Bank Can Help Save Ahmanson Ranch Land

* Re: “Wilson Joins Dispute Over Ahmanson” (Aug. 23).

Home Savings of America has the power to make the right corporate decision and save its irreplaceable 5,000-acre Ahmanson Ranch next to the San Fernando Valley as permanent open space for the millions of San Fernando, Las Virgenes, and Conejo valley residents. With the imminent passage of SB 1280, Home Savings of America can trade Ahmanson Ranch as public parkland for a tax credit on the value of the ranch.

Will Home Savings of America act like the greedy English governor in Disney’s “Pocahontas,” who oversaw the axing down of the trees and digging of deep, scarring holes in pristine American soil for gold? Or will Home Savings make the right corporate decision to preserve its magnificent Ahmanson Ranch with its 8,000 oaks and 400 acres of native grasslands (California’s real gold)?

An appropriate comment summing up the Ahmanson struggle was made by Cardinal Roger Mahony: “Then you see them rearranging mountains and valleys to put in new houses, and I think, geez, why are we taking all these mountains down and filling up the valleys when we really could do some good in our communities?”

It is a huge public relations mistake for Home Savings of America to support moving around 50 million cubic yards of dirt (more than 60 Rose Bowls), which will destroy the hills and valleys of this precious Ahmanson open space. The concrete jungle of the San Fernando Valley critically needs housing redevelopment, not destruction of this 5,000-acre open space airshed and unspoiled wildlife habitat.

Home Savings of America has the power to preserve gorgeous Ahmanson Ranch in its natural state, as did the Native Americans before them. Upon the winds which blow through the native savannas, we wish a happy ending: the preservation of the entire Ahmanson Ranch as the Ahmanson saga draws to an end.

If Home Savings doesn’t save the ranch and our quality of life, then the residents of L.A. and Ventura counties should take their financial business elsewhere, to banks such as Bank of America, which sponsored the governor’s study about unwanted urban sprawl. Home Savings’ planned destruction of Ahmanson Ranch is a perfect example of sprawl that will destroy our region.

MARY WIESBROCK

Agoura

Wiesbrock is the director of Save Open Space/Santa Monica Mountains.