Bid to Stop Westridge Project a Long Shot : Development: Environmentalists’ case aims to pressure the county to better protect significant ecological areas.

Environmentalists appear likely to fail in their appeal of a ruling permitting the construction of the 1,890-unit Westridge project on an ecologically sensitive area of valley oaks and savanna grasses.

Lawyers for the developer of the 799-acre project, which includes a county-designated significant ecological area, filed a motion to dismiss the appeal last week, said a spokeswoman for Newhall Land and Farming Co.

Environmentalists originally sued the company and Los Angeles County last year over the Westridge development in an attempt to force the county to better protect the 61-component system of ecological areas.

In September, Superior Court Judge Robert O’Brien ruled against the environmentalists on the issue but found that inadequate attention was paid to the project’s impact on air quality. Further, he said the county gave “only lip service” to its own requirements that schools and libraries will be adequate to serve the development.

Last month, environmentalists appealed the ruling, and it is that appeal that now appears dead.

“We’re hoping that the court dismisses the appeal and that will allow us to continue to address the issues that the judge asked us to review before,” said Carol Maglione, a spokeswoman for Newhall Land.

For the Westridge project to continue, Newhall Land must submit a revised environmental impact report to the county addressing its impact on air quality, schools and libraries, a process that company officials say could take a year.

Newhall Land’s motion to deny the appeal alleges that lawyers for the environmentalists missed the filing deadline for the action.

“We had a strange, bizarre course of events where one partner was out of the country and another was at the hospital,” said Susan Durbin, an attorney for the law firm Strumwasser & Woocher, which handled the case for local environmentalists. “I got to the court clerk’s window five minutes late.”

Durbin acknowledged that the appeal appears all but dead.

Environmentalists had hoped to make Westridge a test case to force the county to better protect the ecological system, a network of 61 areas throughout the county with unique habitats.

“I’m sure Newhall Land and Supervisor Michael Antonovich are ecstatic, but it’s a real loss to the people of the Santa Clarita Valley,” said Lynne Plambeck of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “It means we’ve lost the last valley oaks savanna.”