Critics Warn of Newhall Ranch’s Local Impacts

Opponents of the 24,000-unit Newhall Ranch development continued voicing objections to the massive project at a public hearing Wednesday, contending the developer has not sweetened the deal enough to reduce its negative impacts on the Santa Clarita Valley and neighboring Ventura County.

They testified before the Los Angeles County Planning Commission, which is considering whether to recommend that the L.A. County Board of Supervisors accept a development agreement with the Newhall Land & Farming Co., the project’s developer.

While much of the meeting was spent addressing concerns from Los Angeles-area groups, Ventura County residents expressed concern over the project’s effect on the Santa Clara River.

Carla Bard, an analyst with the Environmental Defense Center, a public interest law firm with an office in Ventura, warned against permitting Newhall to install an insufficient waste-treatment plant it has planned.

“Sounds like an outhouse to me,” Bard said after the meeting. “We are going to be receiving their sewage and I want to be sure that water has been treated [with] the highest and best technology, and that is usually expensive. We deserve no less.”

Bard and Ron Bottorff, chairman of Friends of the Santa Clara River, predicted the runoff of oils, fertilizers and other pollutants would be disastrous to the steelhead trout, which spawn in the river and were put on the federal endangered species list last month.

“This issue has to be dealt with,” Bard said. “They can’t duck it anymore and they have.”

Newhall Land has proposed building enough homes to house up to 70,000 people on a 12,000-acre site along California 126, filling in much of the open space between the Magic Mountain amusement park and the Ventura County line.

Commissioner Esther Feldman directed Planning Commission staff members to enlist more help in learning the impacts on the fish, and any other impact affecting Ventura County, a sign Bard found encouraging.

“It appears to me there seems to be a growing sense, both in L.A. and Ventura counties, that something serious is afoot here and needs to be checked,” she said.

Many of the project’s opponents told commissioners before they make any recommendation, Newhall Land must reach deeper into its pockets.

“They are required to fully mitigate the impacts [of population growth] to schools and libraries,” said Lynne Plambeck, spokeswoman for the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment [SCOPE]. “And it’s the service providers, like the sheriff’s and fire departments, that decide how much money is needed.”

Wendy Wiles, an attorney representing the William S. Hart Union High School District, which is negotiating with Newhall Land over the cost of junior and senior high schools inside Newhall Ranch, said the Hart district wants the county to reject a proposal in the development agreement that would “usurp the school district’s authority.”

Under Newhall Land’s proposed agreement--in clauses that would kick in if the company and the Hart district are unable to hash out a subsidy for schools--the company would impose expensive conditions on its support for schools.

“Under their proposal, we would be the ones jumping through the hoops,” Wiles said.

Marlee Lauffer, a spokeswoman for Newhall Land, said the company has offered to pay the Hart District $5,063 per housing unit, a figure that would build a better school than even state standards recommend.

“The company and the school district basically agree on what a good school costs,” Lauffer said.

“But they want a football stadium, a swimming pool and [auditorium] that would serve the whole community. We don’t think we should be charged for something the whole community, not just our development, will use.”

The public hearings on the project are scheduled to continue in downtown Los Angeles Oct. 22.