Firm Under Fire Over Wildflowers

Newhall Land and Farming quietly destroyed large numbers of endangered wildflowers that could have complicated its efforts to construct Los Angeles County’s largest residential housing development, according to court records and interviews.

A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said prosecutors are continuing to investigate the case, although they recently said that they were unable to charge anyone with illegally destroying the flowers because the statute of limitations had lapsed. She would not elaborate on what other issues remain under review by prosecutors.

A draft analysis of the issues involving the San Fernando Valley spineflower was given to county planners this month and obtained by The Times. In it, Newhall officials acknowledged that more than six acres of spineflowers remain on its property, mostly on land slated for development. That marks a departure from two years ago, when Newhall reported finding a single stand of flowers on a 50- to 75-foot stretch of dirt road.

In May, prosecutors and state inspectors served a search warrant on Newhall’s property and found the remains of spineflowers that they concluded had been killed the previous fall when Newhall graded and terraced mesas, according to an investigative report filed in Superior Court in Santa Clarita. Investigators also said in the report that they suspected that Newhall had spread alfalfa through areas in which spineflowers were growing, enticing cattle to graze on the plants.

In its environmental assessment of the spineflower, the Santa Clarita-based company has said that even if its actions did destroy flowers, the actions would be legal. Because it is still farming the land, Newhall argues it has the legal right to destroy the plants in the course of agriculture.

The company also argues that the law allows it to move ahead with construction if it maintains a preserve for some flowers. Representatives of the firm said Newhall has properly notified officials about the presence of the endangered plant.

“When we announced [the finding of spineflowers] we said we’d be doing additional surveys in the future to find out whether other spineflowers might occur,” said Marlee Lauffer, a Newhall spokeswoman. “It’s no surprise to anyone that there are a couple of additional locations.”

22,000 Homes

Environmentalists argue that the way Newhall has handled the plants shows that it cannot be trusted. They say that Newhall officials were aware that the flowers were widely spread on the company’s land two years ago, when they destroyed many during the grading project.

“It’s sort of like they’re thumbing their nose at everything,” said Lynne Plambeck, president of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment.

Los Angeles County supervisors approved the Newhall Ranch development in early 1999, clearing the way for construction of 22,000 homes at the edge of Los Angeles County.

Opponents challenged the project’s environmental documents in court, and a judge ordered the company to revise some findings. Newhall is expected to release its revised environmental report next week, and supervisors are scheduled to consider it Jan. 28.

The spineflower issue is crucial to the company’s new environmental analysis.

Long thought extinct, the spineflower, which can grow to 1 foot tall, with dime-size blooms, was found on the Ahmanson Ranch development near Calabasas in 1999. Its discovery intensified environmental opposition that has since caused numerous delays for the Ahmanson Ranch project.

In addition, the May 2000 discovery of the plant on the 12,000 acres of Santa Clarita Valley land owned by Newhall started a yearlong game of cat-and-mouse between the developer and state regulators, complete with secret aerial surveillance and the search warrant.

That sparring also is detailed in court records involving the Newhall firm and state and local regulators.

Initially, Newhall officials insisted that the plants posed no obstacle to development on most of the property, saying the stand of spineflowers along a roadbed was fenced off and protected. They added that it was possible there were more flowers elsewhere but said they would only search for them later, when closer to development.

At the same time, court records indicate that Newhall notified the environmental consultants who had discovered the flower -- URS, Greiner, Woodward & Clyde -- that they had signed a confidentiality agreement, limiting what those consultants could say about the land to anyone outside the Newhall company.

A representative of the firm, John Gray, later told state investigators that it was the first time in his career that he had been directed to obey a confidentiality agreement, according to an investigative report signed by state Fish and Game Lt. Penelope Liotta.

Gray did not return calls for comment. Lauffer, Newhall’s spokeswoman, said it is standard procedure for the company to require consultants to sign confidentiality clauses.

In August 2001, the state Fish and Game Commission approved the listing of spineflowers as an endangered plant in California. That month, Newhall began grading a mesa on its property. Fish and Game officials came to Newhall on an unrelated visit and spotted the grading in an area that they believed had a “very high probability” of being spineflower habitat, according to the investigative report.

Later that fall, Fish and Game investigators flew over the property, taking photographs to chart the damage on the suspected spineflower habitat.

Newhall said it was simply terracing the hillsides to start an agave farm. Fish and Game inspectors noted in court papers that the agaves would not mature until after development began, and labeled the farming explanation a ruse Newhall spokeswoman Lauffer called that suspicion ridiculous

After it was ordered to stop grading, Newhall told Fish and Game inspectors that they were no longer welcome on the property because their last visit had resulted in a county citation, according to court papers.

3-Day Search

In late May, Fish and Game officials returned with a search warrant and county prosecutors. During their three-day search, investigators found numerous remains of dead spineflowers on the graded mesas. The plants apparently had been crushed under tires, the investigators wrote. They also found that alfalfa had been spread around areas with spineflowers.

The large number of dead flowers led botanists for Fish and Game to question how Newhall’s environmental consultants could have discovered only the single stand they reported finding along the road two years ago.

State teams “quickly found numerous other areas within 50 feet or less from the roadbed area ... and more or less continuous bands of occupied habitat for hundreds to thousands of feet north and south,” said the state’s investigative report.

In the draft papers given to county planners this month, Newhall now says that it had indications of more spineflowers than it initially disclosed. Its consultants, the firm wrote in its new filing, had also discovered “unconfirmed spineflower locations” in May 2000. Newhall also acknowledged another previously undisclosed finding of spineflowers in 2001 by a separate team of environmental consultants.

In its draft papers filed with the county, Newhall argues that unless the land is developed, all spineflowers legally could be destroyed by existing farming.

“Without the specific plan in place... ,” Newhall writes, “the occupied spineflower habitat could be lawfully damaged or destroyed.”

Though authorities spent more than a year investigating the destruction of the plants, there has been little legal fallout. Prosecutors this summer charged the Newhall company with one misdemeanor count of illegally diverting a streambed in the course of its grading, a crime to which the company has pleaded not guilty. The investigative report was filed in connection with that case. But prosecutors did not file charges for destroying the spineflower, also a misdemeanor under state law.

Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, said that Fish and Game officials only presented them with the case on Aug. 30 -- after the one-year statute of limitations had expired.

A spokesman for Fish and Game said his agency’s lawyers knew that the statute had expired in August but that prosecutors had assured them that they did not see that as an obstacle.

The expiration of the time limit “hadn’t been identified as a problem,” spokesman Steve Martarano said.