With Newhall Ranch, What We Don’t Know Disheartens

It is sound advice to recommend a regional approach to planning Newhall Ranch and to include impacts on Santa Clarita and Ventura County in the mix. However, it is disheartening to see how little is actually known about the flaws in this ill-conceived mega-development and the denial of reality that permeates the approval process going on in Los Angeles County.

The most important criteria for housing developments in California, “the disaster theme park of America,” is how the homes to be built will connect to the ground. That includes, first, title to the land; second, the seismic stability of the area; third, potential for flood hazard from man-made and natural causes; and, fourth, suitability of the land for development.

Only after these basic land requirements are met should we consider the numerous other environmental impacts: urban sprawl, channelizing of the Santa Clara River, water supply, air pollution, waste disposal, downstream aquifer pollution, traffic, infrastructure, schools, etc.

The Newhall Ranch development fails all of the above.

At the March 24 hearing before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, three qualified appellants were heard: the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, the city of Santa Clarita and the Sespe Indian Resource Center.

The latter was represented by John Tommy Rosas, president, and three expert witnesses: Dora P. Crouch, an archeologist / hydrologist; Kaye R. McCown, a geologist; and myself.

Testimony of this group brought out that:

* The Newhall Ranch development violates historic U.S. treaties and may desecrate on-site Native American villages, burial grounds and sacred areas. Mr. Rosas is preparing a federal action on an adjudication for these Native American lands.

* In 1994, after the Northridge earthquake, the slopes of the Santa Susanas and mountains north of the Santa Clara River were declared by two U.S. Geological Survey geologists to be among the most seismically unstable in the world. They stated, “Future development of these slopes may create one of the most hazardous situations in the greater Los Angeles area during future earthquakes.”

* Rather than the Castaic Dam being the only “dam break inundation hazard” affecting the Newhall Ranch development, as stated in the draft environmental impact report, there are four dams in the Santa Clara River watershed: Piru, Pyramid, Castaic and Bouquet Canyon. Their total reservoir volume is 648,000 acre-feet, or 17 times the size of the St. Francis Dam reservoir that failed March 12, 1928, killing 450 people. The 70th anniversary of that event was just memorialized.

* Reliable sources of water for Newhall Ranch have not been identified. It is assumed that “flood flows” (excess water) would be available for aquifer storage. Average quantities are used for the analysis, and under drought conditions the demand would exceed the supply. The planned injection of excess flows into the aquifer could result in contamination of the aquifer, since storage would be in an oil-bearing underground formation.

* Newhall Ranch has a great many geological and seismic problems that have yet to be addressed. There are numerous surface and buried faults mapped from the many oil and gas wells on the property.

* After the Northridge earthquake, dust raised by thousands of landslides in the Santa Susana Mountains caused the first-ever earthquake-induced valley fever epidemic. Massive grading of the project site to mitigate seismically unstable land will require 95,000,000 cubic yards of earth to be excavated and moved.