Wood’s World:
Council Choice Crusades for City Clean Up

BERKELEY -- When the East Bay Express newspaper ran an article about Berkeley’s new Harrison Park they called L A Wood and asked if they could label him a gadfly—someone constantly criticizing and a general nuisance. The park, with its frequently used soccer fields and concrete skatepark, is built on land loaded with industrial pollutants and outfitted with signs courtesy of Wood warning of the potential health hazards. "People who know me know I’m hardly the gadfly," he said.

The Green party candidate for the District 4 City Council seat started agitating Berkeley into reform more than 10 years ago when he lived across the street from the Public Works yard near Bancroft and Acton. He watched as employees dumped load after load of debris collected off city streets into storm drains flowing into the bay. "A lot of people’s experiences start with something that happens in the neighborhood and they don’t like it and they say ‘OK, well I’m going to fix it,’" he said in an interview.

And what he did was invite neighbors and press on a tour of the facility, which he videotaped with a borrowed camera. "I was walking around like Geraldo and then the street sweeper rolled right over to the storm drain and started dumping," he said. "That was the last time they did it."

Neighbors said Wood’s commitment to change makes him an ideal candidate for the council seat held by incumbent Dona Spring. "It’s his persistence and focus," Regina Gurst, a retired schoolteacher and neighbor of Wood’s, said. She worked with Wood on several projects, she said, but family responsibilities prevented her from keeping up with him. "He looks at all sides of a problem and works with and organizes the neighbors. You get tired after a while, but he keeps going."

Environmental issues are the main focus of Wood’s campaign. His video company, Create Video Productions, has been influential in exposing such dangers as hazardous waste storage, toxic sites and the effects of groundwater on sites like the Harrison Park fields. One video, "Campus Chemical Waste: Disaster in the Making," brought a rare concession between City Council and the UC administration in 1994.

"There’s a lot of joking in town that the Bear never backs up," he said. "We actually had a dialogue with UC and they saw our concerns about planning a waste facility in Strawberry Canyon and I’ve marked that as the last time City Council talked to the University."

Wood, whose legal is actually L A Wood, faces Dona Spring and moderate Bob Migdal in the District 4 race. Spring, who is backed by Tom Bates, the Green party candidate for mayor, was the only council member to abstain from voting on Measure P, the divisive height initiative that would limit building height in commercial corridors. Though he is against the measure, Wood said the city needs clearer zoning standards, which Measure P also advocates.

"There’s a serious problem with zoning and for four years I’ve been lobbying to have it put on television," he said. "Then people will talk and act differently and the zoning process will level itself out."

Spring, however, dismisses Wood as nothing more than a rabble-rousing loner. "He works with communities, but more as a lone wolf and not in terms of relating to other people," she said. Despite Wood’s efforts in organizing neighbors near the Public Works Yard, she maintained Wood doesn’t have the experience necessary to be on City Council. "He has no demonstrated ability to organize neighborhoods, and I think he really misses the forest for the trees on Harrison," she said. "He tends to alienate most of the people he’s working with and he tends to go into these things alone."

But Wood said he isn’t someone who follows popular opinion or falls into faction. "The complaint on one side of the table is I look at things in too great a depth," he said. "I try to chase after what I think is right and that makes me, in a political sense, an independent."