Controversy Takes Root : Arleta: Garden club members, many on fixed incomes, rely on harvest from plots. The DWP is threatening eviction in bill dispute.

The dozen garden plots brimming with tomatoes, corn and lettuce are more than a hobby for 85-year-old Jenny Moreno Contreras.

For the 10-year member of the Arleta Community Garden Club, the fruit and vegetables she harvests beneath power lines means food on her table that she otherwise could not afford.

“This is where we eat,” said Contreras, who shares her home with three relatives. “My pension is too small for me. I do this so I won’t be on welfare.”

Like Contreras, most of the 72 garden club members are senior citizens on fixed incomes who for 17 years have tilled the soil on unwanted odd lots along Canterbury Avenue to produce fruit, vegetables and flowers.

“If we’re ousted, some of our members will be close to welfare. I don’t want to see that,” said Craig Wickham, 37, the club’s vice president.

Now, after months of haggling over the price of water to irrigate the land, the mammoth bureaucracy of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has issued an ultimatum and a July 6 deadline: pay up or get out.

The DWP owns the 5.5 acres which the garden club has sown, but these senior citizens, who claim the harvest is a vital supplement to their diets and incomes, don’t plan to bow out quietly.

Wickham and other members fighting eviction plan a protest at DWP offices in Sun Valley today.

“It’s not fair,” said Henry Fowzer, the club’s 83-year-old treasurer, who says he feeds his grandchildren with the cucumbers and tomatoes he raises on 12 garden plots. “The crops are ready to produce. We’re going to take one heck of a shellacking.”

The DWP has been negotiating with residents for more than a year, but an agreement has proven elusive, according to Dan Duffy, superintendent of transmission rights of way.

“We can’t continue this way,” said Duffy. “We have to insist that the garden club sign the agreement to continue occupancy or we will have to ask them to leave,” Duffy said.

Duffy dismissed contentions by club members that the department is trying to chase off the senior citizens and instead lease the property to a commercial nursery.

“The department’s position is we really do recognize the value of the garden clubs,” Duffy said. “The department itself would like to see the garden club continue.”

For Wickham, the club simply lacks the money and manpower to meet DWP demands, such as paying for water used in the garden’s northern section after receiving it for free for 17 years. Members say it could double the club’s annual $4,500 water bill, which is paid by charging members a yearly charge of $8 a plot.

“Our garden plot fees are going to double. We’ll lose some gardeners who can’t afford it,” Wickham said.

Members also bristle at requirements that the club take over maintenance of parkways and keep areas beneath transmission towers clear of weeds.

“They’re asking citizens to provide free maintenance to the DWP,” said member Larry Clark, 51, as a handful of gardeners cooled off in the shade of a tree Thursday.

“We say that’s slave labor,” said Fowzer.