Truck Now Blocks Chatsworth Oaks From Woodcutters’ Axes

Los Angeles officials used a street maintenance truck Wednesday to block woodcutters from returning to a field in Chatsworth where three large oak trees were illegally bulldozed to the ground this week.

Public Works Department administrators said they took the unusual step of physically blocking the field after workmen were discovered cutting up the fallen oaks Tuesday evening, hours after city inspectors had ordered a halt to the chopping.

City officials also took the first step Wednesday toward filing criminal charges because of the incident. The Board of Public Works asked the city attorney’s office to file misdemeanor charges against those responsible for destroying the 500-year-old trees without a special permit required under the city’s 5-year-old oak protection law.

The board also asked that the Los Angeles police begin patrolling the three-acre site to prevent the destruction of the remaining two living oaks.

The board acted after being informed that workmen had been caught chopping wood at the site Tuesday evening by a Public Works Department superintendent who made a surprise visit to the property in the 21800 block of Lassen Street.

Robert Kennedy, the department’s street tree division superintendent, said he spotted the woodcutters at work at about 6:30 p.m. They had been ordered to cease the oak removal work at 2:30 p.m. by two other city inspectors, Kennedy said.

Labeling the workmen’s actions “outrageous” and “arrogant,” the public works commissioners asked the city attorney’s office to seek a court order to block removal of any oaks and to file a lawsuit against the landowners and grading contractor.

The city attorney’s office said Wednesday that no decision had been reached on the requested civil actions. Terry Martin-Brown, a deputy city attorney, said the criminal complaint will be filed as soon as the owners of the land are identified by city officials. She predicted that the complaint would be filed next week.

Kennedy said identification of the property owners has been hampered by the recent sale of the land, which apparently placed it under the control of an Encino group called the Flynn Road-Camarillo Partnership. Representatives of the partnership could not be reached Wednesday.

City Councilman Hal Bernson said that he will ask for a review of the effectiveness of the city’s oak ordinance. The law requires a permit for the removal of any oak having a trunk larger than eight inches in diameter when measured 4 1/2 feet from the ground.

Bernson said he may ask for tougher penalties for people who violate the ordinance because firewood taken from large oaks is worth more than the $500 fine that violators now face. Violators also can receive a six-month jail sentence.

One way of strengthening the law might be to impose a 10-year freeze on development on property where oaks have been illegally chopped, Bernson said.

Anson Burlingame, a member of the Valley-based Oak Tree Coalition, a private group, told commissioners that the trees had been adorned with plaques certifying that they had been registered with the state as “significant.” He said they had shaded an 1890s-era stagecoach stop called the Chatsworth Inn.