Mt. Wilson Observatory Turf War Ends

The land around Mt. Wilson Observatory will stay in U.S. Forest Service hands, at least for now.

Rep. John E. Peterson (R-Pa.) introduced legislation last month that would give away prime acreage within the Angeles National Forest to the nonprofit Mt. Wilson Institute, which runs the observatory. On Monday, institute representatives met at the observatory with officials from the U.S. Forest Service, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) and staff for other members of Congress to try to resolve some of the problems that led to the legislation.

At issue were 110 acres of land beneath and around the observatory. Institute officials complained that the Forest Service had failed to perform routine and long-term maintenance on the property, and that they were unable to make repairs because the observatory is on public land. The institute said that if it had control of the property, it could maintain the site using grant money.

In the last two weeks, the Forest Service has cleared brush, downed dying Ponderosa pine trees, repaired bathrooms and replaced a faulty electrical relay on the 300,000-gallon water tank that provides water to the entire mountaintop.

“It’s been a flurry of activity up there,” said Craig Jensen, who is a member of the institute board.

At the meeting this week, institute representatives and Forest Service officials agreed to spend the next six months improving the site and their own working relationship. And because of that arrangement, a spokesman for Peterson said, the legislation would most likely be unnecessary. “Our goal was to resolve the serious risks,” said Paul Feenstra. “As long as these problems are resolved, there is no reason to proceed with the legislative remedy.”

Jack Blackwell, regional forester for the Pacific Southwest region of the Forest Service, who attended the hilltop meeting, said he was pleased with how the issue had been resolved. “Clearly, there were relationship and communication problems,” he said. “We had legislation introduced as a result of that ... and I went down in person to try to deal with it.”

But some critics of the deal wondered how such problems could have gone so far as to require a legislative response to what seemed to be only maintenance issues.

It is rare for an out-of-state congressman to introduce legislation to give away federal land in someone else’s district, but Peterson is the vice chairman of a subcommittee on forest resources. His chief of staff, Robert Ferguson, was a trustee of the institute from April to June of this year. Leaders of the institute share Peterson’s skeptical view of global warming, questioning whether humans have contributed to the phenomenon.

Bill Corcoran, regional representative for Sierra Club, said he thought that the scope of the bill seemed out of proportion to the problem expressed by the institute. “I felt like this bill was using a gun to kill a gnat,” he said.

“It’s another bad deal exposed, and stopped,” said Janine Blaeloch, director of the Western Land Exchange Project, a public interest organization that monitors federal land exchanges and sales. “It’s especially good because very rarely is the public even aware that their public lands are being used as trading currency--or being given away, for that matter.”

Schiff offered to host another meeting of all concerned parties at the end of the year. “It seemed to me that the items that needed work were not so insurmountable that better communication could have resolved it,” he said. “But the introduction of the bill had catalytic effect on the parties.... I think the Forest Service’s continued ownership of the property, and higher attention to it, are in best interest of the public.”