DWP Seeks Clues to Hidden Rooms : Inquiry: Tour of two underground chambers seems to reveal evidence of plans to build a massive marijuana farm.

Department of Water and Power officials felt like they had stepped into a scene from “Hogan’s Heroes.”

Pulling aside a tool cabinet in a storage shed at the Scattergood Generating Station in Playa del Rey on March 1, investigators found a strange addition--a hinged, wooden trap door concealing the entrance to a narrow tunnel.

Grabbing several flashlights, investigators lowered themselves into the dank shaft and began slithering forward on their bellies. After crawling about 60 feet, a cavern suddenly opened up in front of them.

The officials, tipped off by an anonymous informant, realized that they had finally found the subject of a two-month search--two secret underground rooms beneath a concrete construction slab.

Although DWP officials are not saying who they think built them, or why, scattered items found within rooms bolster one particular theory.

Somebody--no one is certain who at this point--was getting ready to plant one heck of a marijuana farm under the power plant.

Officials who took reporters on tours of the two matching 10-foot-by-40-foot rooms on Friday refused to draw conclusions.

While there are no grow lights or planters in either of the crudely built rooms, both contain indications of their potential use.

The earthen floor of one of the eight-foot-high rooms appears to have been dug over, with small amounts of gravel mixed into the soil. DWP special agent Chuck Rubidoux, who will say only that marijuana propagation is “a possibility,” has sent five soil samples to a laboratory for analysis.

Both rooms have crude, plastic-lined sumps dug in one corner where excess water can collect. One room contains a small pump and an irrigation hose, which could be used to move water from the corner sump areas.

Tucked beneath a wooden table in one room is a 100-foot roll of polyethylene irrigation hose. Officials said they removed a second, identical roll for investigation purposes.

Alongside the table is a large jar of nitric acid, which is used as a base for many fertilizers. The lower shelf of the table is lined with gravel in a setup similar to what nurseries use to raise seedlings.

Each room sports more than 20 electrical outlets placed near ceiling level, and the ceilings in both rooms are fitted with metal mounting supports, which could be used for light fixtures.

Although the rooms were outfitted only with regular incandescent light bulbs, two green light bulbs were tucked into one corner.

Several of the items in the rooms, including a heavy-duty step ladder and a power transformer, bear DWP insignias.

Access to the rooms at first was gained through an informal employee weight-lifting room set up in a storage container next to the concrete slab, which serves as the ceiling of the chambers. The eight-inch-thick concrete slab was put in by DWP workers a year ago as a construction staging area.

That entrance, however, had been cemented over by the time investigators found the 60-foot tunnel that forms the second means of access to the rooms. A wooden sled with a rope handle found in the first room may have been used to drag supplies from the tool shed to the underground chambers.

Rubidoux believes the rooms, which have 13-inch-thick, steel-reinforced concrete walls, were built at the same time the slab was.

“We’re vigorously investigating it,” said Carl D. Haase, assistant engineer of the DWP’s Power Design and Construction unit.