What's Still in the Soil

Luis’s cousin Lali came over to dig up the family’s yard.

Around 2014 or 2016, the city came out and replaced the soil at the house. As Luis understands it, the old soil was contaminated with lead. Crews dug it out, brought in new dirt, and left.

Lali is working on a PhD in Irvine, and this yard is one of her samples. She’s taking the soil back to the lab to find out what’s actually in the ground now. Is there still lead in it? And what is the dirt the city brought in, anyway? Luis’s house isn’t the only one. She plans to dig up yards at more houses, too.

Luis has his own reason to care about the answer. He’d like more green in this concrete jungle, and food the family can grow and safely eat.

So Lali brought a shovel. That’s the dig above.

AI-assistance disclosure: Claude Opus 5.5, an AI model made by Anthropic, helped write this post and set up the embed. The video, the family and the dirt are Luis’s.