Volunteers Pitch In to Clean Up Stoney Point Park

Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson said Saturday that he plans to lobby city Recreation and Parks Department officials to organize regular cleanups of Stoney Point Park in Chatsworth, which has been scarred by graffiti and trash.

Bernson, who represents the Chatsworth area, made the statement as hundreds of volunteers from the Sierra Club and equestrian and youth groups worked four hours to clean the 22-acre park.

Among the volunteers were 9-year-old Jackson Frishman, raking broken glass, and Doris Blackey, who worked up a sweat on the muggy day. Other volunteers worked to erase graffiti from boulders around the city park.

“I’m going to do what I can to convince the Recreation and Parks people to do more up here to keep it clean,” Bernson said. “But maintaining a park like this is difficult. Keeping trash from being thrown and people from coming here at night and painting rocks would be very hard to enforce.”

The city acquired the park five years ago but has left it in a “state of nature” to avoid liability problems, Bernson said. The city would be responsible for alterations to the park, but does not face the same liability for land left in a natural state, he said.

Tom Jeter, a Sierra Club official who coordinated the volunteer cleanup, said he was frustrated that the city did not take responsibility for the park.

“People are afraid to bring their families here,” he said. “All sorts of people come here, paint devil-worship graffiti on the rocks. They sit high on the boulders at night and throw bottles all over the place. It’s impossible for us to get it all clean.”

Some climbers have injured themselves on glass, Jeter said.

Empty trash buckets were stacked up for the volunteers at the picturesque park. No more volunteer cleanups are planned.