Turning a Devilish Park Into an Angelic Retreat : Nature: Restoring a long-neglected reservoir is a thorny project--starting with what to call the place.

PASADENA —  Hahamongna Watershed Park.

To some, it is the best name for a proposed 250-acre natural area in the northern end of Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco.

Hahamongna, which means “fruitful valley” or “flowing waters,” was what the Gabrieleno Indians called the area centuries ago.

But others complain the name is unpronounceable. They prefer to call it Devil’s Gate Park, which has been the common name of the place for the past 100 years. Rocks on a canyon wall supposedly create a demonic visage.

Disagreement over what to call the place is just one of the problems facing the $54-million plan to resuscitate the long-neglected area behind Devil’s Gate Dam.

On maps, the area is colored blue to suggest a lake and is identified as Devil’s Gate Reservoir. But decades of rainy seasons have caused an accumulation of silt and debris to render it worthless as a reservoir. And since the early 1970s the dam--Los Angeles County’s oldest--has been declared seismically unsafe.

As the design proposal to reclaim the area moves toward consideration Tuesday by the Pasadena City Council, the project faces a critical stage of decision-making. City officials, bird watchers, joggers, horseback riders, mountain bikers, soccer enthusiasts, flood control and water conservation experts, and leaders of the adjoining city of La Canada Flintridge are seeking to have their say.

Debates and knotty questions have surfaced in recent months:

Should there be soccer and recreational fields in the park?

Should parking lots for Jet Propulsion Laboratory be removed in order to restore the native habitat, ending a lucrative lease arrangement that benefits the City of Pasadena?

And, perhaps the central question: To what degree will water conservation and flood control issues guide the project rather than recreation or habitat restoration?

Detailed answers to all these questions are still being worked out, said Pasadena attorney Ernest L. Messner, a La Canada Flintridge resident who chairs the Devil’s Gate Joint Powers Planning Authority overseeing the project.

“It’s all in a refinement process. Two years ago you wouldn’t have found there was any controversy,” he said, explaining that planners then were still entertaining options as expansive as having restaurants, racquetball courts, a hockey rink, a museum and a petting zoo in the park. “But now we’re down to making the hard decisions.”

One of those is what to call the park.

In July, the Devil’s Gate planning authority, with some dissent, voted to change the name to Hahamongna Watershed Park.

Vera Rocha, a Gabrieleno Indian leader who serves on the seven-member board, suggested the name, to reflect the area’s return “to its original state.”

Rocha, a Baldwin Park resident, said, “Hahamongna was our people’s name for it--for all of the Pasadena area--way before the Spaniards, the Europeans came.”

Someone “with bad imagination . . . (who) must have had a hangover” came up with the Devil’s Gate name, she said. “When you look at it, it doesn’t look like a devil.”

But La Canada Flintridge Councilwoman Carol Liu, also a planning authority board member, said it’s silly to change the name from what it is called today.

“Hahamongna is a very sensitive name and recognizes the Native Americans,” she said. “But I don’t know that changing the name would give (the park) any more significance. If there was a compelling reason to change the name, then that case has not been made.”

The authority to change the park’s name, board president Messner said, rests with the planning authority, although he acknowledged that the Pasadena City Council may want to assert its views on the matter.

Myles Standish, a JPL astronomer and descendant of the 17th-Century Pilgrim, is fighting for recreational use of the area.

In approving its design plan, the Devil’s Gate planning board recommended a 10- to 12-acre “meadow area” with recreational playing fields, but only if additional fields “cannot be developed at other locations” in the city.

To Standish and others sports enthusiasts, it is ludicrous not to use part of the Devil’s Gate area. In the San Gabriel Mountains, he said, “we’ve got native habitat up the kazoo.”

Standish, past head of the Pasadena-Altadena American Youth Soccer Organization, says the organization oversees 175 teams with 2,400 youngsters and they are desperately in need of playing fields.

Devil’s Gate board president Messner who supports using part of the proposed park for soccer and other field sports, said land is too expensive for the city to be able to buy large tracts elsewhere, even if any were available.

As much as Guy Hallman loves soccer--he is a parent of a player and the teacher of many soccer players at Westridge School for Girls in Pasadena--he said the proposed park would be severely harmed by putting in playing fields.

“The two things--soccer fields and habitat restoration--are absolutely incompatible from what I know as a biologist,” said Hallman, an Altadena resident who teaches life sciences at Westridge and is a Pasadena Audubon Society leader.

Manicured and fertilized playing fields would attract non-native birds such as house sparrows and blackbirds, which drive off the native species such as fly catchers, wrens and loggerhead shrikes found in the coastal sage scrub of the arroyo.

Another troublesome issue is the question of two JPL parking lots on the east and west sides of the arroyo. The Devil’s Gate planning board wants the City of Pasadena, which owns the lots, to remove the larger one on the east side by 1995 and return that area to native habitat. The board said it wanted to retain the option of removing the west lot, depending on whether the recreational meadow is developed.

JPL officials aren’t excited about having to find other places to park cars, but JPL spokesman Robert MacMillan said the facility, where about 8,000 people work, is drawing up plans to build a parking structure elsewhere to replace the lots.

Although he favors eventual removal of the lots, Messner said it is important to understand that from 1993 to 2000 the lots would bring in $3.8 million to Pasadena and that money could be used to help fund the park plans.

The financing of the project remains somewhat murky, although from the beginning planners have said that it would be paid for with a combination of public and private sources.

Pasadena has already put $1 million into the planning and is expected to contribute millions more. Another $1.8 million will come from the countywide park and recreation measure adopted by voters in November.

A large part of the project, roughly $32.8 million over the next seven years, is also expected to come from the Los Angeles County Public Works Department, which operates the Devil’s Gate Dam.

The county has just launched a yearlong study on the feasibility of repairing the cracked dam. Michael Anderson, head of the public works department’s hydrology section, said that until that study is completed it will be hard to predict the county’s role.

The study may conclude that it is too expensive to repair the dam and that it would be best to remove it. And even if it is determined that the dam could be easily repaired, he said the state’s ongoing budget crisis might affect whether funds are available.

Additional money for the park plan is expected to come from the Pasadena Water and Power Department, which would benefit from the proposed improvements.

Pasadena officials have estimated the improvements could save millions of dollars annually on water costs and would justify spending money to make improvements in the Devil’s Gate area.

Despite controversies and questions surrounding the project, Messner said it is important to note “there are a lot of areas about which there is no disagreement.”

He cited the 40-acre Oak Grove Park which will be a key element in the park plan. Run by the county for years, it now is being turned back to the city and will be improved under the design proposal.

And there is little debate about the hiking, biking and horse riding trails proposed for the park, Messner said.

Acknowledging the many loose ends, Messner said he expects the details will be worked out during the next year or so. “Every element doesn’t have to be nailed down in 1992,” he said.

Arroyo Seco Plan

A proposal to resuscitate 250 acres of Arroyo Seco behind Devil’s Gate Dam is now in a critical stage as officials from Pasadena and La Canada Flintridge, bird watchers, soccer enthusiasts, flood control and water conservation experts clash over how the $54-million project should proceed.