Stiffer Penalties Urged for Wildlife Waystation

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has asked a judge to impose stiffer penalties on the Wildlife Waystation for violating terms of a three-year probation for polluting stream beds.

The request represents the first criminal action against the animal sanctuary above Tujunga since it was closed to the public two months ago for violating state caging and environmental laws.

The refuge has been on probation since 1997 for altering the creeks that run through the 120-acre campus.

The environmental crimes unit of the D.A.’s office wants Newhall Municipal Judge Floyd Baxter to revisit the case in light of new evidence from the state Department of Fish and Game that allegedly shows the Waystation has continued the practices and committed more serious violations.

“We are much more interested in remediation of the problems than in any punishment,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Miller said. “We certainly don’t want to allow the repeated problems. Some of the offenses have proven to be more tenacious than we originally thought.”

Miller, who filed the request to revoke probation two weeks ago, said the action is based on a Fish and Game videotape that reportedly shows Waystation employees disposing of animal waste in Little Tujunga Creek.

The court could impose fines or other penalties, such as an extended probation, Miller said. But the D.A.’s office is first trying to negotiate a deadline with the Waystation for cleaning up the stream, he said.

The refuge has six months left on the original probation.

“Punitive aspects or elimination of the Waystation are not objectives of this case,” Miller said.

The D.A.’s office joins a legion of agencies waiting for the Waystation to define its route to compliance. At least 16 agencies ranging from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the Los Angeles County Planning Commission have postponed punitive action to give the agency time to fix violations.

Waystation Director and founder Martine Colette said the individual actions by regulators were set off April 7 when state Fish and Game closed the sanctuary to the public and new animals.

“This is not an unusual thing,” Colette said. “Any agency comes out, then there’s a chain reaction up and down the line. It’s like at your house, if electrical inspectors found something wrong with your electrical connections, you’d get a call from the fire marshal next. It just jumps from one to the other to the other.”

Fish and Game has recognized the Waystation’s efforts to clean up the stream, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board has said the Waystation met its deadline for filing a plan of action.

Of nine county and state agencies that inspected the Waystation on May 12, only the county animal welfare department found no fault with the organization.

The numerous inspections and investigations have forced Colette, a celebrated animal rescuer, to become an almost full-time contract negotiator, she said.

“There are people who regulate us that I have never heard of,” she said. “Ninety percent of my time is [spent] just trying to address what concerns are expressed, whether or not there’s anything to address.”

California regulators are not the only ones waiting on Colette to tell them how she will work the Waystation out of its latest crisis.

She is also in legal trouble in Pennsylvania, where the secretary of state has banned the sanctuary from holding fund-raisers there because after two years of warnings she has not met demands that the Waystation register with the state’s nonprofit tracking system.

And New York University has asked Colette to return $175,000 earmarked for a primate house at the Waystation that remains only partially built after three years.

In a letter to the Waystation in October, NYU’s vice dean for faculty affairs, David Scotch, said he was “deeply distressed” the sanctuary had not lived up to a 1996 agreement to house a number of its retired research chimps.

Scotch, in a phone interview Tuesday, said he believed it would be unfair to press for the funds “since the Wildlife Waystation has all those other problems right now.”

“We hope they will take care of all those regulation problems,” Scotch said.

“Then, we can take this up with them.”