Profits Outweigh Penalties : Bulldozers Grind Away Illegally Along the Coast

The new asphalt road slithers and twists along a ridge in the rugged hills in Malibu’s upper Ramirez Canyon, hidden from cars below but reflecting in the sun like a giant black snake to those in the helicopter above.

The 2 1/2-mile-long road is a recent addition to the Santa Monica Mountains, and, according to state law enforcement officials, an illegal one. Authorities say the fire road was paved without permits and in defiance of stop-work orders issued by the California Coastal Commission after a neighbor blew the whistle during its construction.

The enormous profit that can be made by providing road access to coastal property or grading steep hillside terrain for development far outweighs financial penalties against landowners who do the work without required permits. As a result, a growing number of bulldozer jockeys have dug in their blades with little regard for the consequences.

Moreover, the severely understaffed Coastal Commission is nearly powerless to catch the hungry developers and land speculators that ply their trade along the California coast.

Nowhere is that more true than in Malibu, which officials say is the site of the most serious grading violations in the state. In some cases along the Malibu coastline, whole mountain ridges have been flattened, running streams have been filled and bulldozers have sliced into landslide-plagued hills.

Ever since the Coastal Act was passed in 1976, feisty landowners have been battling to preserve what they consider their personal property rights while the commission fights to save the state’s dwindling coastal resources. The skirmishes often end up in lengthy court battles.

In March, for example, Topanga businessman Thomas Voiss concluded a two-year fight with the commission by paying a $16,000 fine for illegally grading land on his ranch and erecting an equestrian center and corrals without permits. It was the largest fine ever paid for a Coastal Commission violation but it was probably about one-tenth of what he would have had to pay to board his 41 Arabian horses elsewhere during the protracted litigation.

“This is seen by some people as a cost of doing business,” said Nancy Cave, head of the Coastal Commission’s enforcement program. “It’s written in as part of the cost of the project.”

In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court this month, the state attorney general’s office is asking for millions of dollars in damages from more than 40 Malibu property owners, headed by Malibu real estate broker Charles Tarrats, who allegedly pooled their money to illegally pave the winding road in Ramirez Canyon. But Tarrats contends that similar work is done all the time, without any intervention from the Coastal Commission.

“This has been done in Malibu for years. Why are they singling us out?” Tarrats said. “What they’ve done is clearly unfair, prejudicial and one-sided, and we’ll fight it all the way to the Supreme Court.”

State Budget Cuts

Coastal agency officials say they are ill-equipped to monitor illegal developments along California’s coastline, where permits are required for any development. They blame understaffing caused by budget cuts made by Gov. George Deukmejian in five of the last six years. Just this month, the governor slashed $651,000 from the commission’s $9-million 1989-90 budget. By comparison, in 1981, under former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., the commission had a $14-million budget.

During one particularly lean year, the commission had to rely almost entirely on volunteer high school students to investigate suspected violations.

“You don’t have to look any further than the budget,” said Coastal Commissioner Madelyn Glickfeld. “I honestly don’t believe that the people high in the governor’s office understand the extent of the problem. But we’ve done as well as we could given the resources we have.”

Cave, the commission’s only statewide enforcement officer, said that the lack of manpower means that for every violation they discover, two may go undetected. None of the state agencies that regulate development along the coast has an aerial patrol, and Cave said they must therefore rely on neighboring property owners to call in suspected violations. On a rare helicopter tour above the canyons of Malibu recently, state and federal officials pointed out at least six suspected grading violations.

Weighing the Risks

The development pressures in the Santa Monica Mountains and the price of coastal real estate in Los Angeles apparently are enough to prompt some property owners to take their chances on developing without proper permits rather than face costly bureaucratic delays and the possibility that their applications would be denied.

Cave said the commission staff has detected about 670 violations statewide, ranging from illegal grading to wetlands destruction, with more than half of them in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Because of staffing problems, Cave said, only about 75 of the most serious cases are being actively pursued, with 20% of them in the Santa Monica Mountains.

“A lot of the people that live there are independent souls and they don’t like agencies like the Coastal Commission telling them what they can do with their land,” Cave said.

Two angry Topanga landowners, for example, have been locked in a bitter fight with the commission since 1987 over what they believe is their right to develop their property. After the commission obtained an injunction ordering Steve and Arnold Carlson to stop work on their parcel, where they were allegedly bulldozing an Indian burial ground, the landowners responded by erecting a sign on the property: “Topanga Junction, where the Coastal Commission wants me to think they are God.”

Father Arrested

After his father, Arnold, was arrested, Steve Carlson said there was no truth that the site was a sensitive burial ground. “It’s an engine burial ground, not Indian,” he said. “We’ve pulled out valve stems, air filters, piston heads.” After two years of litigation, the landowners are now pursuing a permit to develop the property, according to the state attorney general’s office.

Joe Edmiston, executive director for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that buys private land for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, contends that the Coastal Commission invites violations with its longstanding policy of asking violators to seek a permit after the damage has been done rather than try to prosecute them and insist that they restore the property.

In some cases, after illegal roads have been graded and paved, developers have sought permits to build houses, noting that the property already has road access.

“That policy is an encouragement for others to do the same,” he said. “These things are tantamount to criminal acts, yet nobody ever seems to be seriously hurt by the consequences.

“You don’t confiscate $10,000 from a bank robber and then tell him that he can have the $10,000 back so he can hire an attorney. The real issue is whether that person is allowed to use the fruit of the ill-gotten gain. If they are, then it appears that it’s more productive to do a project without a permit.”

