Army Corps' Eco-Disaster in Valley

See also: Before/After Photos of Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Area Devastation

PHOTO BY BETH BARRETT

Sepulveda Dam Basin eco-disaster: Thriving flora, bird and animal habitat, footpaths and decorative markers were all mowed down by the Corps.

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More About

• Los Angeles Police Department
• Muriel Kotin
• Deborah Lamb
• Nature and the Environment
• Wildlife

Absurd, unnecessary social engineering and possibly illegal environmental tactics — that's what some activists and politicians are calling the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' surprise destruction before Christmas of more than 40 acres of prime wildlife and vegetative habitat five miles north of the Getty Center in the Sepulveda Dam Basin.

Facing increasing criticism for bulldozing a cherished bird habitat and wetlands ecosystem spanning 40 football fields — in a city where most wetlands were long ago destroyed — Corps officials insisted the federal flood-control agency had no choice, in part because cruising gay men and homeless campers had flocked there and endangered the public.

That rationale is news to West Valley Division Los Angeles Police Department Lt. Anne-Marie Fuller, who for six months has overseen vice patrols in Sepulveda Basin in Encino. Fuller tells L.A. Weekly she's unaware of homeless or lewd-behavior problems beyond those commonly seen in parks and woods patrolled by LAPD. "It sounds kind of strange," Fuller says, adding she'd "never heard anything" about a mounting threat to public safety.

LAPD says it may have a pending investigation in the area. Meanwhile, Deputy City Attorney Raffy Astvasadoorian says he has prosecuted only seven minor cases there, for misdemeanor illegal camping, with most fines set at just $100. Corps spokesman Dave Palmer insisted to the Weekly that the complaints it got from law enforcement were "verbal," including from the LAPD and from the City Attorney's Office — but Astvasadoorian denies that city attorneys complained.

Now, state Sen. Kevin de Leon is demanding that the Corps make public its records of law-enforcement complaints about gays and the homeless, as well as a full accounting of which officials decided to destroy the habitat and why.

Corps Col. Mark Toy approved the project, which his aides defended as necessary to protect the dam and to remove non-native plants. But of the Corps' claim of a worsening threat from gays and homeless campers, de Leon says: "It's silly."

State Sen. Fran Pavley, a well-regarded environmentalist, says she will ask California Attorney General Kamala Harris to jump into the debacle if Toy, the top local boss, adopts an attitude that the feds have the "right" to do as they please.

The devastation is great to the uplands and wetlands near the 101/405 intersection, bounded on the west by the Los Angeles River, which meanders through the Sepulveda Basin before becoming a cement channel.

Pavley asks, "Was it a mistake? I want to hear the tone and reaction to what has happened, to see if this is just a bad mistake that they wish could be done over — or whether they will defend it as their right."

Nobody has apologized yet. Corps officials said Toy was on vacation and couldn't respond to the controversy, which erupted Dec. 24 on Encino-Tarzana Patch.com.

But de Leon says, "If they had a public-safety problem in Central Park in New York, Griffith Park, Golden Gate Park or Balboa Park in San Diego, you'd never hear of them eviscerating 40 acres. ... It's absurd. That problem is everywhere. But you don't hear of folks plowing through sensitive habitat that's home to different species of birds and a fragile ecosystem."

The area had for three decades attracted warblers, hawks, falcons, swifts and myriad other birds who nest and feed in thickets of willows, Fremont cottonwoods, box elders, Mexican elderberries and native shrubs.

That's all gone.

"I think it's homophobic at the very least," says Lewis MacAdams, president of Friends of the Los Angeles River. "It's nature-phobic. It's like they're taking revenge for this [woodlands and wetland habitat] growing up."

Muriel Kotin, youth activities chairwoman of the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society, called the Corps' claim that public safety needed to be restored "unconscionable."

In early December, Kotin came across Toy's new "vegetation management" plan, which had been quietly posted on the Army Corps of Engineers' website without any public meetings. So Kotin contacted the Corps on behalf of the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Areas Steering Committee, a group of nature experts and enthusiasts.

Corps officials told the steering committee not to worry.

Deborah Lamb, a landscape architect who helped Toy create the vegetation-removal plan, wrote to Kotin on Dec. 12 that the Corps would follow federal policy supporting dam "structural integrity" and would "reduce crime ... by making the area more visible to LAPD patrolling." One key goal, Lamb wrote to Kotin, was to eliminate "hiding places for lewd activity and homeless camps."

The Sepulveda Basin and nearby Woodley Park received four out of five stars on the website cruisinggays.com.

However, Kris Ohlenkamp, of the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society, who discovered the carnage on Dec. 22 during the society's annual bird count, says his group was never provided statistics suggesting that gay cruising, homeless camping or other crimes were causing a crisis.

Lamb on Dec. 12 assured the citizen committee, "Nothing is going to be implemented quickly due to funding resources and labor resources." And the official plan declared "no significant impact" on the ecosystem.

Now, the Corps is admitting that, on Dec. 10, heavy equipment had already begun ripping into the growth and nature paths.