Nudist Camp Bears the Burden of Ongoing Zoning, Land Issues : Topanga Canyon: County planning officials will tour Elysium Fields today.

With the passage of time, the Elysium Fields nudist camp in Topanga Canyon has become more quaint than risque.

Its grassy, eucalyptus-screened grounds are covered on warm weekend days with uncovered men and women--many of them aging hippies and earth mothers who nonchalantly display the paunches and sags of time in the morning sun. Some play tennis in nothing but their sneakers. Others skinny-dip in the pool or lollygag in the hot tub. Children squeal as they streak across the lawn.

“See,” says Ed Lange, Elysium’s chubby, soft-spoken founder, as he walks across the grounds. “Nude doesn’t necessarily mean lewd. This place is about what you see--the birds, the bees, the sounds of water. This is a supportive, protective environment.”

In the 24 years since it opened, Elysium has grown into an institution of sorts in offbeat Topanga, where million-dollar Architectural Digest homes loom over dirt-floor cabins and local legend holds that some residents have not left the canyon since the 1960s.

For most of the past 21 years, however, Los Angeles County’s only “clothing optional” recreation area has been engaged in a fight that is anything but Elysian.

The moral argument against the camp, where sex is prohibited, faded long ago with the sunset of the Age of Aquarius. “What we were dreaming of and fighting for in the ‘60s, people are just doing now,” Lange said.

But the more mundane zoning and land issues that first threatened the camp’s right to exist in 1971 refuse to die. In the past two decades, the camp has had several temporary operating permits, has at times operated without a permit and fought two draining legal battles.

The fight, one of the longest and most expensive in county history, has cost Elysium more than $1 million, according to Lange.

And it’s still not over.

Today, the county’s Regional Planning Commission will tour Elysium’s manicured seven-acre compound on the boundary of Topanga State Park to get a firsthand look at the controversial property. Elysium management has asked its 1,000 members to stay clothed or stay away. Commissioners are to vote in early December on the camp’s application for a conditional-use permit.

Lange and other Elysium supporters say they are in a better position than in previous rounds. In the past, critics and county officials have contended that tiny Robinson Road, which is the camp’s only access, presented fire-safety problems because it was too narrow to allow firetrucks to pass fleeing cars. Since then, however, the camp has sued to win the right to widen the road onto its neighbors’ land.

And public support for Elysium has mounted over the years. At a hearing last month, dozens of backers filled the commission’s downtown meeting hall and favorable letters have poured into the county’s planning office.

Letters came from doctors, psychiatrists and several prominent Topanga residents, including the founder of the L.A. Weekly and the president of the Topanga Chamber of Commerce, on which Lange has served as treasurer. Another was from an 8-year-old elementary school student.

“I have been coming to Elysium since I was in my mother’s stomache,” wrote Ariana Zeno, who said the camp’s swimming pool was a welcome escape from the summer heat. “Going naked is a lot more comfortable than going with a bathing suit.”

Fewer than 10 letters were filed in opposition. Among them was one from Harvey Anderson, a retired Los Angeles County fire captain who has fought Elysium since the camp opened in 1968. At that time, Anderson lived on Robinson Road near Elysium. He now lives in Malibu, but still argues that the camp poses a fire risk in an area prone to devastating blazes.

“It is a residential area with people trying to raise children and this is a commercial venture,” Anderson said last month. “As far as morals go, well, that’s their own private business.”

The county joined Anderson’s fight in 1971, when a change in the county’s zoning rules sparked the fight that has spanned three decades. At that time, the county enacted Ordinance No. 10336, which put Elysium out of compliance.

Simultaneously, however, the county granted Elysium an operating permit good for five years. The camp got another five-year permit in 1976. But in 1980, Elysium’s extension request was rejected. Elysium sued and the dispute ended up back in the county’s lap.

In 1984, the Planning Commission gave Elysium permission to operate another five years, subject to 27 conditions. Elysium’s lawyers appealed 10 of those conditions to the Board of Supervisors.

Instead of merely ruling on the appeal, however, the board, led by Supervisor Mike Antonovich, decided to reject the camp’s permit request outright. The supervisors cited concerns over fire hazards and geologic faults under Robinson Road as their reasons.

That prompted another Elysium lawsuit, which the state Court of Appeal rejected last year. The court did, however, allow Elysium to apply for a conditional-use permit, saying that the county erred when it passed the ordinance changing zoning rules to restrict nudist camps to heavy agricultural areas while other recreational facilities are permitted to operate in light agricultural zones.

Antonovich deputy Dave Vannatta said last week that the supervisor’s objections were based on issues such as the amount of traffic generated by the camp, not on prudishness. “The nudist camp itself was not the issue,” Vannatta said. “But Mr. Lange has not been a good neighbor.”

All traffic to and from Elysium must travel along Robinson Road, a tiny one-lane strip that winds steeply away from Topanga Canyon Boulevard. It is difficult for standard-sized cars to pass, let alone firetrucks.

And that concerns fire officials, who are recommending that Elysium be required to agree to widen the road before the commission decides on the permit application. Elysium’s attorney, Stephen F. Rohde, said the camp will pay for the necessary road improvements if the county agrees to let it remain.

“We’re not crazy,” said Rohde. “We don’t want a fire hazard. We don’t want our members at risk. We’ve been there 25 years and there has never been a loss of life due to fire. We have a lush, green, verdant expanse that provides a natural fire break.”

And to Dacia Adams, it provides an au naturel break from the workaday world outside. The 50-year-old Beverly Hills writer has been coming regularly to Elysium for two years.

“People tell me I look 10 years younger since I started coming here,” said Adams, wearing nothing but a beach towel draped across her stomach. “It’s like an extended family here. I really can’t see it ending.”