U.S. Wildlife Agency Calls Big Tujunga Report Flawed : Environment: L.A. will review the impact statement for the $500-million golf course site. Officials have identified endangered plants in the Sunland wash.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service contends that the city of Los Angeles failed to adequately analyze the environmental impact of building a golf course in Big Tujunga Wash, the largest remaining tract of pristine scrub habitat in the county, it was revealed Thursday.

Agency officials are particularly concerned over the fate of plants on the federal list of endangered species, such as the slender-horned spine flower, which grow in the 350-acre sandy flood plain in Sunland.

The federal questions are prompting a fresh review of the city’s eight-volume environmental impact report on the plan by Japanese developer Cosmo World Inc. to build a $50-million private golf course in the rugged wash.

The wildlife agency recommended that the city reject the EIR, which would block construction of the golf course.

“It does not help our position to have a federal agency at odds with us” if the adequacy of the EIR is eventually challenged in court, said Deputy City Atty. Keith Pritsker in an interview Thursday.

The strategy that critics most often use to attack major development projects is to claim that their EIRs are inadequate. The reports are designed to inform the general public and especially public decision makers--in this case, the city’s Planning Commission and the City Council--about the potential damage a project could do.

Earlier Thursday, Pritsker told the Planning Commission that he needed to investigate the wildlife service’s concerns, as outlined broadly in a Sept. 10 letter from the agency, to determine if they have merit.

Specifically, the letter contended that the city’s reply to a seven-page critique of the project by the wildlife service was “unresponsive and unrelated to the issues.” By law, city replies to EIR-related concerns must be “responsive.”

Meanwhile, Deputy Planning Director Frank Eberhard and Cosmo World attorney Mark Armbruster said Thursday that they believed the EIR is adequate. “I think we’re just playing it safe by doing this new review,” Eberhard said.

Eberhard said he hoped questions about the EIR can be settled by next month, when the Planning Commission is scheduled to consider whether to approve the Cosmo World project.

Late Thursday, Jack Fancher, the wildlife service’s supervising biologist for Southern California, said that the city has “not sufficiently” looked at the feasibility of moving the golf course to a place where it would not jeopardize the spine flower.

Supporters of the golf course project have described the spine flower as a weed.

Fancher also maintained that the EIR is defective because it describes a project that is unlikely to win federal approval.

Cosmo World needs a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build its project. But the corps cannot issue the permit as long as the wildlife service contends that the project will jeopardize the spine flower. In June, 1990, the wildlife service issued a formal opinion to the effect that the Cosmo World project would threaten the existence of the tiny, fragile plant.

The developer’s only recourse against the federal roadblock is to appeal to the Council on Environmental Quality in Washington, but it is “very improbable” the council would grant an exception, Fancher said.