Inquiry Asked Into Illegal Chatsworth Bulldozing : Neighbors Fume as 3 Old Oaks Are Felled

Los Angeles officials said they will ask the city attorney’s office today to investigate the illegal bulldozing of three historic oak trees Tuesday on a vacant Chatsworth lot, reportedly to make way for a commercial development.

The oaks, described by officials as 500 years old, were toppled in a cloud of dust and chopped up for firewood. They were the largest and healthiest of an ancient stand of 12 oaks, according to area landowners.

Felled Without Permit

Maureen A. Kindel, president of the city Public Works Commission, said the trees were felled without a required oak-removal permit. She called the incident “the most blatant” violation yet of a 5-year-old city oak protection law.

The three trees were described as historically significant by Helen Treend, president of the Oak Tree Coalition, a San Fernando Valley-based environmental group. She said her group had catalogued the oak grove on Lassen Street, east of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, as the site of an early Valley country store and stagecoach stop. Before that, the grove housed an Indian encampment, Treend said.

Department of Public Works inspectors arrived too late to save the three oaks. But they halted the sawing and ordered the workers not to touch two other oaks standing nearby.

Kindel said she had asked the department’s staff for a full report on the incident. She said the Public Works Commission will ask the city attorney’s office to investigate when commissioners meet today.

City permits have been required for the removal of large oaks since early 1980, when City Council passed an oak ordinance primarily to protect the San Fernando Valley’s dwindling supply of the trees. The ordinance covers oaks with trunks eight inches or larger in diameter, measured 4 1/2 feet from the ground.

Violation of the ordinance is a misdemeanor punishable by a $500 fine or 60 days in jail.

“It absolutely enrages me,” Kindel said of Tuesday’s incident. “If the ordinance isn’t strong enough, we’ll take action to amend it. This is the first time in my memory we’ve had such a blatant violation of it.”

City officials said late Tuesday that no one had yet been arrested for destroying the oaks. They said they were uncertain who is responsible for the removal of the oaks because the property was recently sold and they do not know who now owns the site.

Firewood Sale

Bob Switzer, a Canoga Park grading contractor, said his workmen felled the trees at the three-acre site for the Jason Construction Co. of Reseda in exchange for the right to sell the firewood. But a spokeswoman for Jason Construction denied that the company had any role in the incident.

The bulldozing caused a stir along Lassen Street as businessmen left their shops to watch and passers-by stopped their cars to confront three laborers, who were cutting the trees’ branches with chain saws.

Michael Mekjian, a Woodland Hills landscape architect and Sierra Club member, stopped his car nearby and angrily ordered the workers to halt their sawing. He demanded that they show him a city permit for the work.

“You can’t possibly have a permit to destroy these,” Mekjian, 50, said of the trees. “Look at them. They are perfectly healthy.”

A crew foreman ordered Mekjian off the property. “I don’t have to show you anything,” he told Mekjian.

Use May Be Commercial

Neighboring landowners said they had been told the lot is earmarked for commercial development. The land is surrounded by a gas station, lumber yard, auto repair shop and condominium complex.

Richard Wax, owner of a Canoga Park landscape company, said he had the trees inspected five years ago when he considered buying and developing the property.

Wax said that he also obtained a city permit to remove seven dead or diseased oaks. It was used by a former owner of the property, he said.

“I’m sick about this,” Wax said. “People are just raping the Valley and these oak trees. There’s not enough teeth in the city oak ordinance. It’s not like Thousand Oaks, where nobody fools around with oak trees.”

Trees Were Healthy

Wax said he still has inspection reports that show that the three trees bulldozed Tuesday were healthy.

“I have the records on them that are available to anybody who wants to prosecute the guy who has done this,” he said.