Faking It : Plastic Stream Bed, Fed by Tap Water, Part of Back-to-Nature Plan

You know your project’s in big trouble when someone brings up the plastic trees.

The fake trees were “planted” on Jefferson Boulevard in Los Angeles during the ‘70s on the theory that they would be cheaper to maintain than live trees. They attracted thieves, vandals, protests from bird lovers and howls of laughter from around the country before the city was forced to yank them out.

Now, to the great distress of many Pacific Palisades residents, the city is back in the artificial-nature business again, this time at Potrero Canyon.

There, in the name of geologic stability, the city is filling the coastal canyon with a staggering 3 million cubic yards of dirt to a height of 100 feet--about 213,000 dump truck loads worth. That’s a truckload every 12 minutes around the clock for five years.

Ultimately, according to city plans that were sharply criticized Tuesday at a California Coastal Commission hearing, the site will be topped with a park consisting of supposedly native plants and a plastic-lined stream to be fed by 100,000 gallons of tap water each day.

The intent is to meet federal and commission wetlands preservation regulations by replicating the area’s “native riparian habitat”--a habitat that peeved locals and that even city officials agree was never there in the first place.

At Tuesday’s hearing in Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades resident John Dalessio couldn’t resist comparing the plan to those ill-fated fake trees of yore as he and about 20 neighbors pleaded with the commission to take a second look at the massive project.

“I urge you not to subject us to ridicule,” he implored the commissioners. “This plan does not make sense.”

The earth work is intended to stabilize the canyon, where erosion has claimed about a dozen homes and many more back yards and garages since 1933. In 1980, 11 property owners sued Los Angeles officials, claiming that mislaid city storm drains had undermined their property.

Prompted by the litigation, the city, with the blessing of the Coastal Commission, hired a contractor, who began filling the canyon in April, 1991. Project Manager Kathleen Chan of the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks said about 33 feet of fill--or one-third of the total designated for the mile-long canyon--has already been trucked in. In all, the project is expected to take until 1995 or 1996 to complete, and cost taxpayers $25 million or more. Originally, the city intended to truck in only 40 feet of fill.

“It’s kind of like the monster that ate L.A.,” said coastal activist Sara Wan of Malibu. “It just keeps growing.”

The commission took no action on the overall plan this week, other than to table the city’s request to alter its irrigation plan.

In doing so, some commissioners seemed suddenly wary about the project, particularly about the idea of using tap water to feed an artificial river in a drought-stricken region.

“Are we going to turn a spigot on and water this with a hose during droughts?” asked Commissioner Madelyn Glickfeld of Malibu. She added, “I’m afraid the city will come back to us and say, ‘We just can’t afford to water this.’ ”

Originally, the city had planned to capture runoff water flowing though the area and use it to irrigate both the plants and the artificial stream. But city consultants now say the amount of available “nuisance water” is too small to make reclamation cost-effective. That leaves tap water as the only alternative.

The irony, longtime Palisades residents say, is that the canyon never had a natural stream running through it in the first place. Some residents brought maps, photos and childhood memories to Tuesday’s hearing, all intended to show that the canyon bottom contained little more than sagebrush until runoff, caused by development in the area, created a creek of sorts.

“We are going to spend millions of dollars to . . . put in something that is false,” said Randy Young of the Pacific Palisades Historical Society.

City officials don’t disagree. But they note that once an area is designated as wetlands, they are bound by federal and state regulations to preserve it or replicate it elsewhere, even if the wetlands were created through an unnatural process.

“I do not believe there was a running water stream there historically, but there certainly was when this project was created 10 years ago,” said Frank Catania, planning director for the Department of Recreation and Parks.

Project officials seemed to sag under the weight of the criticism from commissioners and residents, whose list of complaints ran from dust and heavy truck noise to the steepness of a proposed fire access road.

Chan complained after the meeting that the city is merely trying to comply with the dictates of the Coastal Commission--and that commission’s own strict guidelines are preventing the city from addressing residents’ concerns in a meaningful way.

“We fulfill the permit requirements, they change the permit requirements,” she said. “I’d just really like to see some direction.”