Making the Case Against Development in the Sepulveda Basin

The Sepulveda Basin covers 2,100 acres that are many things to many people. Although its primary purpose is flood control, the basin mainly functions as the San Fernando Valley’s largest public park under a lease between the Army Corps of Engineers and the City of Los Angeles. It is a mecca for golfers, soccer and softball players, who flock to its public courses and playing fields, as well as for fishermen and other visitors to 11-acre Lake Balboa. The basin also encompasses such disparate features as the city’s Tillman sewage treatment plant, one of the few earth-bottom sections of the Los Angeles River, a 108-acre wildlife lake and reserve, and more than 100 acres of agricultural lands that provide forage for migratory birds. Environmental groups, including the Coalition to Save Sepulveda Basin, have fought development projects they say would shrink the areas available to wildlife. Coalition president Peter Ireland, who lives in west Van Nuys, recently discussed the group’s concerns with staff writer Myron Levin.

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Question: What is the Coalition to Save Sepulveda Basin, and what does it hope to accomplish?

Answer: The coalition was created in the 1970s when former Mayor Tom Bradley wanted to relocate the Hollywood Park horse racing track in the Sepulveda Basin. A number of individuals and recreational users of the basin came together to express their opposition. Basically, we are an organization of individuals who believe that the basin should be kept open and should be kept free--free of development, free for no-cost public recreation consistent with its open space character.

Q. When most people think of Sepulveda Basin, they think of athletic fields and golf courses, or maybe about flood control and the Tillman sewage treatment plant. Why should they think of it also as an environmental resource?

A. The Sepulveda Basin is the Valley’s largest free public park. It also has high quality, environmentally sensitive resource areas that need protection and proper planning. For example, the portion of the L. A. River that goes through the basin is one of only three sections in the 60-mile river that is soft-bottomed. That is the Valley’s most important wetland area. It is an environmental corridor that links other open space areas in the basin for wildlife purposes and ties it together.

Five tributaries of the river also come together that are begging for restoration, begging for a commitment from a public agency to recognize them and to bring them into beneficial use for educational purposes and for wildlife.

The basin is a link in a chain of five remaining urban open space areas in the Valley that are incredibly important for maintaining wildlife.

Q. What are the others?

A. Encino Reservoir, Sepulveda Basin, Pierce College farm, the Chatsworth Reservoir and the Van Norman Dam area are critical links that are sustaining populations of migratory waterfowl--Canada geese--that visit the Los Angeles Basin. All of these areas are threatened with some kind of incompatible land use.

Q. Don’t you face a tough sales job here? After all, the basin is surrounded by freeways and suburban homes, overrun by people, and under the flight path to Van Nuys Airport. Will people really rally around it as a place of significant environmental value?

A. Absolutely. It makes it even more important, because of the surrounding urban density, to have set aside public open space in an urban area. There is so much urban density around the basin that it seems to add pressure to develop the basin with buildings and facilities that are better suited in other areas. Because we have so little open space left in the urban areas, we need to redouble our efforts to protect the resources that we have.

Q. Since the Angeles National Forest and the Santa Monica Mountains parks are all close by, is there really a need to preserve and improve habitat in the Sepulveda Basin?

A. Absolutely. Those areas are great and they’re beautiful and they’re close, but they still don’t serve the numbers of people that the Sepulveda Basin and other urban open space areas provide access for. We cannot sacrifice the remaining urban open space areas to development just because we have national forest or Santa Monica Mountains parkland surrounding the urban density.

Q. What types of wildlife live or depend on the basin?

A. There are certain small mammals, but most of the wildlife seems to be species of birds. Migratory waterfowl, such as Canada geese, use the basin. Raptors, songbirds, shorebirds. There’s snowy egrets. There’s great blue herons. There are over 200 species of birds that rely on the Sepulveda Basin for forage or habitat. Some of these birds migrate from as far away as South America and Northern Canada.

Q. Could the basin be used for environmental education of schoolchildren and other groups?

A. Yes, and we’re only just beginning to scratch the surface of this potential. Of great importance is a new National Audubon education program that has been funded for one year from fines for polluters. This program is up and running and is available for schoolchildren from throughout Los Angeles. The education program allows children to have a field trip to the basin--to the existing wildlife reserve area, in addition to the Los Angeles River wetlands portion--and observe wildlife with trained docents and teachers from the school district.

Q. Recently, environmental fans of the basin have strongly opposed two projects--the proposed Arts Park L.A. and a planned collection site for septic tank wastes that would be built on the grounds of the Tillman treatment plant. First of all, what are your objections to the arts park?

A. The entertainment complex that has been proposed in the past is better suited for other areas in the Valley. We don’t need to sacrifice open space to pursue cultural activities. We shouldn’t have to pit one against the other. We need to respect and advocate both. Unfortunately, some political representatives in the past had looked at the basin as free public land that could be doled out to their political constituencies. I think the reality is that any land that’s open and publicly owned adjacent to an urban population is going to attract its fair share of development proposals. Part of the job of an elected official is to protect these areas so they are available for our children and our grandchildren. Parkland is not municipal facility development land.

Q. Regarding the septic tank waste dumping site, haulers now pump these wastes into seven manholes scattered around the city. City officials say restricting waste dumping to the Tillman site would reduce the risk of illegal hazardous waste discharges into the sewer system. Given that the Tillman site already handles huge volumes of sewage, what are your objections to the septic tank hauling site?

A. The problem here was the city attempting to create a major change in citywide policy on disposal of untreated sewage without an environmental impact report, and by allowing all of the city’s untreated sewage that is transported in tanker trucks--some of which are as large as double-long gasoline tanker trucks--to be transported into the Valley’s largest and most important public park.

The question of monitoring sewage and proper compliance with clean water laws are absolutely essential, but the question is, do you have to sacrifice the Valley’s most significant open space to accomplish that goal? And the answer has to be no.

Q. What is the problem with the trucks?

A. Would you want to take your family and picnic with hundreds of sewer trucks waiting in line to access the world’s largest truck toilet? I don’t think too many families would. If we damage that recreational opportunity or lessen that experience, then we’re damaging the quality of life in Los Angeles and that’s not an acceptable public policy.

Q. What is the status of the septic waste controversy?

A. The City Council has demanded an environmental impact report along with the Board of Public Works, and that is a process that should be beginning right now. So there will be public hearings. We will insist that a series of common-sense reasonable alternatives be studied and be looked at in the environmental document that the city now has to provide.