Historic Park Site Scarred by Grading to Be Repaired : Chatsworth: Southern California Edison agrees to help fix damage caused by unauthorized bulldozing.

State parks officials said Tuesday that Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles County Fire Department have agreed to help repair damage from unauthorized grading of archeologically significant parkland on the rocky slopes of the Santa Susana Mountains in Chatsworth.

“I think we’re moving ahead” with rehabilitation of the site, said Dennis Hanson of the state Department of Parks and Recreation, following a meeting Tuesday with Edison and Fire Department representatives.

He blamed the grading on “people not realizing the uniqueness of the area.”

Under a contract with Edison, a county bulldozer operator last month dramatically widened a dirt road to improve access to an Edison transmission line that crosses 666 acres of parkland where officials hope to establish a state historic park. Edison has an easement and sought better access for maintenance made necessary by the Chatsworth wildfire last October.

But authorities said the grading damaged up to five acres of parkland, disturbing or destroying two Native American burial sites, knocking down century-old olive trees that were part of an old homestead and plowing across the Old Stage Coach Trail, a hiking trail that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“It was clear to everyone this was an inadvertent thing,” said Thomas T. Taylor, senior archeologist for Edison, following Tuesday’s meeting at the site. “Edison certainly intends to participate” in site repairs, said Taylor, and will work with the others “to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Smarting from criticism of their role in the incident, county fire officials said they were never told by Edison of the property’s historical importance.

“That whole area--I mean the whole 666 acres--is one big archeological site,” said Roger Crow, assistant fire chief in charge of the construction and maintenance division.

“You can’t set foot out there without touching something of historic or archeological value. The Fire Department was unaware of that completely.”

Crow said the Fire Department has maintenance agreements with several government agencies as well as Edison--so that “when our people are not grading our own motorways and firebreaks, we can keep them productive and reduce the cost to the county.”

But “there are ways to minimize your imprint on the land, and that need was not made known to the Fire Department,” Crow said. “Whether it was Edison’s responsibility or parks, I don’t know.”

Hanson said parks officials expect Edison to take the lead in rehabilitating the site, because the utility holds the easement and “the Fire Department was a hired hand.”

But he acknowledged the state might not have impressed on Edison the historical importance of the property. “Whenever there’s a failure to communicate, probably all parties share in it to one degree or another,” he said.

While Hanson said the incident is still under investigation, he backed off prior statements by park officials that the grading might have violated criminal trespass or other laws. In fact, Hanson said, it might not have been illegal under terms of the easement.

Apart from damage from the grading itself, park officials said the incident has had the unwanted effect of publicizing the archeological importance of a site they have been unable to adequately patrol and protect.

They acknowledged Tuesday a problem with “pot hunters” who illegally loot artifacts to collect and sell. Albert Knight, a consulting archeologist who is considered an expert on the site, said that since the grading occurred, pot hunters apparently looted a burial site in search of artifacts. Rudy Ortega, chief of the Fernandeno tribe, said he and other Native Americans on Saturday conducted a reburial ceremony for bone fragments Knight said a pot hunter had uncovered.

In addition to Native American settlements, experts say the parcel was home to early Mexican and Anglo settlers of the San Fernando Valley, carried the old stagecoach line and was the site of an important sandstone quarry.

“You have the entire history of Southern California--from the earliest times all the way down to today--in a beautiful, beautiful setting. There’s nothing else like it,” Knight said.

But the property, which is west of Chatsworth Park South, has suffered a variety of abuses--ranging from litter and graffiti to the recent grading and pot hunters.

“The more it becomes publicly known, the more it attracts people who are not so interested in preserving as they are collecting” artifacts, Hanson said.

He said the parks department will patrol the property more often and is requesting funds and staffing to better protect the site.