Rally Attacks Subway Tunnel Plans

More than 75 people rallied at Metropolitan Transit Authority headquarters Wednesday, protesting that two years of digging and dynamiting subway tunnels in the hills above Hollywood and Studio City will endanger their homes and the environment.

“This project has more to do with ego trips than passenger trips,” said State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), a subway critic who organized the rally.

The MTA is scheduled to fire up two boring machines in February to burrow twin 2.3-mile tunnels from Universal City to Hollywood, the northernmost extension of the Metro Rail Red Line system from Downtown Los Angeles.

Many people who own hillside property or enjoy the tranquillity of historic Runyon Canyon Park, however, fear the ecological damage that tunneling could cause.

The MTA has said it will drain as much as 7 million gallons of water per day from the hillsides as it tunnels through, and use 250,000 pounds of explosives to create three 3,400-square-foot underground equipment rooms and 18 cross-over passages. It also will blast out a wide section where the tunnel passes through an earthquake fault in Hollywood. The MTA has also applied for a state permit to store up to 10,000 pounds of explosives at a time in the tunnel--a one-week working supply rather than the usual three-day cache.

Citing a study by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy describing the project as “an enormous gamble to the integrity of the mountains” property owners contend that construction could ultimately scare off wildlife and leave water-deprived slopes barren.

“It’s not really about the money, it’s about the mountains,” said Allen Rose, whose Mulholland Drive home lies directly over the tunnel route.

MTA officials insist that the hard-rock mining will occur so far underground--deeper than the height of a 40-story building for most of the route--that the sound and vibrations of the work will be barely perceptible on the surface.

Yet on Wednesday, landowners mocked assurances from MTA construction chief Charles Stark that the blasting would feel “like a child jumping on a bed.”

“How big is that child, and why are we letting him jump 15 hours a day?” said Blue Andre, a Hollywood Hills resident.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, an MTA board member who has long advocated building a monorail instead of a subway, supported their concerns.

“Allowing the MTA to store explosives in Hollywood is like giving an arsonist matches and gasoline,” he said.

He asked MTA employees to to store explosives elsewhere.

Hayden himself disparaged the MTA explosives plan as an “underground bombing campaign,” and said the MTA could save $2 billion by letting the subway terminate in Hollywood.

“Draining the watershed to make way for the least traveled and most expensive subway in America is the height of environmental and fiscal irresponsibility,” he said.

MTA board member Nick Patsouras expressed frustration that the transit agency had not adequately communicated its message that the digging will not harm property owners--suggesting that staffers should send information to mountain homeowners by registered mail.