Canyon Landowner Can’t Get Environmentalist Untangled From His Hair : Pollution: Executive of shampoo empire is under fire for allowing trash to pile up. He says he is working to restore the scenic area.
The creator of a global hair care empire, John Paul Jones de Joria has a wizard’s touch for making things happen.
But he just cannot make Scott Mathes disappear.
For more than a year, Mathes, an environmental activist, has criticized the wealthy co-founder of Paul Mitchell Systems about the condition of his trash-strewn property in Malibu’s scenic Tuna Canyon.
Spiraling majestically up from Pacific Coast Highway at Malibu’s eastern edge, Tuna Canyon is one of the last undeveloped coastal canyons in Southern California. It is designated by Los Angeles County as a significant ecological area and has been targeted by the National Park Service for possible acquisition.
The canyon also is home to old furniture, appliances, automobiles, garbage and other illegally dumped debris--an estimated 25 tons of it.
No one blames the mess on De Joria. But environmentalists believe he should do more to clean up his 410 acres, which make him the second-largest landowner in the 3,000-acre canyon. His property extends east from PCH about a mile up Tuna Canyon Road on both sides.
De Joria says he is restoring Tuna Canyon through an “ongoing process” and accused Mathes of playing to the media.
“I would hope his true environmental concerns would be to help the environment--not the press,” De Joria said.
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For the most part, the trash is the product of illegal dumping, a problem painfully familiar to owners of remote parcels of land everywhere and to law enforcement authorities who say they find such violations virtually impossible to control.
“I have a sense he doesn’t have a real grasp of how sensitive an area Tuna Canyon is,” said Mathes, head of California Environmental Project, a nonprofit group dedicated to cleaning and maintaining area canyons.
De Joria’s Saugus-based company, which he has said does “way more than $100 million in sales worldwide,” aggressively promotes its botanical shampoos and other salon products as being environmentally friendly, most recently with the advertising slogan: “We’re as good to the environment as we are to you.”
He has received attention for a variety of ecologically minded exploits, including racing solar-powered cars, fighting to save an Oregon rain forest and sponsoring an environmental awareness fair in Malibu.
In light of that reputation and De Joria’s wealth, Mathes and other environmentalists insist that he has a special responsibility to keep his vacant Tuna Canyon property--which he owns with a partner, Curt Hendricks of Beverly Hills--reasonably clean.
So far this year, De Joria has ordered a partial cleanup of the property, installed metal gates to block access roads favored by dumpers and erected conspicuous “No Littering” signs that, among other things, implore people to “learn the importance of saving our planet.”
His aides stress that he continues to work with officials to reach a long-term solution that will stop the illegal dumping and relocate homeless people who are living in the canyon in as humane a way as possible.
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Mathes is supported by most, if not all, of the smattering of small landowners in and around the canyon. “It was a garbage dump up here before Scott started forcing the issue,” said eight-year resident Wendy Walker.
De Joria said he wants to donate the lower portions of the canyon to the city or county for a park. As for the upper reaches, he said he hopes to join forces with the canyon’s only other major landowner, Ken Chang, who owns 1,400 acres above him, to create “the world’s first environmentally friendly golf course.” De Joria said it would be irrigated with recycled drainage water and become part of a low-density community of about 120 homes spread out over about 1,800 acres.
Although she was reluctant to criticize the proposal before seeing the plans, Carolyn Chandler-Barr, a project analyst with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, voiced concern about its potential to damage an “incredibly pristine” area.
“Any development is going to have a very significant environmental impact,” she said.
Mathes organized a cleanup of the canyon in early March. The two-day cleanup yielded more than 100 bags of refuse and more than half a ton of scrap metal.
At one point, some of the young volunteers crossed from the publicly owned roadside and started scouring De Joria’s property. De Joria public relations representative Sarah Kirkland told them to leave. The volunteers complained that De Joria should be more concerned about protecting the canyon.
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De Joria continues to reject the offer by the California Environmental Project, which Mathes heads, to clean up the canyon and perform regular maintenance for $10,000 to $15,000 a year.
Despite obviously strained feelings between the two, Mathes said De Joria appears to be serious about restoring the canyon on his own, or at least his portion of it.
Last June, after news reports about the condition of his land, De Joria hired a group of youths from South-Central Los Angeles to clean up some of his property. De Joria pitched in to help.
The crew put a moderate dent in the mess but did not return to finish the job.
De Joria has also hired homeless people living in the canyon to help clean it up, an idea that produced mixed results at best.
As recently as a year ago, the canyon seemed on the verge of getting a thorough going-over when entertainer Bette Midler expressed an interest in adopting the canyon for $52,000 through California Environmental Project’s “Adopt a Canyon” program.
She dropped the idea, a Midler representative said at the time, after learning that the man who owns much of the canyon is richer than she is.
