Environmental Study Urged on Ahmanson

Prompted by the recent discovery of an endangered flower and frog on the Ahmanson Ranch property, Ventura County planners are recommending more environmental study of a long-debated 3,050-unit housing project near Thousand Oaks.

Senior planner Dennis Hawkins said Monday his department will be asking the Board of Supervisors in the next few weeks for roughly $50,000 for a consultant’s study on how to protect the California red-legged frog and the San Fernando Valley spineflower, and the potential ripple effects of those measures.

That review would supplement an environmental impact report approved in 1992, when Ventura County supervisors signed off on the project. The Ahmanson development, which would add 10,000 residents to the area, includes two golf courses, a school and commercial complex, parks, trails and open space on rolling hills abutting the Los Angeles County line.

A spokesman for Washington Mutual Inc., the parent company of Ahmanson Land Co., said it agrees with the county.

“We think a supplemental environmental impact report is appropriate in light of the discovery of these species and the conservation plans we have developed for them,” Tim McGarry said.

But Mary Wiesbrock, director of Save Open Space and a leader of opposition to the project, said a supplemental report is not good enough. Instead, Wiesbrock, whose Agoura Hills home is not far from Ahmanson Ranch, is urging officials to throw out the 1992 report and start over, saying information is outdated and inadequate.

Meanwhile, Supervisor Frank Schillo, who has been under pressure by Wiesbrock and others to oppose the development located in his district, issued a statement supporting the additional review.

Schillo said he wants critics to know he is not beholden to developers, as they have suggested. Wiesbrock responded that the Thousand Oaks supervisor was “grandstanding” and that if he really had concerns, he too would push for an entirely new assessment. Several county officials said a full review is unnecessary and would guarantee a lawsuit.

State law requires a supplemental review when significant new information comes forth. The discovery last summer of the species fits into that category, county planners and Ahmanson officials said.

The planning department’s recommendation was triggered when developers last month submitted mapping plans for the first phase of the project located on the southeastern quadrant of the ranch.

Hawkins said the initial phase cannot be reviewed until the county evaluates how Ahmanson’s proposed modifications--intended to protect the frogs and spineflowers--would affect other plants and animals, air and water quality, fire hazards and the gas and oil lines that run across the property.

The changes would shift proposed roads north of Laskey Mesa, the area the spineflowers were discovered, and could affect drainage in a different area of the project, where the frogs live, planners said.

The review also would investigate other concerns, such as the flow of water into a nearby creek and the health effects to area residents of the diesel fumes that construction equipment would emit during more than a decade of construction.

If supervisors approve the request, at least three months of public hearings and review would be conducted before Ahmanson gets preliminary approval for the first phase. At 871 acres, that phase would include 658 homes, a golf course and clubhouse, commercial property and an elementary school.

Since 1992, environmentalists and several Los Angeles County officials have attempted to block the project. While it could generate a spike in property tax revenue for Ventura County government, officials in Los Angeles say that most of the traffic will spill into the western San Fernando Valley, adding perhaps 45,000 cars a day.

Schillo said Wiesbrock and others are out to make him look like “a bad guy” because he isn’t trying to block the project.

In recent months, he said, a video being run on public-access television in Thousand Oaks tells residents to call and urge him to oppose the project. He gets four or five angry calls a week, he said.

After years of lawsuits that have favored Ahmanson’s developers, opposing the project is like “spitting into the wind,” Schillo said.

“They have a right to do it, and if we vote against them they’ll just take us to court and we’ll spend money in court and we’ll lose,” he said.