Inquiry Backs Assertions by Consultant : Santa Paula jail: Four biologists don’t remember discussing the new site with Mike Wood. But county officials believe his notes that say they did.

A Ventura County consultant apparently did not lie when he reported contacting four state and federal biologists before deciding that the new Santa Paula jail would do little harm to wetlands and wildlife, county officials have concluded.

Though the four biologists say they do not recall the conversations, handwritten notes and a telephone log by consultant Mike Wood indicate that he did talk with the biologists named as information sources in the jail’s environmental report, Public Works Director Arthur Goulet said.

The September, 1991, log, a summary of Wood’s computer notes of the conversations, says that Wood discussed the project’s effects with all four, and it provides detail about the biologists’ comments and recommendations.

“I’m convinced the contacts were made,” Goulet said. “But as a follow-up, we’re going to have him talk to those people again to try to refresh their memories.”

The truthfulness of the county’s jail study was challenged at a hearing last Thursday before the Ventura County Board of Supervisors approved construction of the $54-million jail.

Opponents claimed that three of the four biologists had never been at the location--at Todd Road and the Santa Paula Freeway--and didn’t recall conversations with county representatives about the jail.

Reached by The Times, all four biologists said they did not remember the conversations and were surprised that they were listed as sources of information on which the report’s conclusions were based.

Three of the four said they had never been to the Todd Road site. The fourth said she visited there for the first time last week, long after the environmental study was completed.

The environmental report says the biologists’ comments were used to help determine the value of the site’s natural habitat and actions that should be taken to protect wetlands and wildlife.

“The analysis of impacts, habitat values and mitigation . . . reflects the input of all of the above,” the report said. It was referring to Morgan Boucke and Michael Giusti of the state Department of Fish and Game; Cat Brown of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Gary Sanchez of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The biologists said that even if they did talk to Wood briefly, they did not provide the detailed information indicated in the county’s report.

Boucke was so upset that she wrote a letter of protest to the Board of Supervisors. The letter said it was her department’s conclusion that the county report “is inadequate and misrepresents the biological values of the site.”

Brown said this week that consultant Wood “extrapolated way beyond the information he was given by me, if I did talk to him. I’ve never been on the site, so I could not have given him any site-specific information.”

Goulet said he understood the biologists’ objections, but could not determine from Wood’s notes and log whether he overstated what he was told.

“I can see both sides of that,” Goulet said.

Even if Wood misrepresented the biologists’ information, it probably would not make any difference in stopping construction of the jail’s first phase, said Marc Chytilo, chief counsel for the Environmental Defense Center in Santa Barbara.

The legal test courts would use to decide whether the supervisors acted properly in approving the jail is whether the overall evidence supports their findings, said Chytilo, who represents the Santa Paula-area group Citizens to Save the Greenbelt.

“That’s why whether they’re lying or not, who cares,” Chytilo said. “It ain’t going to carry the day.”

Chytilo said he thinks the county could be legally vulnerable because it did not sufficiently analyze the project’s impact on natural habitat and misstated the significance of the adjacent Todd Barranca as a wetland.

But officials for Citizens to Save the Greenbelt have said that they do not expect to sue to try to block construction.