For his part, Wizmann has sued homeowners for improper fence boundaries and said that vandals once painted so many swastikas on his home he decided to raze it.

"In 10 years, I've never seen a case like this," said Dale Thrush, planning director for City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, whose district includes Shadow Hills. "It's an unfortunate situation."

Caught in the crossfire are Maria Mejia, a homeowner, and Ruffolo, her guesthouse tenant. Their water was turned off by the Department of Water and Power after Wizmann claimed their 55-year-old pipes were leaking at a rate of tens of thousands of gallons per day and damaging his property

Homeowners counter that Wizmann may have broken their pipes with a bulldozer, resulting in water bills of $1,000 a month.

Residents and DWP officials have offered to repair the pipes, but say Wizmann has refused to allow them onto his property. While homeowners have a utility easement to their meters, neither they nor the DWP have legal access to the water pipes running beneath Wizmann's land, officials said.

Also affected is Rudy Madrid, who said Wizmann personally shut off his water for several days leading up to last weekend's heat wave.

"He's turned off my water a bunch of times," said Madrid, 75, a retired laborer who for 30 years has lived in a one-bedroom home now landlocked by Wizmann's horseshoe-shaped property. "I can't even take a shower or go to the bathroom.

"The city has been here and won't do anything about it. He takes advantage of us."

Wizmann, a native of Morocco who lives in Hollywood Hills, insisted he's never touched Madrid's water valve. He added that the ongoing dispute has its roots in neighbors' efforts to block his $16 million development.

Had the 21-home project been built, he said, the neighborhood would now be serviced by new streets, city water and sewer lines and would share the benefits of equestrian homes, corals and public horse trails.

He described Mejia's property as a "squatter's place" built in the 1930s and '40s, without legal water hookups to meters on his land.

He said he cannot grant homeowners permission to repair their pipes because there was never any easement -- that the pipes lacked permits and are, therefore, illegal.

"I (won't) become an accessory to breaking the law," Wizmann said. "Her house is illegal.

"The subdivision would have cured all of this stuff. ... Ms. Mejia cut her own throat. Ms. Mejia does not have an easement for water. That place is so screwed, she couldn't get a permit if the pope were her father. It's a cesspool of problems."

Mejia, without a water hook-up since Dec. 1, had relied on a tie-in to her tenant. But with Ruffolo's water turned off after her galvanized pipe also sprung a leak, both have been without water since last Saturday.

Since then, Mejia and Ruffolo have depended on buckets of water brought up by neighbors.

"We can't live like this," said Mejia, a 47-year-old environmental attorney whose hilltop home is surrounded by Wizmann's property and who won a lawsuit blocking his development. "I need my regular water connection, like an ordinary U.S. citizen and human being."

Last Monday, DWP General Manager David Nahai met with staff to resolve the issue at the request of Greuel, but found no solution to the impasse.

Since the DWP has no jurisdiction over water lines between its meters and residents' homes, officials said the only cause of action would be a civil suit seeking a water pipe maintenance easement.

"Unfortunately, this matter is the result of a property dispute between two adjacent property owners," the agency said in a statement. "We have advised the affected party of the appropriate action to take in order to resolve this dispute with her neighbor."

The Shadow Hills neighborhood in the 9900 block of Wheatland Avenue is a collection of ranch-style homes, white horse fences and flowing pepper trees.

In 1998, Wizmann bought 17 acres and obtained permits to build 21 homes. Neighbors sued him and the city, alleging violations of the state's Environmental Quality Act. In 2005, an appellate court overturned the lower court ruling that had granted Wizmann permission to build his homes.

Neighbors previously had filed a public nuisance lawsuit after Wizmann felled hundreds of mulberry, pine and eucalyptus trees, creating a grass-covered field.

Their suit alleged systematic harassment of neighbors during his nearly daily patrols of his land. That he stalked them. Filmed them. Spied on them. Threatened them. Detained workers and guests. And bulldozed their mailboxes located on his land.

Both sides, who together have spent an estimated $250,000 or more on attorneys, say mutual settlement agreements have been broken.

"This is like the Wild West out here, like an old Gary Cooper movie, where the guys shut off the water upstream," said Bill McChesney, 65, a neighbor, litigant and former developer. "It's terrible. People shouldn't have to live like this -- we're Americans.

"A person's home should be his castle, but here it's a prison."

Wizmann, who said he's abandoned plans to build, denied any harassment and accused his neighbors of violating city land and building codes with impunity.

"Everything I do, I do by the book," said Wizmann, 45. "I pay top dollar for my lawyers ... Everything I have done, it's been with the input of the community."