Chatsworth Off List of Possible Prison Camp Sites

A California Conservation Corps camp in Chatsworth is no longer under consideration as a site for a prison work camp, the Deukmejian Administration announced Monday.

Bud Sheble, statewide director for the CCC, said that “speculative accounts in the media” caused state officials to drop the Chatsworth camp from a list of possible prison sites. He said the publicity prompted opposition from San Fernando Valley residents and elected officials, which contributed to the agency’s decision.

Carol Edward, secretary of the Chatsworth Chamber of Commerce, said she was relieved to hear that the camp would not become a minimum-security prison. “Everybody’s very happy. Nobody wanted a prison there,” she said.

The 22-acre CCC camp, called Oat Mountain Center, is in a sparsely populated area near the crest of the Santa Susana Mountains, about five miles north of the intersection of De Soto Avenue and the Simi Valley Freeway.

Until Monday, the Chatsworth site was one of 17 statewide CCC camps that the Deukmejian Administration was considering for conversion to prisons because of crowding in state penal facilities. None of the other sites under consideration is in the Valley area. As part of a review of potential sites, prison administrators recently visited Oat Mountain to determine how many prisoners it could accommodate, state officials said.

Sheble said the alarm voiced by residents “is a natural reaction that occurs no matter where you’re going to move prisoners. Since speculation has had it that prisoners were going to be moved here, we just wanted to make it clear that it is not an option.”

But Sheble said the public concern was premature, because Oat Mountain was only one of many sites being considered.

“When the information came out, everybody got upset and excited about it,” said Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley).

Wright said she believed Oat Mountain was a “bad choice” for a prison camp because it was near populated areas.

Sheble said Oat Mountain will continue to serve as a base for CCC workers who help San Fernando Valley communities fight fires and carry out other public-service projects, many of them conservation-related.

The Chatsworth camp can accommodate up to 77 corps members, according to Susanne Levitsky, a CCC spokeswoman. Corps members from Oat Mountain have been responsible for repair of trails in state parks, highway landscaping, tree planting and restoration of historic buildings, she said.

Although the Chatsworth site has been dropped from the list, state officials said they plan to go ahead with the program to relieve crowding of prisons. The state’s prisons contain more than 1 1/2 times as many inmates as they were designed to hold, they said.

A high-level Administration committee, including the governor’s chief of staff and the director of the Department of Corrections, has met four times in the past month to discuss prison crowding and evaluate potential prison sites, according to Kevin Brett, deputy press secretary.

Once the committee has reviewed and examined each potential site, it will forward recommendations to Gov. George Deukmejian. He is expected to decide after the Legislature reconvenes Aug. 19 which sites should be converted to prisons, Brett said.