Development to Affect County, Planners Warn : Newhall Ranch: Officials fear spillover from the massive housing project near Santa Clarita. But builder says there are no plans to extend across the line.

Although the developer of the massive Newhall Ranch project near Santa Clarita has no immediate plans to build in nearby Ventura County, local planners warned Wednesday that the development will affect area communities and eventually spill over into the region.

“People need to get educated about the fact that this project is being built on the Ventura County line,” said Janis McCormick, who heads the Local Agency Formation Commission. The state-sponsored commission, which regulates changes in boundaries for Ventura County cities, has no say in whether the project is approved.

“This is the future,” McCormick said. “This is a landowner with major holdings on both sides of the county line. I’m positive that they’re eventually going to develop on our side.”

During a meeting of the commission in Ventura on Wednesday, representatives of the Newhall Land & Farming Co. presented the developer’s plans to transform a 19-square-mile tract of ranchland into a community of 70,000 residents.

The sprawling project would be built on 12,000 acres along a five-mile stretch of the border separating Los Angeles and Ventura counties. It would include nearly 25,000 homes, 10 schools, several shopping centers, a business park and a golf course.

Although the developer owns an additional 15,000 acres of farmland in Ventura County, Newhall Vice President James M. Harter assured the commission that there are no plans at this time to extend the development into the county.

Harter said later that he believed the project, which would be built over the next 25 years, actually would relieve pressure to develop in Ventura County because of the housing it would provide.

But he stopped short of ruling out any future development plans for Ventura County. “Who knows what the world will be like in 20 years,” he said.

McCormick and others said the giant housing project poses more immediate air, water and traffic concerns to residents in nearby Piru, Fillmore and Santa Paula. The Santa Clara River and California 126 link both counties.

“I think people need to understand that the county line doesn’t protect them in terms of growth and the environment,” McCormick said.

Fillmore Mayor Linda Brewster agreed, saying that traffic along heavily traveled California 126 is bound to worsen. By adding more traffic to the highway, she said, she fears that the Newhall Ranch development will slowly erode the rural lifestyle of Fillmore and Piru residents.

“The environment we have is the reason we live here,” she said. “We have this beautiful place where you can see the mountains when you drive in. We’re basically selfish and want it to stay this way.”

Harter predicted that the project’s effects on the county would be minimal. He noted that plans call for a four-mile section of California 126 in Los Angeles County to be widened to six lanes to ease the flow of traffic traveling to and from the Golden State Freeway. He said land has also been set aside for a Metrolink commuter rail station that could eventually connect the Los Angeles community with Ventura.

But Brewster said the Newhall Ranch project is so enormous that more steps need to be taken to reduce the development’s impacts on surrounding communities.

“The things they’re doing are not out of the goodness of their heart,” she said. “They’re doing these things because they have to.”

The environmental impact report on the ranch project is expected to be completed next spring, Harter said, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will probably review the report and the project itself in the fall of 1996.

In the meantime, the developer is soliciting input from Ventura County officials to include in the environmental document, even though the county will have no say over its final approval.

Newhall Land officials plan to make another presentation of the ranch project at 5 p.m. today at the Arroyo Vista Recreation Center in Moorpark.

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The Newhall Ranch Project Projected Population: 70,000 Size: 12,000 acres. Number of units: 24,700, 55% of which will be attached. Open space: 5,400 acres. Neighborhood parks: 170 acres. Other amenities: A lake, 200- acre business park and golf course. Schools: One high school, one middle school and eight elementary schools. Projected completion date: 2023, 25 years after construction begins.