Furor Over Regents’ Meeting : Environment: Jews and others say meeting on controversial UCLA power plant, set for Rosh Hashanah, should be rescheduled.

Opponents of a proposed power plant for the UCLA campus are urging the University of California regents to reschedule their September meeting now set for the Jewish High Holy Day of Rosh Hashanah, so that community members who are Jewish may be heard.

Alternately, members of community groups have called upon UCLA to voluntarily withdraw the matter from the Sept. 20-21 meeting agenda out of sensitivity to the community. The meeting will be held at UCLA.

Despite lobbying by state elected officials and two major Jewish organizations, both the Board of Regents and UCLA have thus far refused to change the meeting date or postpone consideration of the giant “chiller-cogenerator.”

Allen Solomon, UCLA vice chancellor for administration, said the university is not willing to delay the matter because of the urgent need to move the proposed project forward. It was already delayed in July in part to provide for community input, he said, adding, “This plant will be built.”

He also noted that the November regents meeting is set for San Francisco, which would also diminish participation by Southern Californians.

However, Laura Lake, representing Friends of Westwood and UCLA Watch, said it will be far easier to get Jewish opponents of the plant to fly to San Francisco than it will be to get them to a hearing on the High Holy Day.

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, which begins at sundown on Sept. 19 and continues until sunset on Sept. 21. It is marked by daylong religious ceremonies and many Jews abstain from work or any other secular activities.

University officials say the plant, to be fueled by natural gas and landfill gas, is urgently needed to provide energy for the campus. Opponents of the project are concerned about its size, the pollution it would generate and its 125-foot smokestacks.

They also allege that the reason UCLA is in a hurry is to avoid new air quality guidelines that will go into effect soon after the meeting.

UCLA’s position is that it should not be held responsible for a meeting set by the regents, however unfortunate the timing. Carlotta Mellon, assistant vice chancellor for community and governmental relations, said UCLA officials are “very regretful that the meeting has to occur on Rosh Hashanah. “We try to be sensitive,” she said.

According to Solomon, “There are opportunities for people who are not going to testify in person (because they) . . . will be in a house of worship, to have someone read their statements into the record.”

But State Senator Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) do not agree that the meeting must be held on the Jewish New Year.

“They should not be meeting on Rosh Hashanah,” Rosenthal said in a telephone interview. “It’s disrespectful.”

Rosenthal, who represents the Westwood area, said the intransigence of the UC system reflects a general attitude that it does not have to answer to the public or the legislature . “They don’t listen,” he said. “They run on their own on all these issues until the community gets upset.”

According to Rosenthal, he met with UC lobbyist Stephen Arditti on Thursday to discuss the scheduled meeting and was told that UCLA must have the chiller-cogenerator approved in September, and the meeting could not be reset.

Hayden also fired off a letter to UC President David Gardner and the regents asking them to set a date on which “no group is forced to disregard its religious creed in order to attend.”

According to Hayden aide Adi Liberman, the assemblyman’s office has been working with the UC system for years on religious sensitivity. Hayden sponsored successful 1985 legislation asking professors to not force students to take exams on religious holidays, although the issue has not been completely resolved.

“It’s just not surprising; it’s difficult to deal with this situation when the regents themselves set this kind of example,” Liberman said.

Both the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation Council and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith also sent letters asking that the meeting not conflict with a major Jewish holiday.

UC spokesman Ron Kolb said the policy is to schedule regents’ meetings on the third Thursday and Friday of each month, without regard to religious holidays.

In a later conversation, he said there would be a meeting when Gardner returns from vacation to discuss the issue of this month’s meeting and how things will be handled in the future. “We take this seriously,” Kolb said.