J.E. Mitchell

Push came to shove Wednesday when State Water Project crews began bulldozing land in Cal Poly's Stenner Creek Canyon, stopping about 500 yards short of a stand of old oak trees and a creek tributary.

The construction angered university officials who said they were counting on the state Department of Water Resources officials to honor a pledge to do no further work on the pipeline project in the canyon until a settlement could be reached that save some or all of the canyon's oak trees, some of which may be 200 to 300 years old.

"We clearly have been deceived," said Frank Lebens, Cal Poly's vice president for administration and finance. "We trusted them that they would hold to their word. That trust has been broken."

In response to the start of construction, President Warren Baker ordered university officials to immediately pursue all possible legal remedies against the water agency to stop the construction.

Lebens late Wednesday said the university lawyers will likely first seek a restraining order against the department and then study more permanent legal avenues against the project.

Bob Potter, the water agency's deputy director in Sacremento, said he was not aware of any construction occurring in Stenner Creek Canyon until receiving a reporter's phone inquiry.

"If the contractor is working there, we have a problem," Potter said. "This is the first I've heard of it"

Meanwhile, outraged university officials succeeded late Wednesday in getting a lower-ranking DWR manager to issue a second stop-work order to the pipeline contractor to temporarily idle the big D-8 Caterpillar bulldozer that cleared the rangeland Wednesday.

Wednesday's start of construction comes just two weeks after Baker held talks with water agency officials on campus and in Sacremento. At the time, Baker said he was gaurdedly optimistic that trees and the rest of the canyon's natural habitat would be spared.

Baker has argued that the pipeline should be re-routed because Stenner Creek Canyon serves as a natural laboratory for the biological sciences and natural resources management departments-the latter of which offers the only hardwood management course in the Western United States.

The conflict between the two state agencies flared as university officials this week welcomed about 400 participants in a four-day oak woodlands symposium. Topics include the ecological status of oak trees.

The section of pipeline proposed to run through the canyon is part of a 100-mile long offshoot of the California Aqueduct running from Kettleman City in Kings County to Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County.

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