SILVER LAKE—More than two-dozen neighborhood residents say they have recently developed respiratory issues and claim a nearby Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power (LADWP) construction site and its contractor, Steve P. Rados Inc., are to blame.

Residents have also complained of severe noise and local businesses are reporting staggering decreases in business, all surrounding the work site located along Glendale Boulevard from Riverside Drive to where Rokeby Street and Waverly Drive intersect in north Silver Lake.

Martha Mattieu, 72, who lives off Waverly Drive, has a pre-condition of asthma but was ordered onto oxygen by her doctor after construction began.

Another neighbor Lillian Groag started waking up choking in the middle of the night. She has visited several ear, nose and throat doctors and allergists but none could determine the cause. According to Groag, when she leaves town for work, she feels better.

According to another resident, Michael Newsom his two dogs and a cat died within a few weeks of each other. None were old or unhealthy, he said, and with each he noticed respiratory issues prior to their deaths.

Ana Calderon has also been experiencing allergy-type conditions and wheezing, worse than she’s had before.

“I couldn’t understand why I was always getting this asthma,” she said. As a deejay, Calderon works nights and is rarely home before 3:30 a.m. She said when the construction starts at 7 a.m. it’s so loud she can’t sleep causing stress and anxiety. As a newlywed, she said, it seems that every argument with her husband can be traced back to the construction.

“Everything is more difficult than it needs to be,” she said.

The construction is part of a water quality project replacing the current two-mile river supply conduit that runs through the neighborhood. This portion of the project began in October and is now expected to be finished in April. The construction will then move down Rokeby Street for another month and a half.

For residents, the end can’t come soon enough.

Jerome Courshon, who works from home as a film producer, started taking pictures of what looked like improper practices at the construction site.

Promised in the project’s environmental impact report is that the site would be watered at least twice daily. According to Courshon, that has not happened. He has dozens of videos photographs of the unwatered dry site, uncovered dirt trucks and piles, and other infractions taken almost daily through January.

He has also taken several readings of the construction site’s noise from his apartment, approximately 95 feet away. According to Courshon, the levels have been as high as 94db.

According to city code, equipment and machinery cannot exceed 75 dB at a distance of 50 feet.

In mid-January, Courshon hosted a community meeting at nearby Silverlake Presbyterian Church. In attendance were 22 residents, five DWP staff members and four representatives of the contractor. Throughout the two-hour meeting, as the neighbors listed off complaints, their moods grew heated.

“I feel like we’ve put up with it for a reasonable amount of time but we’re frustrated because we haven’t seen reasonable progress,” said Jeff Kaufman who’s lived in the same property on Rokeby Street for 10 years.

For some the construction has been so unbearable, they’ve moved away. “I am not off the site, I’m in the site. I hear everything… I welcome you to stay at my home for a night. We can’t breath, we can’t sleep and we’re [angry],” said Keith Ruggiero, a sound engineer who eventually moved away because he could no longer work from his home.

“We need to be more visible,” said Glenn Singley, Director of Water Engineering and Technical Services at LADWP, of his department’s oversight after hearing complaints. “Let’s come back and see what we can do because there’s a lot more work coming as well. The neighborhood’s complaints are being looked into. There were some things that we had to tighten up,” he said, including regular watering onsite and covering dirt piles overnight.

Singley said an industrial hygienist will also monitor the site and take air quality samples to see if there are any concerning constituents in the soil.

“We are pretty much in bedrock in this particular area,” he said, “so we don’t expect there to be anything that has been dumped on the site or penetrated but we’ll see if there’s anything that raises a red flag.”

The project manager from Steve P. Rados Inc., Derek Rados, said his company and crew are trying to take resident’s complaints in consideration and they’re working as fast as possible. However, he said, the site has harder rocks than initial reports showed and that has made things difficult.

“You can only go as fast as your excavating and especially with this hard rock it’s really hard to excavate. . . .You run into things in underground construction you don’t expect,” he said.

According to Rados, since the meeting, a sound engineer has explored methods of sound mitigation and work crew have been more diligent about consistent watering and sweepings of the work area, as well as covering dirt stalk piles.

To his knowledge, he said, none of the crew has experienced respiratory problems since working on this site.

The construction has hurt local businesses as well.

On Riverside Drive, down the hill where it intersects with Glendale Boulevard, Armen Yeghikyan, 47, who works at Valero gas station, walked along the gas pumps one recent afternoon. He ran his finger along the top of one pump, showing a clear line in the dust. Pumps are wiped down every morning, he said, but by 11 p.m. the dust is twice as bad.

