4 Alternative Sites Found for Controversial Prison : Penal system: But Gov. Wilson says it may be too late to move the facility, planned for East Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has identified four locations in the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys as alternative sites for a proposed downtown Los Angeles prison, but Gov. Pete Wilson indicated Thursday that it may be too late to change the state’s plans.

In January, the Los Angeles City Council directed the DWP to undertake the study of its extensive land holdings after Wilson indicated that he might be willing to review alternative sites for the 1,450-bed facility planned on the city’s East Side near Olympic Boulevard and Santa Fe Avenue.

But Wilson, mired in budget negotiations this week, cast doubt Thursday on the prospects of relocating the $147-million prison, saying that he “probably would have” supported an alternative site, but “I don’t know if that’s possible now.”

State corrections officials and local legislators are adamantly opposed to relocating the prison and said that it would take a major policy shift initiated by the governor’s office to make them do so.

“This is a really dumb thing for the city to be pursuing,” said state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita), who represents the Santa Clarita Valley, where three of the four DWP sites are located.

But a spokesman for state Assemblywoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles), who strongly opposes the East Los Angeles site on the grounds that the community is already surrounded by five detention centers, said representatives of the surrounding community will continue to lobby Wilson.

“The governor is in a very sensitive position because Gov. Deukmejian so adamantly insisted that the prison be in East Los Angeles,” said Henry Contreras, a spokesman for Roybal-Allard. “This is not a decision that is going to be made quickly.”

The East Los Angeles site was chosen in a 1987 “pain-for-pain” compromise hammered out by the Legislature after years of political haggling. Lawmakers agreed to permit a prison in heavily Democratic East Los Angeles if another were built in the heavily Republican Antelope Valley. Under the agreement, neither prison can be used unless the other is.

State Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside), chairman of the Joint Committee on Prison Construction and Operations, blasted Los Angeles officials for seeking to undo the “precarious” compromise.

“To start from scratch would jeopardize a lot of time and money that’s already been expended,” Presley said.

Construction began in October on the $207-million, 2,200-bed companion prison in Lancaster. But although the state has spent about $15 million to purchase the East Los Angeles property from the Southern Pacific Railroad Co., construction has not begun there because of a lawsuit against the prison by the city of Los Angeles, said Christine May, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections.

The city is appealing a Superior Court ruling that upheld the adequacy of the environmental report on the East Los Angeles site, said Gerry Hertzberg, chief legislative deputy to county Supervisor Gloria Molina. When Molina was on the City Council, she suggested that the DWP study alternatives sites.

Mark Gladstone reported from Sacramento and Tracey Kaplan from Los Angeles.