Fears Over Newhall Ranch Project Spill Into County

When Ventura County officials in 1992 approved the $1-billion Ahmanson Ranch development on the Los Angeles County border, environmentalists as well as Los Angeles municipal and county officials raced off to court to stop it.

Four years later, two of those lawsuits are unresolved and the fears over increased traffic and environmental damage remain.

Now, Ventura County officials are expressing concern about Newhall Ranch, a similar yet even larger development of 70,000 people under consideration just across the county line in Los Angeles County.

Environmentalists who fought Ahmanson Ranch--and are gearing up to oppose Newhall Ranch--see the stance of Ventura County officials as hypocritical.

“Their decision on Ahmanson Ranch has come back to haunt them at Newhall Ranch,” said Vince Curtis, an Oak Park resident and director of Friends of Ahmanson Ranch. “They are all for Ahmanson, but apparently they’re opposing Newhall Ranch. They have no conscience when it comes to making environmental decisions.”

Not surprisingly, Ventura County officials take exception to that characterization.

County officials contend they studied and found solutions to traffic and other problems associated with Ahmanson Ranch’s impact on Los Angeles County. But the preliminary environmental analysis for Newhall Ranch conducted by Los Angeles County virtually dismisses or underestimates its effect on Ventura County, officials and environmentalists say.

“They basically ignored us,” said Ron Bottorff, chairman of the Friends of the Santa Clara River, an environmental group that champions preservation of the last free-flowing waterway in Southern California. “They don’t need to pay attention to us. We have no jurisdictional authority over this development.”

Los Angeles County officials have a slightly different perspective on the two projects.

“There’s similarity in that traffic impacts from Newhall Ranch may occur in Ventura County,” said Barry Witler, who as head of the transportation planning division for the Los Angeles County Public Works Department has studied both projects. “Unique though is that 100% of the traffic leaving the Ahmanson Ranch would be entering L.A. County. That is not true of Newhall Ranch.”

If approved, the Newhall Ranch development would be the largest master-planned community in Los Angeles County history. Over the next 25 to 30 years, the project would extend the sprawl of Los Angeles over another 19 square miles into an area that is mostly open space but is also used for farming, oil drilling and ranching.

Flood Plain Housing

Five distinct villages would be carved between the hillsides of the Santa Susana Mountains and the woodlands near the Santa Clara River. Portions of the area along the river’s course through the rural valley and in the mountains have been declared significant ecological areas by the state and include the habitat of two endangered species. The planners say they will largely avoid those areas.

But what has also raised the concerns of opponents is that plans call for building housing in portions of the river’s flood plain.

So while environmentalists worry about losing Southern California’s last wild river, local residents fear the possibility of flooding during heavy storms. And downstream, questions are being raised about the project’s effect on everything from air quality and traffic to affordable housing and urban runoff.

Ventura County officials are concerned enough about the project to spend $80,000 studying the development’s potential impact.

Newhall’s environmental concerns have been questioned before. In 1991, the company agreed to pay nearly $400,000 in fines and repair costs after it altered the course of two tributaries and the river above the proposed development and disturbed the habitat of the two endangered species.

The Newhall Ranch project is now pending before the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission, which rarely rejects developments. But even if the development gets quick county approval, it might take several years before various state and federal agencies also sign off and construction could begin. The politically influential developer, Newhall Land & Farming Co., hopes to break ground in 2000.

But as backers of Ahmanson Ranch discovered, lawsuits can delay those plans. And environmentalists already anticipate that litigation will occur in an effort to prevent construction of Newhall Ranch. The potential for conflict between officials of the neighboring counties and legal action are only two of several similarities between the projects.

Newhall Land is marketing Newhall Ranch as “a community by nature.”

The company plans to spare all but 4% of the area’s 16,316 oak trees, and company officials say they will use the river as the centerpiece of the development. That means the river will not be diverted. Nor will it be encased in concrete--though some critics see little difference with the rock riprap that is planned to line a portion of its length.

Further, Newhall says the development would actually expand the habitat of the endangered Bell’s vireo, a bird that lives in the willow trees along the river, and the three-spined stickleback fish that live upriver, by replacing the farmland along the river banks with open space.

Nearly half the land around the 25,218-home development would be devoted to open space, including an extensive trail system and an artificial 15-acre lake surrounded by the spectacular Santa Susanas, where coyotes can still be heard howling at night.

Under the plan, residents will live in densely populated villages with names such as Riverwood and Oak Valley that boast a variety of housing styles to add variety, and an 18-hole golf course.

Planners believe business parks adjacent to most of the villages would encourage residents to walk or bicycle to work instead of commuting. For the young and restless, there would be action a short jaunt away at the town center in the form of shops, restaurants and night life.

“What we found,” said James Harter, executive vice president of the project, “is that people wanted to live in a small town with all the amenities of a big city.”

Traffic Concerns

Ahmanson Ranch is a 3,050-home development planned for the rolling hills south of Simi Valley that has a similar neo-traditionalist theme. As a condition of approval, county officials insisted that 10,000 acres of open space, including 2,600 acres within the tract itself, become public parkland.

The project also includes two schools and golf courses, and 400,000 square feet of commercial and industrial space within a 10-minute walk or bicycle ride from every home.