Business, he added, is also down about 30% which he attributes to the construction because of a lack of commuter access to the gas station.

Rafi Abramyan, 54, owns the Dyno Smog test center behind the gas station. Though he has been coughing more recently, he’s more concerned about his business.

Since construction started, Abramyan said he’s seen a nearly 90% dip in sales. On a recent day, he said he only had one customer in 10 hours. He said he might be forced to move or close his business all together.

“Right now I’m stuck in the middle of something and I don’t know what to do,” he said.

Abramyan said he has filed a claim with the city to compensate for his losses. “They told me it’s being investigated,” he said.

Current Los Angeles City Council District 13 candidates are (left to right from top): Josh Post, Rueben Martinez, Mitch O’Farrell and Scott Crawford.

Three more candidates have entered the race for the Los Angeles City Council District 13 seat opening in 2013.

They are Mitch O’Farrell of Glassell Park and a senior advisor to Los Angeles City Councilmember Eric Garcetti; Echo Park activist and California Dept. of Justice Deputy Attorney General Josh Post, and Atwater Village Neighborhood Councilmember and real estate agent Rueben Martinez.

The three join the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council’s Scott Crawford in vying for Garcetti’s seat. Garcetti will be termed-out in 2013 and has entered the city’s mayoral race.

O’Farrell career of public service began in 2002 when he began working for Garcetti’s Council District 13 office. Previously he was in the restaurant business and has was a dancer and gymnast.

O’Farrell, 51, said he will leave his position as Garcetti’s senior advisor this month to pursue his candidacy.

In O’Farrell’s tenure with Garcetti’s office, the Ohio-native helped establish a community and senior center in Glassell Park, managed the Echo Park Lake and boathouse project and removed transient encampments from the Los Angeles River basin.

Most recently he has been working on projects such as bringing a farmers market to Glassell Park and plans for a footbridge over the Los Angeles River from Silver Lake to Atwater Village.

“No one knows the district like I do,” said O’Farrell. “And over the last year it really became clear to me I wanted to stay in the 13th District. There’s so much to do, there’s so much more potential that hasn’t even been tapped.”

Echo Park activist Post, 33, is a newcomer to politics and boasts that fact.

“I’m the first to admit that I’m an outsider,” he said, adding the city’s political scene is “becoming this club of cronyism.”

Raised in rural Missouri, Post moved to Los Angeles a little more than a decade ago. His credentials include managing communications for the city’s BEST After School Program and working as a staff attorney for a federal judge on human rights and government cases.

He also assisted in the prosecution of government corruption for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and as acted as a visiting U.S. constitutional law professor at the Universidad de Guanajuato in Guanajuato, Mexico. He also has a list of community service and volunteer work around Echo Park and other areas in Los Angeles.

“I’m trying to bring together communities, work harder than the next candidate on the street level and change the way things are done,” said Post.

Martinez, who has lived in Atwater Village for 26 years, is the only Los Angeles native of the current candidates.

“This is my city,” he said. “This is where I grew up. This is the only city I call my home.”

Raised in what’s now considered Korea Town, Martinez recalls his first jobs working at a Carl’s Jr. on Sixth Street and Western Avenue, and then at Rampage Hardware on Bronson Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard.

It was a rough area, he said. He credits his mother and stepfather for keeping him from “becoming a gang member or going the wrong way.”

Martinez is a father of three; a real estate agent for Keller Williams/Los Feliz; a small business owner of Cecilia’s Custom Lamp Shades; and a South Atwater Representative on the Atwater Village Neighborhood Council since 2010.

“I’m a very simple guy,” he said. “I love my community. This is the only community I know, the only city that I know, and I want to do the best I can… I’m not a politician. I speak from my heart, and my heart is in my city.”

Several more candidates are expected to enter the race in the months to come once the city’s redistricting process has been completed.

Among them are Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council President Jose Sigala, medical marijuana activist Richard Eastman, and State Senator Kevin DeLeon of the 22nd District.

GRIFFITH PARK

Huizar has long advocated for clarification from the state on creating clear guidelines on the sale of medical marijuana.

“I personally believe in the use of and the value of medical marijuana for patients who actually need it,” Huizar said in an interview. “But if we are put in a situation like we are today, where we have no tools at our disposal to control for the ill-effects of medical marijuana dispensaries on local communities, we have no other option but to repeal our ordinance, ban dispensaries and wait to see what happens in the California Supreme Court case.”

Recently the California State Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments if cities can ban medical marijuana dispensaries. California Proposition 215 allows their existence while current federal law does not.

