Local News in Brief : Japanese Garden Beside Water Plant to Open

City officials are estimating that the Japanese garden built to camouflage the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in the Sepulveda Dam recreation area will be open to the public on a limited basis by the beginning of April.

The opening of the 6.5-acre garden, originally planned for the end of last year, has been postponed by “leaks in the lakes, paper work, and trying to sift through the very good ideas presented by a lot of experts and a lot of people,” said Doris Meyer, an administrative coordinator for Mayor Tom Bradley’s Valley office.

Meyer, who created an ad hoc committee to generate ideas about how to maintain and use the site, said the garden’s plants and buildings are too delicate to open the site to general public use without first training tour guides, setting up security, and creating rules for private uses, such as community meetings and weddings.

“It isn’t a park, and it’s got to be treated as a special place,” Meyer said. Tentative proposals for the garden’s use are scheduled to go before the City Council’s Public Works Committee next week, she said, before going before the full council for approval. Once that approval is secured, Meyer said, Bradley will appoint a 15-member Citizen’s Advisory Committee to set official regulations about maintenance and use of the garden.

City Bureau of Sanitation Director Delwin Biagi said his department already has drawn up a waiting list of more than 300 people who have requested access to the garden, including two couples who want to be married there.

“Come heck or high water, it’s going to be open no later than April 1, at least on some sort of limited basis,” Biagi said. “We’ll get it open on a controlled basis so we can get experience on how it’s going to work and then have an opportunity to modify our procedures.”