Elaborate Plan to Divert Stream, Build in Wash Filed

When developer Donald Cunningham began talking three years ago about an ambitious plan to build a commercial center and homes in the often-flooded Tujunga Wash in the northeast San Fernando Valley, area residents did not think he could be serious.

He is.

Cunningham this week submitted to the Los Angeles Planning Department his proposal to build a high-technology industrial park, 600 homes and several commercial buildings. He wants to divert the wash, which is flooded with churning waters and debris during heavy rains, around the proposed 565-acre site into a massive, three-mile-long, 1,500- to 3,000-foot wide system of man-made levees and flood channels.

Cunningham enthusiastically compares his project to the dikes that protect the Netherlands from the sea. In a recent interview, he insisted that the project is entirely workable and salable to the city. But city officials, who must approve the project, and some influential neighboring homeowner and environmental groups have serious doubts.

Finn Tells Conditions

He must also convince Councilman Howard Finn, whose district includes the project site. Finn said in an interview Friday that he has told Cunningham that he will not “accept any destruction of Tujunga Wash” and that any construction would have to be outside the flood plain.

“I see a couple of really serious problems with the entire project,” Finn said.

City engineering authorities, as well as Los Angeles County flood control officials, already are recommending to City Council members that the project be rejected or greatly altered. The plan, officials say, simply isn’t feasible and would pose significant safety problems.

City engineers, noting that it is the first time anyone has proposed building on a wash, late last month hired an independent engineering firm to re-examine findings of a feasibility study--commissioned and financed by Cunningham’s firm, Stephen W. Cunningham and Associates--that indicates such a project would work.

“A developer can always come up with a study saying everything is rosy,” said Dick Wanier of the city Public Works Department’s bureau of engineering.

Looking for Objectivity

“What we’re looking for is an objective third-party examination of the situation.”

The city-commissioned study was ordered after Thomas A. Tidemanson, county director of public works, stated in a memo to city engineers that the calculations made in the developer’s study were based on untested theories. He said the project should include more measures to ensure its safety. The levee system, Tidemanson said, could also pose a significant danger to freeway and street bridges in the path of the wash, and, to a lesser extent, to the operation and maintenance of Hansen Dam.

The wash, which lies above the community of Sunland at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, is a normally empty, sandy stream bed. But, during a rain, it turns into a raging river.

Highly unpredictable in winter, the wash carries water from 115 square miles of watershed through the Big Tujunga Canyon to Hansen Dam. Over the years it has unleashed floods and destruction on homes and bridges. In January and February of 1969, for example, the Foothill Boulevard and Wentworth Place bridges were destroyed after a severe Pacific storm. Homes along Le Berthon and Bengal streets and Westcott Avenue were also destroyed or flooded. In March, 1983, part of Big Tujunga Canyon Road was washed out after a severe storm.

Problem of Debris Removal

“Our past experience with the destructive power of floods in Tujunga Wash gives us concern over proposals to further constrict the natural flow paths,” Tidemanson said in his memo to the city. The shifting of earth in Big Tujunga Canyon in recent years has further complicated flow in the wash, causing large boulders and other rock debris to tumble into the flood plain along with the runoff. Aside from the danger, the most crucial question confronting the project is who will pay to clear the debris from the levee.

City and county officials have said they will not. Cunningham has said he or an assessment district formed among occupants of the development will pick up the maintenance tab. Residents who oppose the project, somewhat predictably, doubt that Cunningham will.

“When the floods come, I doubt that Mr. Cunningham will be standing atop his levee fighting to keep the water and debris from destroying what he has built,” said Jenny Kline, president of the Shadow Hills Property Owners Assn., which is battling the project.

Would Entail Zone Change

Furthermore, construction of the development and levee system, planned for the south side of Tujunga Wash running along Wentworth Street from Hansen Dam to Oro Vista Avenue, would require a zone change from very-low-density residential to limited industrial, highway-oriented commercial and residential.

None of this appears to have daunted Cunningham, who is enthusiastically plunging ahead with his plans.

The mechanics of the construction would work something like this:

A levee would be built in an arc from Oro Vista west under the Foothill Freeway to Wheatland Avenue. From the mouth of Big Tujunga Canyon, river water would be diverted from the existing flood plain virtually against the Lake View Terrace foothills north of the proposed development, then southwest toward Hansen Dam.

The developer subsequently plans to truck 3.35 million cubic yards of earth to the flood plain to elevate the proposed building site several feet above the 11- to 15-foot-high levee.

Two-Year Project

Such a system, which would border the communities of Pacoima, Lake View Terrace, Sunland and Shadow Hills, would take about two years and several million dollars to build. Cunningham conservatively estimates the cost of the levee and flood channel alone at about $5 million. The public has until mid-June to comment on the environmental study. The project isn’t expected to reach City Council for at least a year.

“If he could pull that off, it would be one of the most monumental and spectacular engineering feats of all time,” said Tina Eick, land use chairman of the Shadow Hills group.

Eick said she believes Cunningham is proposing what she calls a “ludicrous” project just to get the land rezoned. She questions whether he really wants to go through with the project as planned.

“All he really wants is to get the zone change to industrial and sell the land. That would be the only logical thing to do. I mean, why is he going to sink millions of dollars into building levees and selling bonds to maintain them? He couldn’t possibly sell enough homes to make a profit after all of that.”

But Cunningham, insisting that he is serious about following through on the project, said opposition comes mainly from residents of one area.

Cites Shadow Hills Opposition

“The people of Shadow Hills oppose what we’re trying to do, but a great number of others support us. Shadow Hills residents are simply afraid of the unknown, afraid of change. They don’t make any bones about it. There’s just not much we can do for them.”

Shadow Hills and other neighborhood and environmental groups have hired lawyers and engineering experts to fight the proposed development and save Tujunga Wash, which has been declared an environmentally sensitive area by both the county and city because of its unusual plant life and topography. The groups are attempting to prod the city into upholding the area’s community plan, a city document that guides how land should be used. The plan specifies that the site be retained as privately owned open space. The land now is zoned to allow construction of homes on half-acre lots.

The development would destroy about 240 acres of natural habitat, according to the environmental study commissioned by the developer. But it would attract an estimated 1,400 new residents to the area, plus 3,000 jobs related to high technology and light industry, the study says.

Owned by Akmadzich Estate

Tujunga Wash is now owned by the estate of Peter J. Akmadzich. Developer Cunningham owns an option to purchase the land for a price he wouldn’t disclose.

Shadow Hills and neighboring communities set up a trust and have been raising money for two years in an attempt to buy Tujunga Wash should City Council reject the project and Cunningham walk away.

Eick said her association believes it will have to raise a minimum of $50,000 to convince the state and various foundations that the community is serious about buying the land and get them to provide the lion’s share of funds to make the purchase. Eick estimates that the land as now zoned would sell for $3 million to $5 million.

Homeowners in the area, Shadow Hills leader Kline said, “feel threatened by the development because the wash and its open space are the reason we chose to live here. To lose that simply cannot be mitigated by an overly ambitious developer in some environmental study.”