Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Power Lines, Terrain on Palmdale School Site Spark Concerns : Antelope Valley: The Department of Education urges the district to put off accepting a builder’s offer of 50 acres.

The state Department of Education is concerned about high-voltage power lines and steep terrain on a school site being offered to the Antelope Valley Union High School District by a developer.

Ritter Park Associates, the developer of the 7,200-home master planned community known as Ritter Ranch, is willing to give a 50-acre school site to the high school district as partial mitigation of the impacts the west Palmdale development will have on the district.

Ritter Park is also proposing to pay $1.20 per square foot of residential development in fees to the high school district, about 50 cents per square foot higher than the district would otherwise receive as a result of state-mandated developer impact fees. The impact fee Ritter is offering would amount to an estimated $15.6 million for the high school district.

To sweeten the deal further, Ritter Park said it would pay half of the site development costs, such as water line and road installation, over $4.3 million, to a maximum of $350,000.

The high school site is north of Elizabeth Lake Road at about 50th Street West and is bordered on the south by the San Andreas fault.

But the property line of the mountainous terrain would be 350 feet from 500 kv transmission lines, a source of electromagnetic fields. Some studies have shown a link between EMF exposure and cancer.

The state Department of Education has adopted as policy, and recently proposed as regulation, separation requirements for new schools and high-voltage transmission line easements.

In the case of 500 kv lines, the separation is 350 feet, which the site Ritter Park is proposing would meet, said the developer.

High school district trustees were slated to accept the site and approve the agreement on the contributions at their meeting Wednesday but delayed a decision until at least July 21.

“We shouldn’t commit to anything until we have state approval,” said board President Steve Landaker, who also said that from a business perspective Ritter Park’s offer was a good deal for the school district.

The offerings are irrelevant from the perspective of the state Department of Education. Instead, the department is concerned that the proposed school site is in an area rife with slopes of 25-50%, including some above 50%, and close to the power lines.

Betty Hanson, a consultant with the Department of Education’s school facilities planning division, sent a letter Wednesday to the high school district expressing the department’s concerns about the site.

“Because these issues have not been thoroughly reviewed and resolved, I urge the board to postpone the decision and acceptance of this site until these issues have been looked at and compared with other sites that have been previously considered,” Hanson wrote.

Steven Penn, a representative of the Ritter Ranch developer, expressed frustration over Hanson’s letter. The state Department of Education had earlier visited the site and had given “marginal approval,” said district engineer Rich Aitken.

Ritter Park has identified at least two other 50-acre sites for a high school, both of which it said it will sell, rather than give, to the school district.