Towsley Canyon Land Bought for Park : Recreation: The purchase by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is the first step toward creating a 6,000-acre preserve near Santa Clarita. It also may hinder creation of a landfill.

The purchase of 145 acres of pristine woodlands west of Santa Clarita for a new park--a move that could block or at least hinder plans by county sanitation officials to open a garbage dump in the area--was announced Wednesday by state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia) and an environmental group.

Davis said the new Towsley Canyon Park, which was immediately opened to the public, was the first step toward creating the proposed 6,000-acre Santa Clarita Woodlands State Park west of Santa Clarita and north of Granada Hills.

Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, said the 145 acres is at the mouth of Towsley Canyon, a unique area filled with waterfalls and groves of big-pine spruce. The parcel surrounds land that the conservancy hopes to buy someday for the proposed woodlands state park.

The woodlands are the home of a wide variety of wildlife, such as deer, mountain lions and even an occasional bear. “This is the best of the best,” said Laurene Weste, a Santa Clarita parks commissioner and environmentalist, in describing the property.

The purchase is considered a victory for the conservancy, which has been competing with the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts to buy land in and around Towsley Canyon. The sanitation districts have obtained options to buy 760 acres southwest of the new Towsley Canyon Park, but not contiguous with it.

The park’s grant deed will not allow industrial traffic, including dump trucks, along a road that leads to the property under option by the sanitation districts, Edmiston said.

In a recent memo, sanitation district engineers called the property “the only feasible access way from the Golden State Freeway to the potential landfill area.”

Edmiston said the conservancy sought the Towsley property not to block the dump, but to create a park. But Davis said the purchase makes it easier to defeat plans to open a 235-million-ton landfill in Towsley Canyon.

“I don’t think I’ll have to resort to force of arms” to fight the dump, Davis said. “We did it legally.”

Davis blasted sanitation officials for considering Towsley for a dump at all. “Imagine dumping putrid waste into an area like that,” Davis said.

Thomas A. Tidemanson, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, said he was unaware of the purchase and said it was too soon to comment on its potential impact on the proposed landfill. The public works department is working with the sanitation districts to find new dump sites to ease the county’s mounting garbage problems.

Additionally, Edmiston said, the deed restrictions limiting traffic through the park would make it difficult for developers to build projects, such as condominiums, in other parts of the proposed woodlands state park.

Edmiston said the conservancy is negotiating with other property owners in the area, including the federal Bureau of Land Management, which owns 1,200 acres in and around Towsley Canyon.

The county sanitation districts are negotiating with property owners throughout the area.

The 145-acre parcel was purchased from the Rivendale Ranch Co. for $500,000 by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, a joint agency comprised of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, the Conejo Recreation and Park District and the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District.

The authority later will be reimbursed the $500,000 with state funds provided by recent legislation written by Davis and signed by Gov. George Deukmejian.