Ahmanson Consultant Criticizes Firm’s Plan : Environment: An ecologist also accuses the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy director of glossing over loss of native grassland prairie.

A plant ecologist hired by Ahmanson Land Co. has become a sharp critic of the firm’s plans for a huge residential and golf course development in eastern Ventura County, saying the project would destroy a prime remnant of the state’s vanishing grassland prairies.

Jon E. Keeley, an Occidental College professor retained by Ahmanson as an environmental consultant, says the project’s two proposed golf courses would all but obliterate one of the finest surviving native grasslands in all of Southern California.

In recent letters to Ventura County officials, Keeley and other authorities on native vegetation attacked the development plan, which includes an offer to trade vast parkland acreage for building permits. The letters also accused two key supporters of the deal--Ventura County Supervisor Maria VanderKolk and Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Executive Director Joseph T. Edmiston--of glossing over the loss of the grasslands.

This is the first time since the project was proposed last year that the grasslands surfaced as a prominent issue. The proposal has been widely praised as environmentally superior to previous plans to develop both the Ahmanson property and nearby Jordan Ranch.

It also is a rare instance of a consultant biting the hand of a developer-client. Environmental consultants are supposed to provide objective opinions on the likely impacts of development projects. But they rarely go public with concerns or complaints about the plans of those who hire them.

“I was hired to do an assessment of the grasslands there,” Keeley said. “I wasn’t hired to be an advocate” for Ahmanson.

The project is a joint venture of the Ahmanson firm and Potomac Investment Associates and is under review by Ventura County officials. Originally, both companies sought to build their own big projects--Ahmanson on the Ahmanson Ranch and Potomac on the Jordan Ranch holdings of entertainer Bob Hope.

Facing strong opposition, however, the companies last October announced a merger of the projects that would preserve all of Jordan Ranch and confine development and environmental damage to the Ahmanson tract.

The combined proposal includes 3,100 residences, two golf courses, a hotel and about 500,000 square feet of commercial space on the 5,477-acre Ahmanson Ranch, which borders the Ventura-Los Angeles County line north of the Ventura Freeway. Up to now, the most prominent issues have been the project’s size and traffic impacts.

The proposal’s appeal has been the developers’ offer to donate and sell more than 10,000 acres of mountain land in Ventura and Los Angeles counties, including Jordan Ranch, to the conservancy and the National Park Service for a below-market $29.5 million. Supporters say it would be the state’s largest single parkland acquisition in at least 30 years.

But the golf courses would destroy about 400 of 430 acres of native grasslands that authorities have described as a prime example of a plant community that is threatened in California.

Before Europeans arrived, experts estimate, grassland prairie covered 15 million to 20 million acres, or up to 20%, of the state. But over the past two centuries, farming, grazing and development--along with the introduction of non-native weeds and grasses--have reduced native grassland cover to roughly 50,000 acres statewide, said Todd Keeler-Wolf, vegetation ecologist with the natural heritage division of the California Department of Fish and Game.

Even these remnant areas have been invaded by non-native plants. The exotic species are so prevalent that authorities consider any land with at least 10% cover by native grasses to be a native grassland, Keeler-Wolf said.

“It’s the . . . one ecosystem that seems to be more highly reduced than any other,” he said. “Just that fact alone means that the remaining fragments are extremely important for natural conservation.”

Keeley, a professor in the biology department at Occidental in Eagle Rock, was retained by Ahmanson to do an assessment of the grasslands. He concluded that the ranch was among the three finest grassland sites in Southern California, matched only by those at Camp Pendleton Marine Base in San Diego County and the Santa Rosa Plateau in Riverside County.

Keeley said the only other significant grassland in the Los Angeles region--in the protected La Jolla Valley area of Point Mugu State Park--is smaller than the one on Ahmanson Ranch.

Keeley said Ahmanson responded to his findings by “dramatically” changing its plans to minimize impact on the grasslands. But when the Potomac merger added a second golf course, officials felt “they no longer had the flexibility to worry about grasslands,” Keeley said.

As a result, the combined project would result in “a significant loss of a rare plant community,” he said in a report to the company.

Ahmanson is offering to fund grassland restoration experiments on Jordan Ranch, a mitigation measure suggested by Keeley. But plant ecologists, including Keeley, say the success of such efforts is highly uncertain. “I’m sure no one would take on a program of grassland restoration and guarantee their work,” he said.

