Newhall Ranch Specific Plan

Supervisor Kathy Long’s comments regarding her opposition to the Newhall Ranch Specific Plan (“County Line Defines a Debate About Growth,” April 11) reflect misunderstanding of the terms and conditions of Los Angeles County’s approval of the plan.

Contrary to her statements, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors gave serious consideration to Ventura County’s concerns regarding ground water, affordable housing and traffic.

Our board’s approval of the Newhall Ranch Specific Plan did not approve the issuance of a single building permit or allow for any massive grading or other use of the property. A specific plan only provides a framework for future consideration through the public hearing process of individual subdivision applications or other development permits.

Ms. Long states that the Newhall Ranch developers are not required to pay any traffic mitigation money to Ventura County entities. This is untrue. The mitigation measures specified in the environmental impact report acknowledge that there are impacts in Ventura County and provide for direct payments of several hundred thousand dollars to Ventura County and the city of Fillmore for improvements at key intersections along State Route 126.

She also complains that our board did little to address Ventura’s ground water concerns--dismissing our conditions as “untested assumptions and piecemeal offerings.” (At least she is now acknowledging that we did include conditions; her previous stance was that we ignored the issue.)

Let me be clear as to what we did to address her very legitimate concerns. For starters, we required that the EIR discussion be amplified to provide a more detailed explanation of Newhall Ranch’s source of supply. We then noted that the Castaic Lake Water Agency was acquiring 41,000 acre-feet of additional supplies for the upper Santa Clara River Valley--including this location.

We also required the developer at the time he files his subdivision map to fully disclose his specific source of supply and to demonstrate that it would not adversely affect downstream supplies. We also required that there be an annual water study done for the upper Santa Clara River Valley and, at the request of Ventura County’s own United Water Conservation District, we required the addition of another monitoring station at Blue Cut in the Santa Clara River. The applicant has demonstrated that his source will be imported supplies, surface water flows to which he is entitled, and reclaimed water. Our conditions of approval require that he adhere to that principle.

Ms. Long conveniently ignores one of the chief differences between the Newhall Ranch development and her own Ahmanson Ranch project. Newhall Ranch will depend upon services and infrastructure within its own county. Ahmanson Ranch--in Ventura County--requires use of Los Angeles County roads and other infrastructure exclusively. One cannot get to Ahmanson Ranch except by using streets in Los Angeles County. It will be essentially an island within Los Angeles County.

So much for the concern for protecting boundaries and quality of life.

MICHAEL D. ANTONOVICH

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors