If This Is a DWP Barbecue, Where’s the Fire?

In late March, a Mount Washington resident named Diane Behrens took her dog for a walk in nearby Debs Park.

She was near the top of the park in the hills above the Arroyo Seco -- far from any public roads -- when a truck from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power went roaring past.

“That’s strange,” Behrens thought to herself.

Behrens soon found herself in the midst of a gaggle of DWP trucks, raising the question ...

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Q: Why were DWP trucks on a hilltop in a park where there are no DWP facilities?

A: “So I stopped one of the guys and I asked what’s going on,” Behrens said. “He said, ‘We’re having a goodbye party for one of our workers.’ ”

She stopped another truck. The driver told her, “We’re having a barbecue.”

But Behrens couldn’t find any evidence of a barbecue having taken place. That might be because there are no barbecues in that part of the park.

She did, however, remember one of the trucks’ license plate numbers and called DWP district Supt. Dennis Barr.

He said the workers shouldn’t have been there, and that “it’s not going to happen again.”

As for what the workers were doing, he said the workers were apparently “doing their tool report -- checking all the tools on their vehicles.”

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Q: Didn’t the City Council give DWP workers a raise last year of at least 17.9% over the next five years?

A: Yes.

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Q: When is a picture worth a thousand words?

A: Check out the highly effective visual brought to you by the anti-sewer sludge group Keep Kern Clean Committee, whose website is www.keepkernclean.com/news.htm.

Residents in neighboring Kern Country are trying to stop L.A. from dumping surplus sewer sludge on farmland.

It would appear they’ve made their case.

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Q: Why is Councilwoman Janice Hahn calling the school district a bunch of Pinocchios?

A: She thinks that they’ve fudged the numbers on the cost of moving a pipeline in Wilmington.

The Los Angeles school district is trying to build a new middle school on one site there, while Hahn wants another that is closer to a high school.

The district says that Hahn’s site isn’t feasible because of the $20 million cost of moving an underground natural gas pipeline. Hahn says she has three estimates -- including one from the city’s Bureau of Engineering -- that the cost would be only $1 million.

“It seems that either the district is being untruthful about the cost of moving the pipeline, or that the LAUSD is being taken advantage of by contractors,” Hahn wrote in a recent letter to school officials.

Roderick Hamilton, the school district’s regional development manager, stands by his estimate.

“I found [Hahn’s] analysis to be a bit lacking,” he said.

Stay tuned on this one.

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Q: What ran up Figueroa Street a week ago Sunday at the base of Mount Washington and surprised a few residents?

A: Two deer.

“I was at my friend’s bookstore and rubbing my eyes because it looked like there were two deer running down the middle of the street,” said Anita Martinez of Lincoln Heights. “And it was two deer running down the street.”

The deer eventually ran back uphill into Mount Washington. By coincidence, Daniel Marlos, who lives there, had taken a photo of two deer in his backyard one day earlier. He maintains that the deer are the first seen in Mount Washington since the 1960s.

Of course, there is a back story. Marlos is entrenched in a battle with the city’s Planning Department over several homes that are slated to be built on an empty lot next door -- land he says is good habitat for a lot of critters, including the deer.

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Q: Why does Councilwoman Wendy Greuel want to be known as the lady who upped the price of parking tickets?

A: Last year the city wrote about 200,000 tickets to motorists whose cars were illegally parked during rush hour.

Greuel believes that if the city spanks motorists a little harder -- by increasing the ticket from $65 to about $140 -- maybe they’ll get the message that blocking rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles is a bad, bad thing.

“We’re looking to change behavior with this,” said Greuel.

A reporter offered Greuel another idea: Allow motorists whose route is blocked by illegally parked cars to legally deliver three kicks to the offending vehicle.

Greuel didn’t like that idea.

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Q: Why does it get dark so ridiculously early in the summer in Los Angeles, and what can your elected leaders do about it?

A: Double daylight saving time!

As the accompanying map clearly shows, L.A.’s southerly location does not make for nice long summer evenings like they have in Seattle or even Denver. In fact, it gets dark here just as some reporters are getting home from work -- an intolerable situation.

In fact, during the 2001 energy crisis, the idea of moving clocks ahead another hour in California, Oregon and Washington was bandied about by the federal government, but it never got anywhere.

Instead, Congress last year decided to add a few more weeks to daylight saving time, but that doesn’t solve the problem of the sun setting at 8 p.m.

So what can L.A. do?

There might be a couple of solutions, although they are longshots, said David Prerau, who has written a book about the history of daylight saving time and has a website, www.seizethedaylight.com.

“I proposed way back in the 1970s a system of having standard time in winter, daylight saving time in spring and fall, and double daylight savings time in summer,” he said.

That proposal didn’t go anywhere. The better solution for L.A., Prerau said, might be to secede from the Pacific time zone and join the Mountain time zone, which in effect would keep it light out for an hour longer throughout the year.

There are complications. For one, L.A. isn’t allowed to secede as a city -- the whole state would have to petition the federal government for the change.

And there would obviously be pushback from mush-minded early risers who like their morning sun.

Are there any takers on the council to start a battle that would be long and contentious?

The Times turned to the council’s resident Man of Ideas, a.k.a. Tom LaBonge, whose initial question was, “What will this do to Alaska?”

After a reporter politely suggested what could be done with Alaska, LaBonge said he could see the merits in giving residents an extra hour of sunlight to enjoy “the great city of Los Angeles” and, in particular, his 4th District. “But I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve got to call Caltech on this one.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Left in the dark

Because of geography and the placement of time zones, Los Angeles has less evening sunlight in spring and summer than most other Western cities. Times shown are for sunrise and sunset on June 21, the longest day of the year.

*--* City Sunrise Sunset (a.m.) (p.m.) 1. Anchorage* 4:20 11:42 2. Kalispell 5:37 9:41 3. Seattle 5:11 9:11 4. Portland 5:22 9:03 5. Salt Lake City 5:56 9:02 6. San Francisco 5:48 8:35 7. Denver 5:32 8:31 8. Albuquerque 5:52 8:24 9. Los Angeles 5:42 8:08 10. Las Vegas 5:24 8:01 11. Phoenix** 5:19 7:41

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*Alaska time zone, not mapped

**Most of Arizona does not observe daylight savings time

Source: U.S. Naval Observatory. Graphics reporting by Steve Hymon