Code War in Bucolic Canyon

For the doctors, lawyers, artists and filmmakers who flock there, life in Brentwood’s Mandeville Canyon involves trade-offs.

In exchange for being close to nature, with its howling coyotes and hooting owls, residents gamely endure an occasional fire, flood or landslide. A massive mudslide in 1969 killed former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan’s brother Michael and trapped film director Robert Altman and his family.

Now, nearly four decades later, several new luxury homes are going up along the canyon’s steep hillsides, prompting fears from some residents -- and even state water officials -- that the work could pose a danger. They contend that the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety is adding to the usual risks by failing to impose adequate erosion and pollution controls on the builders.

Critics say developers, under the eyes of city inspectors, have illegally redirected or filled Mandeville Canyon Creek. Compounding the problem, they say, the city has allowed builders to put seepage pits dangerously close to the channel -- which is given to seasonal flooding that sweeps debris and pollutants directly into Santa Monica Bay. When it rains, critics say, effluent from the new pits could rise above the soil and be carried along with mud and trash.

Residents’ complaints have spawned a jurisdictional battle that centers in part over whether Mandeville Canyon Creek constitutes a stream.

State water quality officials have sided with the residents. City officials, however, insist that the permit process was done by the book and that it would be unfair to the developers to hold them to a standard beyond current city laws.

As land grows scarcer in out-of-the-way havens and developers attempt to build on lots that once would have been deemed unsafe, such conflicts are erupting more often.

Residents have also been fighting development that they consider potentially dangerous in the Hollywood Hills and Laurel Canyon, among other areas. Activists say the city must quickly address the issue of protecting fragile streams, hillsides and canyons.

“The codes would protect us, if they were enforced,” said Wendy-Sue Rosen, president of the Upper Mandeville Canyon Assn., a homeowners group. The city “rubber-stamps projects without consideration of the unique nature of the canyon and the safety risks. The city has no coordination between departments and no institutional memory of incidents.”

Mandeville Canyon, which extends about five miles northward from Sunset Boulevard, historically was part of the Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica, a Spanish land grant awarded in 1839 to Don Francisco Sepulveda, a retired soldier. According to the Upper Mandeville Canyon Assn., an 1881 map shows the canyon as Casa Viejo Canyon. Running down its middle was Casa Viejo Creek, which, records showed, was fed year-round by springs in the upper canyon.

From Sunset, Mandeville Canyon Road passes first through a gently sloping segment where yards and driveways follow the curves of the road. The road gradually steepens as it winds into the canyon’s upper reaches.

Over the years, the canyon has attracted a bevy of artists (Ed Ruscha), film industry people (director David O. Russell, producer Sean Daniel), media moguls (Ken Roberts) and celebrity attorneys (Harland Braun). Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver also live there.

Like many other canyons in Los Angeles, Mandeville has endured Mother Nature’s wrath.

As recounted in the Upper Mandeville Canyon Assn.’s Canyon Echoes newsletter, incidents include a deadly storm in 1969, when rushing waters sheared off Mandeville Canyon Road to the center dividing line near a ranch owned by actor Robert Taylor. A fire in 1978 denuded hillsides and was followed the next year by mudslides. In February 1980, mudslides swamped cars and rose to the eaves of many homes. Debris created a dam behind the deck of one house, sending a river of muddy water coursing into neighboring yards and dwellings.

During last winter’s downpours, flooding occurred where drainage systems had become clogged or diverted by residents. Water poured through residences and dumped mud, rocks and branches along Mandeville Canyon Road, the sole route into and out of the canyon. Photos from early 2005 show waterfalls descending the soggy hills to a raging torrent that in the dry seasons is a benign creek bed.

As construction began on the hillside sites, neighbors said they were stunned to see workers storing lumber and other materials in the watercourse, building temporary driveways, erecting retaining walls in the creek banks and leaving cement and other materials in the bed. They sent a letter to the city in March 2004. The practices continued, Rosen said.

A few weeks ago, Rosen sent an e-mail to city officials, attaching photos showing stacks of lumber and piles of gravel stashed directly in the watercourse and evidence that the creek’s direction had been altered.

“Irreparable harm is being done and continues to be done in violation of the law,” Rosen said. “This has put our community in serious jeopardy as the rainy season is upon us.”

On Dec. 9, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board notified the city that it was violating its storm water discharge permit. The city responded that its inspectors had found no violations. The regional water board said in late December that it was considering whether to take further enforcement action.

Even without the recent saturating rains, the steep hillsides posed a number of construction challenges. Tons of rock and dirt have been carved away and hauled from the sites, leaving exposed soil unprotected by vegetation. At one lot, seven or eight mature oak trees were cut down to make way for construction.

The recent storms sent sandbags sliding into the creek bed and plastic sheeting sailing off the hillsides, exposing the disrupted soil to the elements.

Partly at issue, those involved say, is what exactly constitutes a stream. “Everybody has a different definition,” said Robert C. Steinbach, assistant chief of the city’s Department of Building and Safety.

Under the city’s plumbing code, builders are required to keep septic systems well away from streams -- 50 feet for septic tanks and 100 feet for seepage pits. (A seepage pit is a covered pit with a perforated lining through which the discharge from the septic tank leaches into the surrounding soil, which helps to clean it.)

The regional water board, which grants the city the authority to issue permits for private sewage disposal systems, says Mandeville Canyon Creek qualifies as a stream. Building and public works officials dispute that, saying it does not appear as a blue line on the U.S. Geological Survey’s map of rivers, the map the city uses. (The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, meanwhile, has weighed in, saying it does not have jurisdiction because the “drainage” in question is not a “water of the United States.”)

“The seven properties were issued permits for seepage pits and septic tanks based on procedures this department has followed for many years,” Steinbach said. “You can’t change the code after you’ve already issued the permit and expect them to comply. The law requires that you grandfather what’s already out there.”

Peter A. Nyquist, an attorney hired recently by some of the developers and owners, said his clients have proposed to meet soon with Santa Monica Baykeeper, an environmental group that is concerned that the construction might violate the federal Clean Water Act. “In our view,” he said, “everything has been done in compliance with the permits issued by the city.”

Changes are afoot. Stuart Nacht, who is building two of the houses, said he and other developers have volunteered to upgrade their septic systems with new treatment technology to diminish the chance that pollutants could wash into the creek.

Steinbach said building and safety officials plan to push for a new policy that would require builders to install such technology in all new septic systems. The time has come, he said, to stop allowing “conventional septic systems in hillside areas.”

Paula A. Daniels, a city public works commissioner, said her department has been working with building and safety officials to adopt a definition of stream “that would more than likely include this one.” Under a new policy being considered, streams that appear on either the U.S. Geological Survey map or the regional water board’s map would qualify. “We’re hoping that will happen right away,” she said.

She has also started work on a stream protection ordinance. “My understanding is that there were historically 200 miles of streams in the city of Los Angeles, but now there are only 20 miles left,” she said. “I do think it’s important we be as protective as possible.”