LA CAñADA FLINTRIDGE >> Designating nearly 400,000 acres from the coastal edge of the Santa Monica Mountains through Simi Hills, the Santa Susanna, Verdugo and San Gabriel mountains as a new National Recreation Area managed by the U.S. National Park Service will be an uphill battle.

The idea — percolating in Congress since 2003 — faces opposition from property rights groups, anti-government activists and the NPS itself which has said it doesn’t have the money to take on new parks. Although many grass-roots and even national environmental groups support the proposal, it suffers from confusion over where to place the boundaries and what to name it.

And that assessment comes from the author of the plan, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, who held a town hall meeting Wednesday night at the Crescenta-Cañada YMCA to collect input and keep what’s called the Rim of the Valley Corridor proposal on the front burner.

“This is going to be enormously challenging to accomplish,” Schiff said in his introductions. He concluded with a call for unity: “The only prayer we have for success is if we are all in this together.”

The meeting drew a standing-room-only audience of about 125 people. About a dozen residents asked questions or made comments. Those in opposition were concerned about loss of property rights and government intrusion. Supporters said it would help bring more resources such as park rangers and trail builders, while at the same time protect lands for wild animals.

The NPS study offers four alternatives: no action, forming partnerships and two alternatives that create different boundaries for a new park unit or an expanded unit of the Park Service.

Schiff and most of the 5,000 people who submitted comments so far favored combining Alternatives C and D. This expanded proposal would link existing urban parks with wildlands into a new NRA. Such a broad boundary would incorporate cultural resources such as: Hansen Dam, Sepulveda Basin, Debs Park, El Pueblo de Los Angeles, Griffith Park, the Rose Bowl and JPL with existing wilderness areas, such as the Arroyo Seco and the western portion of the Angeles National Forest and the Simi Hills.

Alternatives C and D exclude the San Fernando Valley, Simi Valley, Conejo Valley and Santa Clarita, according to the NPS study. An updated study is expected to be released by early summer, said Ann Dove, project manager with the NPS.

The new draft will include comments from the meeting and a refined look at alternatives and boundaries. A final recommendation from Jonathan Jarvis, director of the NPS, will be presented to Congress at the end of 2014. Schiff then would presumably introduce legislation and seek approval of Congress and the president.

Aside from where to draw the boundary lines, the next decision involves what to call it.

“A new unit of the NPS system would be more costly and less feasible than expanding partnership authorities or expanding existing Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area park operations,” Dove said.

Schiff said he didn’t mind if the Rim of the Valley became an extension of the existing Santa Monica Mountains NRA. “Whatever has a better chance of shepherding this through Congress,” he said in an interview before the meeting.

An adjoining proposal to create a national recreation area out of the rest of the Angeles National Forest, the San Gabriel River and the Rio Hondo, plus part of the Puente-Chino Hills, was launched by Rep. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena and is further along.

The NPS scaled down Chu’s preferred proposal from 581,000 acres to about 50,000 acres in April. The NPS also recommended that it become a “unit of the Santa Monica Mountains NRA” and not a separate park.

The NPS recommendation was met with considerable push back from Chu, the county Board of Supervisors and the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments. They generally supported the larger proposal and did not want to be part of the Santa Monica Mountains NRA.

Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, wrote in a letter to Schiff stating that he and Chu favor an expanded boundary, one that would provide more resources in Cucamonga Canyon, an area of waterfalls and intense use in the eastern Angeles. The city of Rancho Cucamonga supports the wider San Gabriel NRA, Holden wrote.

Holden, as does Chu, opposes association with the Santa Monica plan or its conservancy. The implication being, if Schiff’s proposal gets attached to Santa Monica, then Chu’s might as well.

Joe Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy, spoke at the town hall. He urged residents to support Schiff’s Rim of the Valley proposal but didn’t favor one approach over the other.

“We would all be better off if the (National) Park Service were here. If we see a lot of Stetsons on the trails helping us in the community,” he said, referring to the hats worn by federal park rangers.

Schiff and others on the panel said that any NRA designation would not take away private property rights. Dove said the NRA would not use eminent domain and only would buy land from a willing seller.