2 Brochures Aimed at Ending Illegal Building : Santa Monica Mountains: Task force releases publications that help developers follow the rules and tell people how to report violations.

A multi-agency task force trying to halt illegal development in the Santa Monica Mountains released two brochures Thursday: one to help builders follow the rules and another to help the public turn in those who don’t.

At a news conference set against the hills they seek to protect, 15 representatives of the Santa Monica Mountains Enforcement Task Force also unveiled a 24-hour toll-free telephone number (1-800-852-7550) to enable the public to report violators.

California Coastal Commissioner Madelyn Glickfeld, co-chairman of the task force, praised the hot line and the brochures as additional weapons in the war against illegal development--a war the task force says it is starting to win.

“We’re catching them earlier, we’re stopping them faster,” Glickfeld said, referring to developers who build either in defiance or ignorance of environmental regulations.

Prior to the task force’s establishment two years ago, Glickfeld said the Coastal Commission received up to five complaints per week, from throughout the 150,000-acre area covered by the task force, of violations ranging from excessive grading to illegal dumping to the construction of seawalls that have not been approved.

The number now is down to two per week, Glickfeld said. She attributed the decrease to the existence of the task force, a regional panel that includes representatives from 16 local, county, state and federal agencies, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the state Fish and Game Department.

Although the task force itself has no enforcement powers, it serves as a coordinating agency, providing a unified response to complaints of unlawful development in the environmentally sensitive region.

Several task force members stressed that developers can no longer play one agency against another.

“There’s no more saying, ‘the county made me do it’ or ‘the Coastal Commission made me do it,’ or the ‘fire department made me do it,’ ” task force member Susan Friend said.

The brochures--to be made available at libraries, government buildings and other outlets--are titled “Obtaining Development Permits in the Santa Monica Mountains and Malibu Beach Area” and “Reporting Violations in the Santa Monica Mountains and Beach Areas of Malibu.”

They contain the names and phone numbers of participating agencies and use a grid to help users determine which agency they need for a particular problem.

The toll-free hot line connects caller with the state Office of Emergency Services. Callers’ information will then be forwarded to the appropriate task force agency.

So far, the task force’s biggest catch has been John Downs, a Malibu man who used a bulldozer to illegally grade his Santa Monica Mountains property two years ago and dump tons of soil and debris into Malibu’s Las Flores Creek.

Downs was fined $105,000 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail by Malibu Municipal Court Judge Lawrence Mira. Downs is appealing.