Payment OKd for Ahmanson Road Improvements

In a move that may speed groundbreaking on the massive Ahmanson Ranch project and settle the last of 15 lawsuits, Ventura County supervisors Tuesday approved a plan for the developer to pay $1.3 million to the city of Calabasas for street improvements instead of doing the work itself.

The change to the nearly 5-year-old development agreement was approved on a 4-1 vote.

The project, which is to be built just over the county line west of the San Fernando Valley and southeast of Simi Valley, calls for 3,050 homes, 400,000 square feet of commercial space, two golf courses and a 300-room hotel.

But development has been stalled since plans were first approved by Ventura County supervisors in late 1992, and will remain so until the developer can negotiate the purchase of private land to be set aside as public open space, a condition of the board’s original approval.

Ahmanson Land Co. officials said they were encouraged by the vote, which will likely help speed negotiations to acquire 7,300 acres of private ranchland and turn it over to public ownership.

“It might speed up the project, but it gives Calabasas more local control over the timing” of the road improvements, Ahmanson Land Co. consultant Don Brackenbush said. “It takes the pressure off Ahmanson Ranch if we can just fund the improvements rather than do them.”

Opponents of the project implored the board Tuesday to order new soil tests on the land because they are worried that years of nuclear research at Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory--located 2 miles away from the development--have tainted soil and ground water.

Project foes fear that without further tests, the future residents of Ahmanson Ranch could be prone to cancer clusters and birth defects, and that county taxpayers could be held legally responsible.

“The fact is Ventura County will be liable for not determining that the Ahmanson Ranch soil and ground water is safe,” said Mary E. Wiesbrock, director of Save Open Space, a leading critic of the project.

Supervisors, however, remained silent on the request for more testing, assured by planning officials that there is no substantial evidence to suggest that ground water or soils are polluted.

“I’m not stunned or amazed by it,” said John Buse, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Center. “I think our argument was a modest one. It’s simply that public agencies . . . should err on the side of caution.”

The city of Calabasas, which remains embroiled in litigation with Ahmanson Land Co., took no position on the plan.

Since it was approved in December 1992, the Ahmanson Ranch project has been the subject of 15 lawsuits, nine of which unsuccessfully sought to overturn the board’s approval of the project on grounds that formal studies used to gauge environmental impacts were flawed.

Ahmanson Land Co. prevailed in all nine cases, as well as two more filed by the city of Calabasas and the Mountain View Estateowners Assn. Those two lawsuits sought to overturn the board’s decision to give the developer more time to acquire the public open space lands in light of the heavy litigation.

Ahmanson Ranch also prevailed in three of four lawsuits it filed against the city of Calabasas over roadway access plans.

The fourth suit is the only litigation still alive. It challenges Calabasas’ approval of a General Plan that the developer alleges to contain policies intended to block development at Ahmanson Ranch.

Ahmanson officials said Tuesday that the supervisors’ vote on the road-work fee was encouraging, and will probably allow them to dispose of the final lawsuit against the city of Calabasas.