There are three relatively new dispensaries in the Los Feliz area: at 4614 Hollywood Blvd.; 4511 Sunset Blvd. and another next to the Vista Theater on Sunset Boulevard. There are three additional dispensaries in Los Feliz but outside of the GGPNC’s boundaries.

Laderosa is now seeking the support of Los Angeles City Councilmember Tom LaBonge on the proposed ban.

“Right now, he is not supporting it, and I’m not sure why that is,” she said.

In a subsequent interview, LaBonge said he has spoken to physicians and would like the American Medical Assoc. (AMA) to weigh in on the issue.

“I voiced my concerns over the impact of these dispensaries in the area and want the AMA to take a stand on the treatment component. Then we can ask it be sold at established pharmacies like CVS,” LaBonge said. “This could be a valuable tool and that bridge needs to be crossed as soon as possible.”

West Hollywood and Beverly Hills already have strict regulations for dispensaries in place, but Los Angeles has been unable to curtail the growth and is battling numerous lawsuits.

Los Angeles Police Dept. Cpt. Bill Murphy also told the GGPNC dispensaries offer criminals what they seek most: drugs and money, creating great temptation for robbers.

The ability to pay huge rents was also discussed by others that spoke at the meeting.

“Landlords that had tenants moving out because they couldn’t afford to pay $12,000 a month are now getting rents of $75,000 from these dispensaries,” said guest speaker East Hollywood Neighborhood Councilman Craig Cox.

The neighborhood councils of East Hollywood, Eagle Rock and Hollywood Studio District have all gone on record as supporting the proposed ban.

But GGPNC council member Nelson Bae said he disagreed with the proposed ban.

“We are facing an economic recession the likes we haven’t seen in 80 years and we’re trying shut down one of the few industries that is booming?” he said. “Banning profitable businesses while we sit around, procrastinate and create more bureaucracy is nothing short of asinine,” he said.

GRIFFITH PARK—The Greater Griffith Park Neighborhood Council (GGPNC) has unanimously adopted a resolution to support the construction of two youth baseball fields in Griffith Park.

According to Mark Mauceri, GGPNC Sports and Recreation Committee Chair, the fields would be funded by Prop. K “LA FOR Kids,” which earmarks funds for recreation and parks to help “combat the inadequacies and decay of the city’s youth infrastructure,” according to Prop. K wording.

The idea of new Griffith Park baseball fields was initiated Los Angeles City Councilmember Tom LaBonge. Griffith Park is in LaBonge’s city council district 4.

Los Feliz resident and mother of five, Erica Yoder Chapman spoke at the GGPNC’s Jan. 17th meeting—prior to the council’s vote—in favor of the two new ball fields.

“As a past president of the Los Feliz Mom’s club, I can tell you there are so many of us who want this field. We really need more recreation and playgrounds here in the neighborhood, not across town. I can bring you as many people as you want to stand in this room and support the project,” Chapman said.

Joe Young, chairman of the GGPNC’s Parks, Rivers and Open Space (PROS) committee, spoke against the vote saying the GGPNC’s PROS committee didn’t have adequate time to evaluate the city’s proposal.

The construction of the 5 Freeway destroyed the previous Griffith Park ball fields in the late 1950s.

In the Sports and Recreation committee’s resolution, they cited inadequacies of Los Feliz’s youth recreational facilities and the influx of local families with children.

“We have no city-staffed recreation center,” Mauceri said. “There are no public basketball courts in all Los Feliz… and that’s just wrong.  Golf and tennis we have in spades, but we need to do better in the more traditional ‘stick and ball’ sports, and this Prop. K plan is a chance to at least bring little league back, we certainly have the kids for it. I have three.”

Mauceri also stressed Griffith Park’s deficiency of ball fields when compared to other Los Angeles city parks that are only a fraction of the size.

“Why L.A.’s largest public park doesn’t have a little league field is just beyond me.  We have the chance to put back what the 5 Freeway wiped out.  Area parents shouldn’t have to drive to the Valley so their kids can play sports,” he said.

A Los Angeles City Bureau of Engineering exploratory plan, presented at the meeting, showed two adjacent ball fields that could be incorporated into the park’s Crystal Springs area.

“This will be a long process, and I have no doubt there will be staunch opposition to these fields from park advocate groups who would rather have the whole of the park be designated an ‘urban wilderness,’” said Mauceri. “But it’s a big park and there’s room for some kids’ ball fields… Sometimes we all have step back and see the forest through trees. . . if we really do what’s right by the neighborhood.”

For more information, please visit: www.ggpnc.org/go/recreation