Horses booted from Will Rogers Park over environmental fears
Efforts to prevent the eviction of privately boarded horses at Will Rogers State Park were side-saddled Friday.
Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Terry B. Friedman ruled that removing the privately housed horses in the public park located in the Santa Monica Mountains in Pacific Palisades would not decrease equestrian activities there.
Judge Friedman gave the horses’ owners until April 5 to find new homes for them. Judge Friedman also ruled the state’s parks and recreation department doesn’t have to put a time limit on the temporary removal of the horses — something critics said could create a “permanent temporary” eviction.
State officials announced in October that it would suspend overnight horse boarding while a new management plan for the park is developed because they believe the horses are hurting the environment. The state claims that the horses generate nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous, which ecologists fear are chemicals that are being carried by run-off into adjacent streams.
“You can see horse manure running down into that creek,” said Steve Capps, the deputy director of communications for the state’s department of parks and recreation. “We don’t know the full extent of what’s going on there and that’s why we want the horses out for a bit so we can study this fully.
“It was in the discretion of the director to make this decision and it did not constitute any major change in the use of the park,” he added.
Genesses Rievera, an 8-year-old Los Angeles girl, along with 34 other plaintiffs and the support of 1,300 petition signing members of the public, filed an injunction in December in Santa Monica Superior Court to prevent the department of parks and recreation, as well as its director, Rusty Areias, from terminating horse boarding and other equestrian activity at the park. They also say it was always the intention of the late Will Rogers and his family to have equestrian activity at the park, where they used to live.
Lawyers for Rievera said they planned to appeal Judge Friedman’s decision to the Third Circuit Appeals Court in downtown Los Angeles.
“Respectfully, we disagree with the judge’s decision,” said Eric M. George, attorney for Rievera. “We knew this would be a long fight and we knew this would likely be settled in the court of appeal anyway, so I guess that’s where the next round will be held.”
“We knew this would be a long fight and we knew this would likely be settled in the court of appeal anyway, so I guess that’s where the next round will be held.” — — ERIC M. GEORGE Plaintiffs’ attorney
The public is still allowed to bring their horses to the park for use on the trails and polo fields, but state officials want horses permanently stationed there removed so environmental testing can be performed, government officials said.
“We’re not suspending all activities, just suspending one activity,” Capps said.
The appeal would be based on the state’s “thin” evidence on how removing the boarded horses would affect the overall equestrian activities at the park, and the lack of a time frame in the state’s temporary eviction of the horses, George said.
“Our argument is that your average visitor to the park doesn’t have an opportunity to see horses,” he said.
The eviction of the horses and the completion of an environmental impact study, which was delayed because of the lawsuit, will continue as scheduled, said officials.
Parks officials wanted the study to be done during the rainy season, which is during the winter months. Now officials may have to wait to perform the study until next winter to get accurate information.
“It seems like the damage that is being done is being lost in all this,” Capps said in an earlier interview. “Pasture is a packed-down, barren field, and if you compare it to pictures from the past you can see that.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 9, 2002. Read the original PDF.