SCOPE Takes on Newhall Ranch in Its Biggest Battle

They have picketed, sued and held a mass funeral for 150 oak trees, some 100 years older than the Declaration of Independence. Protecting the Santa Clarita Valley, with its good schools, clean air and three-spined stickleback fish, from being trampled by frenzied development is their declared mission.

Now the members of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment are in the midst of their biggest battle--an attempt to stop Newhall Ranch, a 25,000-unit residential project that would be, if built, the largest development of its kind in Los Angeles County history.

“We want to save some part of the reasons why we moved here,” said Santa Clarita City Councilwoman Jill Klajic, a founder of the 100-member group. “If we let the flow continue, let the drawbridge down, then [Santa Clarita] will no longer have any value.”

Not everyone agrees with that assessment. In its zeal, SCOPE has managed to anger not only developers but city officials and residents, many of whom say that responsible growth only enhances property values and quality of life.

SCOPE’s goal may also be impossible to achieve. From 1970 to 1990, the city of Santa Clarita’s population doubled from 70,000 to 140,000, and more people are flocking there. Last year, Valencia captured 12% of all new home sales in Los Angeles County. Some experts say that in less than 20 years, the Santa Clarita Valley’s population will quadruple.

Still, SCOPE’s track record in trying to protect Santa Clarita from overcrowding, smog and high crime is impressive.

Since it was founded more than nine years ago, the group has exerted powerful influence on how that valley is being developed. It helped halt a plan to turn Elsmere Canyon, a woodland about five miles south of downtown Santa Clarita, into the nation’s largest dump site. It also thwarted a proposed 250-unit condominium complex on the banks of the Santa Clara River.

But those fights could pale in comparison to the inevitable brawl over the Newhall Ranch project.

If approved, the housing development would bring 70,000 more people to the valley over the course of 25 years, just outside Santa Clarita’s city limits. It would include 10 schools, several shopping centers, a business park and a golf course on a 19-square-mile tract between Six Flags Magic Mountain and the Ventura County line. Six thousand acres would be reserved as open space.

The proposal is pending before the county Planning Commission, which has scheduled its last hearing on the matter for April 23. No decision on approval is expected that day.

The project’s developer, Newhall Land & Farming Co., is Santa Clarita’s largest developer. But SCOPE’s reputation, in its own way, is almost as formidable.

Its members have been called “tree-hugging radicals” and “no-growth extremists.” Yet the group, whose members range from 30 to 82 years old, also comprises aerospace engineers, business owners, television producers and homemakers--including a number of registered Republicans.

One of SCOPE’s most visible and outspoken members, Allan Cameron, has worked as an environmental consultant to developers, according to Lynne Plambeck, a SCOPE vice president. But Cameron has never lobbied members on behalf of his clients, Plambeck said.

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SCOPE was born during the Santa Clarita cityhood movement in 1987, when a few friends including Klajic, aerospace engineer Mike Kotch and Cameron and his wife talked about development issues at one another’s homes over coffee.

Eventually, they helped develop the city’s hillside and oak tree ordinances and were instrumental in initiating the city’s Development Monitoring System, which identifies how much money developers should pay for the schools, roads and other infrastructure made necessary by their projects.

“The thing is, if [SCOPE] wasn’t watching, nobody else would be,” said Councilwoman Jan Heidt. “If nobody asked the questions, the developers wouldn’t bring up the issues.”

In 1992, when Newhall Land & Farming proposed a 1,967-unit housing development in Valencia and was negotiating over funding the new schools its project would require, it was SCOPE that came to the rescue, according to Robert C. Lee, superintendent of the William S. Hart Union High School District.

“I know it was because of SCOPE that the developer finally” agreed to pay a fair share of the schools’ building costs, Lee said. “SCOPE has stepped up to the plate and taken some legal challenges for Santa Clarita’s citizens and they should be grateful.”

In fact, SCOPE successfully sued the county and developer to stop that project, which was known as Westridge and may be resubmitted to the Planning Commission, according to a Newhall Land & Farming spokeswoman.

But it’s that willingness to use litigation to forward its causes that infuriates many of SCOPE’s adversaries. Critics say SCOPE has been too quick to hire lawyers and too slow to compromise.

The group, which pays its legal fees through donations, has already said it may be prepared to go to court over Newhall Ranch. “Sometimes a lawsuit is the only thing” that works, said Kotch, SCOPE’s president.

Marlee Lauffer, spokeswoman for Newhall Land & Farming, said SCOPE has sued the company five times in seven years.

The group “many times judges projects without hearing all the facts,” Lauffer said. “They shoot first and ask questions later. People have asked us why it’s taken so long to make some public improvements to some of our projects. It’s because we’re spending hundreds of hours defending ourselves in court.”

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SCOPE has turned its lawyers on smaller developers, too. It sued Los Angeles County and the city of Santa Clarita in 1995 because two homeowners in rural Sand Canyon, Bill Fredrick and Sharon Kenneally, were trying to build a small bridge near their property.

Fredrick and Kenneally contended that during heavy rains, the Sand Canyon Wash made it impossible to get in or out through their only access road.

Both also acknowledged that they wanted improved access because they were planning to subdivide their properties and build more homes there.

SCOPE said that the city and county failed to conduct the necessary studies to find out if the bridge would be adequate for the area’s growing population.

“There is nothing wrong with wanting to protect the environment,” Kenneally said, “but after listening to SCOPE, hearing what they had to say, they act like they’re soldiers of God, anointed to protect the environment.”

Fredrick said he paid $122,000 in legal fees before the case was settled out of court and the bridge went up.

As part of the settlement, Fredrick had to buy space in a local paper to apologize for publicly calling Kotch and Plambeck “radical extremists.”

Plambeck and Kotch argue that lawsuits are a credible way to make oneself heard when nothing else works.

“What it gets down to,” Kotch said, “is what is going to change the minds of the people making decisions.”