Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : County Panel OKs Condo Development Along Creek : Santa Clarita: The 195-unit project will be built near Bouquet Creek, prompting concerns about possible flood threats.

The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission on Wednesday tentatively approved a condominium project along a tributary of the Santa Clara River that environmentalists fear will be subject to flooding.

The commission unanimously asked its staff to draft final plans for the 195-unit Arbor Park project to be built on a flood plain next to Bouquet Creek in Valencia.

Most of the creek has been lined with concrete by the developer, Newhall Land and Farming Co., as part of a flood-control plan, but Lynne Plambeck of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment said the lesson learned from the recent flooding of the Mississippi River is that controlling a river is not that easy.

“You don’t tell the river where to go, we’re not gods,” Plambeck said.

Paving of the creek began two years ago, some of it illegally by Newhall Land and Farming, for which the developer was fined $90,000 by the state Department of Fish and Game.

The lining of the creek with concrete, called channelizing, the developer said, had nothing to do with the 20.5-acre Arbor Park and was mandated by county flood-control authorities to protect a bridge near Newhall Ranch Road.

“All of the channelization that has occurred there had been reviewed and approved by all of the appropriate agencies,” said Marlee Lauffer, spokeswoman for Newhall Land and Farming.

But without the channelizing, Lauffer said, the project could not go through.

Others in Plambeck’s group said they fear that the paving of Bouquet Creek is a precursor of things to come and that the Santa Clarita Valley’s waterways will resemble the concrete channel through which to Los Angeles River flows.

“Even if they wanted to restore those creeks in Los Angeles, they can’t,” Pat Saletore said. “That’s not the way we want to develop our valley.”

Santa Clarita city officials said that channelizing the creek, which is just outside the city limits, is contrary to the city’s policies.

“We generally want to support leaving the river as native as possible,” City Planner Don Williams said. “It’s obvious that that is not going to happen with this particular section.”

It was not clear when county planning staff will return to the Regional Planning Commission with a final draft for the Arbor Park development.