“The whole concept was one could live here and manage to avoid a great deal of the auto trips that have been associated with a single tract development,” said Don Brackenbush, president of Ahmanson Land Co.

Nevertheless, traffic associated with the project provoked some of the numerous lawsuits filed against Ventura County by Calabasas, Los Angeles County and others. Ventura County officials say they conducted detailed studies of the traffic the development would cause. Developers will pay more than $6 million for new roads and other improvements in surrounding communities as a result.

“I believe it’s unique in California,” Brackenbush said. “I don’t know of a single other community that’s paying money across intergovernmental boundaries to pay for improvements.”

In contrast, while Newhall’s developer will cough up the money to turn California 126 in Los Angeles County into a six-lane expressway, there are no such plans for the stretch of highway in Ventura County.

The project’s engineers have determined that existing plans to widen California 126 from two lanes to four are sufficient to handle the additional traffic from Newhall Ranch.

That presumes a mere 2% of traffic from the project heads west--an assumption county Planner Scott Ellison believes is a gross underestimation.

“The suspicion is that it’s very convenient that after all this analysis they hit exactly their standard, and if they were one car over that standard they would have to widen 126 to six lanes,” he said.

Preliminary modeling conducted by Ventura County Transportation Commission analysts suggests as many as 8,000 vehicles a day could come from Newhall Ranch, double the developers’ estimate. About 18,000 vehicles already travel the road daily.

“Because we have no control, we can’t require them to do the same sorts of things we could require Ahmanson to do,” said Supervisor Maggie Kildee, who represents the part of Ventura County next to Newhall Ranch.

The traffic volume emanating from Newhall Ranch undermines the assertion it is planned as a self-contained community that will not lead to the sorts of problems associated with urban sprawl, said Jim Churchill, an Ojai grower with an interest in land preservation.

“They say that 52% of the people that live there will work there, but that means 48% of the people that will live there will not work there,” he said. “It would be a shame in 25 years if the Santa Clara River Valley looks like the San Fernando Valley.”

Company officials say Newhall Ranch will be a “good neighbor” to Ventura County. And municipal officials in Fillmore, the county city nearest the project, have not come out strongly against it.

Newhall officials have worked closely with their Fillmore counterparts and have agreed to some improvements to intersections in the city.

Fillmore Mayor Roger Campbell--who received $1,150 in contributions from Newhall officials out of a total of about $86,000 during his failed campaign for county supervisor--believes the project is for the most part a sensible development of a “pretty desolate area.”

Moreover, Newhall Ranch would bring tens of thousands of potential visitors within easy marketing reach of a community remaking itself for tourists.

“That type of development is not something I would like to see in Ventura County, but the development is not in Ventura County,” Campbell said. “I think it’s going to be an economic benefit to our community with a very minimal amount of negative effect.”

But irreversible growth caused by a project at the door of a valley often described as possessing the last remnants of Southern California’s once extensive citrus orchards is a major concern to others.

Santa Clara Valley

Company officials maintain they have no plans to develop the 15,900 acres they own in Ventura County next to Newhall Ranch even in the “distant future.” Moreover, existing county policies preventing the conversion of agricultural land to urban uses would make development difficult.

But Bill Fulton, a Ventura-based land-use expert who writes a newsletter on development issues, believes Newhall Ranch raises fundamental questions about the future of the Santa Clara Valley.

Ahmanson Ranch makes sense, Fulton says, because it is adjacent to heavily populated areas. He adds that Newhall Ranch would create a new growth dynamic, increasing land values and bringing urban pressures to a rural valley.

Even at more than 30 miles away from Newhall Ranch in Ventura, municipal planner Marion Thompson worries that such pressures could undermine measures enacted last year to preserve city farmland.

“If the county starts losing its ag land, will it domino to where the city will lose its ag land?” she asked.

Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, does not necessarily subscribe to the notion that construction of Newhall Ranch makes the loss of Ventura County agricultural land inevitable.

“As long as there’s a commitment to preserving Ventura County the way we know it today, I don’t see it as a fait accompli,” he said. “Rather than wringing our hands over every acre [of farmland] that is converted, we should be wringing our hands over whether it is done in an orderly fashion.”

Fulton says that is naive.

“My personal opinion is that the Santa Clara Valley cannot be protected by land-use regulation alone,” he said.

Litigation will not offer long-term protection either. Lawsuits--the only recourse for disputes between agencies--tend to merely delay projects, Fulton said, citing Ahmanson as an example. The general trend in California is for courts to side with developers, he said.

Instead, he believes the county will be forced to take a proactive stance if it wants to save agriculture in the region. For instance, Suffolk County on Long Island has passed bond measures to buy up development rights and preserve farmland from becoming an extension of New York City.

And Newhall Ranch may also be symptomatic of a greater threat facing Ventura County.

“This project represents only 20% to 30% of the growth they’re planning in the Santa Clarita Valley and that’s what scares the county staff,” Ellison said.

Nick Green is a Times correspondent. Timothy Williams is a staff writer.

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The Newhall Ranch Project

* Projected population: 70,000.

* Size: 11,963 acres.

* Number of units: 25,218.

* Open space: 5,852.

* Neighborhood parks: 274 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 to 30 years after construction begins.