Until recently, Keeley confined his opinions to technical reports and other contacts with Ahmanson. That changed last month when he read an interview with Edmiston in Mountain Country, the news magazine of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

In the interview, the conservancy head lauded the Ahmanson Ranch compromise and the role of Supervisor VanderKolk in engineering the merger. VanderKolk was elected in 1990 on a pro-environment platform that included opposition to the separate projects.

“What Supervisor VanderKolk did was look at the whole domain of the area to be developed and determined that the Ahmanson project had resources that were not as significant as all the other resources to be protected,” Edmiston said.

“She told developers they could make their profit there, but only there.”

In a letter to Edmiston on April 17, Keeley disputed his statements. “Although I do recognize that a potentially justifiable position is one of trading quantity of acreage for quality,” Keeley wrote, “I am concerned about the picture being drawn that this deal has minimal negative impacts.

“As you well know there are positive and negative sides to any action and I suggest the readers of Mountain Country deserve to be told the entire story.”

In a letter the following week to a VanderKolk aide, Keeley questioned whether VanderKolk had critically analyzed the Ahmanson property. “It seems apparent that your office is supportive of the destruction of these very valuable native grasslands and thus you have placed yourself in a precarious position,” he said.

Angered by this attack on her environmental credentials, VanderKolk hit back in a letter to Keeley, calling his assertions “erroneous and arrogant.”

“Professor Keeley, how many sleepless nights did you spend pondering this complex public policy issue?” she asked in an April 28 letter. “It’s so easy for those of you in academia to make snap decisions that are readily expounded to others of like mind or to students who are forced to take your conclusions as fact.

“As an elected official, I do not have the luxury of pontificating to a captive, narrow-minded audience,” VanderKolk went on. “The compromise Ahmanson project I helped engineer is a step toward fulfilling my oath of office.”

Peter H. Raven, a world-renowned ecologist and director of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, then weighed in on Keeley’s side. “There are many golf courses and other developments . . . to satisfy anyone,” he said in letters to all five Ventura County supervisors.

He urged them to “take into account the opinions of scientists who have had the opportunity to evaluate this area, and to take the necessary steps to keep this irreplaceable part of the California heritage intact for the future.”

Keeley’s wife, Melanie Baer-Keeley, who is president of the California Native Plant Society’s San Gabriel Mountains chapter, also got into the act, with a notice in newsletters of two local native plant society chapters. Headlined “Letters Needed to Protest Proposed Destruction of Local Grasslands,” the notice listed the names and address of the county supervisors.

Ahmanson officials, feeling betrayed, were displeased by this turn of events. Ahmanson Senior Vice President Gil Nielsen, in a May 1 letter, scolded Keeley for writing letters based on information obtained under contract with Ahmanson.

Nielsen said he was particularly upset about the notice placed by Keeley’s wife.

“I have no problems with the facts being revealed and debated,” Nielsen wrote, “but I do question if it is proper for members of your family to use information accumulated by you on a project which you have been hired as a consultant and then to essentially solicit letters of opposition to that project,” he said.

In a response dated May 6, Keeley said Nielsen’s “accusations of impropriety are unwarranted . . . I should also remind you that I was hired to do an honest assessment of the grassland resources on Ahmanson Ranch and not to act as an advocate for your position.”

In an interview, Nielsen sought to minimize his differences with Keeley, saying he merely wished Keeley had “let us know what was happening.”

“Jon’s a fine man,” he said. “Jon’s got to do what he’s got to do.”

Whether the loss of grasslands will prove a major stumbling block remains to be seen.

Dan Silver, a conservation activist and opponent of the project, said officials should “think 50, 100, 200 years in the future . . . and what we’re taking away from future generations by doing something that’s simply expedient now.”

But Nielsen said he believes the experimental grasslands program and vast parkland acreage more than make up for the grasslands loss.

VanderKolk failed to return several phone calls. But her press deputy Doug Johnson said the parkland dedications are “worth some of the problems that we’re going to have.”

“If we have to lose some grasslands, then maybe we have to,” Johnson said, “because the broader public interest is being served here.”

There would be no loss of grasslands “if you had your druthers on all this,” Edmiston said. But he said this “is not something that ought to derail the overall agreement.”

NEXT STEP

Ventura County officials next month are expected to issue a draft environmental report on the Ahmanson project. A public comment period will follow, with hearings this summer and fall before the Ventura County Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors. The supervisors are expected to vote on the project before the end of the year.