cubic yards to 1.7 million cubic yards.

However, they did not consider mitigations based on truck trips, air quality and the impacts on the Hahamongna.

Three years ago, Superior Court Judge James Chalfant agreed in part with the Arroyo Seco Foundation and the Pasadena Audubon Society that the final environmental impact report was deficient regarding air pollution, necessary mitigation and cumulative impacts.

In July, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant postponed the trial to allow the two sides to have settlement talks.

“There’s just a few little things, little refinements that we would like to see,” Brick said. “So we anticipate a decision very soon by the county in which they will agree to the settlement.”