MOORPARK : Hike Scheduled in Regional Park

A three-hour hike through Happy Camp Canyon Regional Park will be held Saturday for local officials and the public, a spokeswoman for the Moorpark Branch of the Ventura County Environmental Coalition said Thursday.

The hike is intended to enhance public appreciation of the 3,700-acre park that environmentalists say would be damaged by the expansion of a nearby quarry.

“We thought it would be a good time to get people out there to see what we’re talking about when we say we’re worried about how it will be impacted by Blue Star,” spokeswoman Roseanne Mikos said.

Blue Star Ready Mix Inc., next to the park, has proposed adding 284 acres to its gravel quarry and building an asphalt-mixing plant.

Mikos and other environmentalists say the expansion would harm wildlife in the park.

“People don’t realize that there is a place this huge and this beautiful so close to where we live,” Mikos said.

The walk, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., will be “an easy hike,” she said. Dogs are not allowed.

To reach the camp, hikers should take California 23 to Happy Camp Road and go north to Broadway. Follow Broadway until it ends in a dirt parking lot, where the group will assemble at 10 a.m.