Although the commission usually requires restoration work to be done when there are serious violations, it often rules that since the development has been completed it might as well make it legal rather than ask that the project be “undone.” Cave said the policy, which she called a “problem area,” is under review.

Offers Explanation

Tarrats, who began in late April paving two contiguous fire roads, some as high as the 2,000-foot level in the hills between Kanan Dume Road and Latigo Canyon Road, said he ignored the stop-work papers served on him in May because after talking to his attorney he concluded he was not violating any laws. He said that since the county does not require permits for road paving he just assumed that the Coastal Commission didn’t require them either.

After he was ordered to stop work, Tarrats applied for an emergency permit from the Coastal Commission to continue paving the road, but was turned down. One day later, according to the lawsuit, the crews started up again, laying down a 20-foot-wide asphalt surface that coastal officials contend was done to speed development in the area. Tarrats denies that, saying that the property owners who contributed to the project just want to improve the access to their homes.

Nonetheless, Tarrats is trying to capitalize on the new road access. The road that the state attorney general is suing him over is featured in an advertisement placed by Tarrats’ company in the summer edition of the Malibu Homes directory, which lists a 26-acre property in upper Ramirez Canyon: “A beautiful private park-like setting with close proximity to Pacific Coast Highway and easy access off a newly paved road. . . . There is room for all amenities. $795,000.”

Tarrats said also that he ignored the order to stop paving the road because he had signed an expensive contract to complete the work.

“We were marching along before we got the stop-work order but we’re locked into a $240,000 contract to pave the road,” he said. “Nobody’s been hassled before for this but all of a sudden they’re all over us.”

Tarrats said the case points out how “clearly unfair, prejudicial and one-sided” the Coastal Commission can be in light of the fact that a neighbor also did some unpermitted grading and paving. The neighbor, Westside clothing retailer Fred Segal, said he was unaware that permits were required for an access road to a park planned on the site, and is working with the Coastal Commission staff to fix the problem. He said he is now going through the permit process.

Case Being Probed

Coastal Commission officials said they are trying to determine the extent of the violation and that the case is under investigation.

They are also investigating another case on Sweetwater Mesa a few miles down the coast, where a developer was granted a permit to grade 50,000 cubic yards of dirt for four single-family homes and allegedly bulldozed five times that amount.

A few years ago, the problem became so bad in Santa Barbara County--in one case a group of artists built a private housing colony without any permits--that officials took a different tack. They passed a county ordinance that allows the county to bill the developer an hourly fee for the time spent investigating the violation.

The county also has a program that requires a county inspector or team of consultants to monitor developments to make sure they are in compliance with county codes--all paid for by the developer.

“It’s a very effective program because the longer they resist, the more they end up paying,” said Dev Vrat, Santa Barbara County’s energy specialist. “We’ve had whole subdivisions put in illegally but that’s not happening anymore. The only answer is, you’ve got to hit them in their pocketbook.

“Frankly, we can’t understand why other agencies aren’t following our example. But since we’ve done this, we’ve gotten cooperation from developers very quickly. It’s just too expensive otherwise.”

Coastal Commissioner Glickfeld, who lives in Malibu, said the main problem is a lack of funds to staff an efficient statewide monitoring program. Compounding the problem, she said, is that the agency lacks the legal power to order developers to stop work when violations are found. Instead, it must ask other enforcement agencies, such as the county or the state Fish and Game Department, to issue injunctions to stop illegal development.

Authority Sought

The commission is pursuing legislation in Sacramento, authored by Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia), that would give the commission’s executive director that power. The bill, SB 467, has passed the Senate and is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee today.

“The lack of cease-and-desist authority is largely responsible for the violators’ willingness to undertake the risk,” Glickfeld said. “We need to have a much stronger presence in the coastal zone, and the violators need to know that we’re there so that they know they’ll get caught if they break the law.

“But right now the process (of granting permits after a violation is found) is absolutely wrong and it needs to change. If someone builds a room addition to their house without a permit that would have been allowed anyway, that’s one thing. But if someone rips a canyon up, I think the first thing we ought to do is take them to court.

“If we don’t have that power, then it just creates an incentive to violate the law. It’s like putting a neon sign up to go ahead and do it.”

Cave said the commission is outnumbered by the huge influx of developments throughout the state. Even when extensive grading violations are discovered, she said, it’s hard to assess the extent of the damage.

“Unless you actually have someone who did the grading work telling you what they did, it’s difficult to say,” she said. “Sometimes you’re dealing with extreme types of persons, and it doesn’t make it any easier.

Calls for Cooperation

“I think it’s up to people to educate themselves about local land-use controls,” she said. “I think then if they go through the system rather than ignoring it, they might find it isn’t often as onerous as it’s cracked up to be. We’re very sympathetic to people wanting to develop land that they own.”

However, Edmiston said the problem runs deeper. He pointed to a recent example of an extensive grading violation in Malibu’s Carbon Canyon, where a developer installed building pads and filled a running stream without permits. When a neighbor was asked why she didn’t report it, she told one coastal official that “it wasn’t like he was abusing his child. It’s his land, after all.”

Edmiston called that a typical response.

“In this society we just don’t take the same aggressive actions against the kinds of destruction to natural resources, trees and forests that we do for other crimes,” he said. “We have to make a big deal out of it or we’re going to have bulldozer jockeys carving the hillsides and in 20 years we’ll be saying, ‘Hey, we shouldn’t have allowed that to happen.’ ”