Support Mounts for Cal State Site at Taylor Ranch : Education: A prominent Ojai environmental organization has joined two other groups with an ‘implied’ endorsement of the controversial campus.

In a boost for construction of a Cal State University campus at Taylor Ranch west of Ventura, a prominent Ojai environmentalist group announced its support this week for a university in the county and an environmental impact report on the project.

In similar moves, the Ojai City Council and the Ventura Unified School District passed resolutions that also endorsed a new Cal State campus and called for an environmental impact study of Taylor Ranch.

Citizens to Preserve the Ojai, the 700-member group that successfully sued the Environmental Protection Agency in 1988 to force stricter clean air rules in Ventura County, proclaimed support for a new campus after a poll of its executive board, which decides issues for the group.

While the Ojai group stopped short of specifically endorsing the Taylor Ranch site, officials of the group said that the call for Cal State trustees to move ahead with plans for an environmental impact study means “implied” support for locating the campus at the controversial site.

“We’re not dealing with a garbage dump or a major polluting industry here,” said Stan Greene, president of the Ojai group. “We’re dealing with something that is a major asset to our community.”

Greene said that while his group did not single out Taylor Ranch as the preferred site, “that is implied.” He said that public benefits such as education are also resources that must be balanced against natural resources such as water and air.

The vote delighted Cal State officials and disappointed the outspoken administrative director of Citizens to Preserve the Ojai, Russ Baggerly, who has been one of the leading opponents of locating the university at Taylor Ranch.

Baggerly, who sits as an ex-officio member on the Environmental Coalition, an umbrella group for environmental organizations, was cautious, however, in describing his reaction to the decision by Citizens to Preserve the Ojai, saying he does not want to create a rift in the organization.

“He didn’t call me for the poll,” Baggerly said of Greene. “I guess he knew my position.”

Baggerly has said that he may sue Cal State trustees to challenge the environmental impact report, regardless of its contents.

Cal State Vice Chancellor Jack Smart said the trustees would not look forward to a suit challenging the report.

“However, it would be our intention to pursue an EIR process that would withstand a court test,” he said. But he interpreted the resolutions for a university and urgings for an environmental impact report on Taylor Ranch as endorsements for the site.

“We have to consider that encouraging that they have asked us to go ahead with the EIR,” he said. “Assuming that if the EIR is successful in terms of presenting reasonable mitigation, that means the bodies are in support of a particular site.”

Smart said Cal State now plans to announce its decision in early to mid-February on whether it will go ahead with an environmental impact report at the Taylor Ranch, a process that is expected to cost $200,000 to $400,000.

Cal State Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds told the community last month that Cal State will no longer consider alternative sites and that the community must rally behind the Taylor Ranch site or Cal State will take its resources elsewhere.

Since then, several chambers of commerce and city councils in the county have supported the site. The Board of Supervisors has endorsed the concept of a university in the county, but has pointedly refused to mention the Taylor Ranch site.

The chancellor had said she would decide by about the first of February. But Smart said Cal State staff is still in the process of doing preliminary studies on the site to provide a preview of what the in-depth environmental document will say.

Cal State first performed an environmental impact report based on a two-year university that would be serving upper-division students only, with a maximum student population of about 2,000. Cal State has said the university would take about 30 years to reach its proposed cap of 12,000 to 15,000 students.

Baggerly and the Environmental Coalition sued Cal State after the first impact statement was completed, demanding an environmental document that would consider the impact of the ultimate size of the university. A Ventura County Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the Environmental Coalition in November.

If the final environmental impact report is done and his group brings suit, Baggerly said the suit would be based on the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act, which requires alternative sites to be evaluated. The law also requires the builder to choose the alternative site with the fewest impacts on the environment.