Countywide : Landowners Critical of Saticoy Area Plan

The Saticoy Area Plan approved Tuesday is so restrictive on water use for industry that it will be impossible to build on the land that the new plan opens for development, local property owners told county supervisors Tuesday.

Using a formula based on historical use of the land now cultivated for agriculture, the County Board of Supervisors imposed a limit of just over one acre-foot of water for each acre of land.

“There is not an industrial park in the county that could operate with that limit,” said Chuck Rogers, who represented Saticoy land owners.

“You’re taking our freedoms away from us,” said Don Whaley of Ventura, who owns property zoned for industrial development in Saticoy. The board approved the Saticoy Area Plan 4 to 0.

The plan, which updates a 1967 version, permits 161 new homes and opens for industrial development 44 acres of predominantly agricultural land along the Santa Clara River.

Ventura City Manager John Baker also argued against the plan, but for different reasons.

He said some provisions of the plan are too lenient because developers would be allowed to set up their own mutual water companies to supply water.

That water would be drawn from ground-water supplies, the same underground pools that supply the cities of Ventura, Oxnard, Port Hueneme and hundreds of agricultural pumpers.

Allowing new building in Saticoy is unfair when neighbors in Ventura, who drink the same water that Saticoy residents drink, are prohibited from building under the city’s present moratorium on new water hook-ups, Baker said.

Baker said Ventura should have more control over development in Saticoy since Ventura may one day have to provide the water.

The tiny unincorporated community northeast of Ventura is part of Ventura’s sphere of influence. Because of the four-year statewide drought, the city of Ventura is rationing water and has forbidden any new hookups until the water shortage eases.

Bruce Smith, supervisor in the county Planning Division, said new development in the unincorporated Saticoy area is necessary to bring in money from developers’ fees to upgrade roads, water and sewer services.