Neighborhood Unites to Fight DWP Electric Facility

Residents of a working-class Arleta neighborhood have banded together over the years to fend off urban problems by painting over graffiti, cleaning up street trash, planting trees and forming crime watch groups.

But now they fear they will be on the losing side of a months-long dispute with the Department of Water and Power, which has proposed construction of an $8.5-million electrical distribution station on Branford Street, smack in the middle of their neighborhood of small, neatly kept homes.

Residents said the proposed facility, which would be unstaffed and housed behind a 16-foot wall, will become a neighborhood nuisance.

They fear that the high walls will provide cover for loiterers and drug dealers and a clean canvas for graffiti.

Also, they resent it that their quiet neighborhood must carry the burden for the booming residential and commercial development in surrounding east San Fernando Valley communities that increased electrical demand 20% during the 1980s, creating the need for the new facility.

“Believe it or not, we happen to be a strong community of homes and feel this facility is entirely out of place in the middle of our neighborhood,” said Joe Bonilla, an Arleta resident and member of the Arleta Chamber of Commerce. “I think the DWP was surprised that we even had a community association and care about the character of our neighborhood.”

In August, the DWP took out an option to buy two homes along the 13200 block of Branford Street.

If the zoning and building permits are approved, construction would begin in December, 1991.

Residents, with the support of Councilman Ernani Bernardi, have urged DWP officials to locate the station on nearby department-owned land beneath power lines.

“This is a nice residential area and I don’t want it disturbed,” Bernardi said Tuesday. “We are in the middle of discussion with the DWP and no decisions have been made. I’m still asking questions to find out whether this is the best location.”

DWP officials said the Branford site is the No. 1 location because it is in the center of the service area. The station would take in high-voltage power and transform it into lower amounts that would be carried to 15,000 to 20,000 homes and businesses in Arleta and Pacoima.

Without the new station, residents and businesses in the area would eventually suffer from periodic power outages because overburdened equipment would be more prone to failure, said Joe Thompson, DWP manager of substation design.

He said his staff studied six other nearby sites for the new facility.

“Placing it outside the neighborhood would mean placing it far from the center of the service area,” Thompson said. “It would not be efficient. Transmission lines would be longer and more energy would be lost in the transmission.”

But longtime residents like Karen Zuccolillo, 47, and Cecilia Munoz, 67, say they can predict all too well what will happen to the blank walls and vacant facility.

“Graffiti. Vagrants. Can you see it any other way?” said Zuccolillo, a mother of three, whose house is located across a wash that is adjacent to the proposed station. “I get this feeling, though, that we can’t stop it. Their minds have been made up.”

Munoz, a 23-year resident, fears that “bums will hang around the building.”

In response to neighborhood concern, DWP officials met with a small group of residents to further explain details of the site-selection process.

Thompson said it would cost up to $2 million more to build a new station at two alternate sites near Sheldon Street that were suggested by neighbors.

A communitywide meeting is scheduled for Oct. 17 at Vena Avenue Elementary School auditorium in Arleta. Zuccolillo and others at the meeting are part of an informal neighborhood group that paints over graffiti and notifies police when abandoned vehicles are found.

Several years ago, to prevent drug dealers from evading police by running through Branford Park one block away, residents successfully pushed city officials to erect a chain-link fence around the park.

DWP officials said the station will be well maintained and landscaped.

Thompson said that if neighbors are concerned about graffiti and crime a private security company could possibly be hired to periodically patrol the site and DWP crews would paint over graffiti.

“We want to be a good neighbor,” he said.