Newhall Plan Gets Tacit Approval

The massive, 70,000-resident Newhall Ranch project--the largest single zoning application ever brought before Los Angeles County--took a major step forward Tuesday as the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors held the only public hearing on the matter.

The proposal to build a new town from scratch along the banks of the Santa Clara River near the Ventura County border would involve building 24,300 homes, a water reclamation plant and schools.

Hailed by planners as a revolutionary opportunity to zone and design an entire community, its approval would mean that the powerful, well-connected developer behind it would have the county’s blessing to plop a population larger than that of Redondo Beach along the last natural river in Los Angeles County.

Opposition has been fierce and widespread, including elected officials from nearly all of the surrounding communities. The project also faces the threat of a lawsuit from Ventura County, whose Board of Supervisors has filed an appeal of the L.A. County Regional Planning Commission’s December approval.

At Tuesday’s three-hour hearing, dozens of neighbors, elected officials and others implored the supervisors to extend the public-hearing process and to request that new environmental studies be done.

But when all is said and done, the Newhall Land & FarmingCo., which built the community of Valencia and is a major fixture in the region’s political scene, will probably get to build its city, county insiders said.

County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, whose district includes the proposed site, said he hopes to negotiate with the developer to meet neighbors’ concerns while still allowing Newhall Land to build on the 19-square-mile parcel.

“We need to make sure the infrastructure needs, schools and traffic issues are resolved,” Antonovich said. “And we have to resolve to also protect the . . . property rights of the developer.”

Key area officials--including the head of a Ventura county water district, two Ventura County supervisors, and the mayors of Santa Clarita, Fillmore and other cities--urged the Los Angeles County supervisors not to approve the project in its current form.

The superintendent of the Santa Clarita Valley’s highly regarded Hart High School District said the project would overwhelm the area’s already crowded schools. Newhall Land, he complained, was refusing to pay as much as other developers had paid to help fund the construction of new schools.

Some of the biggest concerns about the project come from Ventura County and highlight what appears to be growing antagonism between that county--where development has mostly been restricted to incorporated cities--and L.A. County, where growth has been in the form of suburban sprawl. Ventura County officials have been protesting the proposal for months and filed an appeal against the Regional Planning Commission’s unanimous approval of it last year.

Newhall Ranch will drain water from four important Ventura aquifers and severely tax the area’s farms, Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn testified Tuesday, as did others.

Frederick Gientke, general manager of the United Water Conservation District, which serves Ventura County, said that unless the developer is required to purchase water from upstate farmers or other providers, the development would drain ground water needed by Ventura County farmers.

“It limits the future of agriculture in Ventura County,” Ojai farmer Jim Churchill said in an interview. He is one of about 70 protesters who came to the hearing on buses chartered by two environmental groups. The project would drive up nearby land prices and drain the area of water, he said, making it almost impossible to continue farming the land.

But Ventura’s pleas for cooperation met with little sympathy from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which a few years ago begged Ventura County to back off on Ahmanson Ranch, a project that affected L.A. county.

“It’s hard for me to rationalize the statements of Ventura County officials,” L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said. “The impacts are very similar [to Ahmanson], when they turned a completely deaf ear to the complaints we had about a project in their county.”

The board declined to schedule additional hearings but voted to accept written testimony through April 10. The supervisors asked L.A. County planners to address the issues raised by the project’s opponents and report back at their May 18 meeting.

“I’d like to think we can carve up a compromise everybody can live with,” Dave Vanatta, Antonovich’s planning deputy, said in an interview. “Ultimately, there will be an approval of something.”

James Harter, vice president of Newhall Land and the company’s lead player on the project, defended Newhall Ranch, which has been in the planning stages for years and would represent the company’s biggest effort.

“Newhall Ranch has been meticulously planned,” Harter said. He argued that far from strapping county funds, it would add to its coffers through sales and property taxes, development fees and construction jobs.

He testified that the project would generate $304 million in taxes and other revenue for L.A. County while it is being built and $21 million annually once it is complete.

Two busloads of opponents, one from Ventura County and the other from Santa Clarita, attended the hearing. They staged a demonstration on the steps outside the hearing room, hoisting signs that criticized the development’s effect on schools, traffic and the environment.

One demonstrator brandished a sign that depicted the San Fernando Valley and Orange County as pieces of toilet paper floating in a commode.

“They’re flushing us down the toilet!” they shouted. A figure representing a politician ripped off another piece of tissue, emblazoned with “Ventura County.”

“The word that keeps coming to mind is arrogance,” said Jeri Andrews of Thousand Oaks, a member of the Conejo Valley chapter of the Sierra Club. “The Los Angeles County politicians act like we don’t matter, like the impact of the development stops at the county line.”