Ahmanson Ranch Project

Re “Ahmanson Ranch Foes Pin Hopes on New Supplemental Impact Study,” Nov. 19.

The communities that surround the proposed “Ahmanson City” and commuters on the Ventura Freeway deserve actual up-to-date traffic figures that include those that would be generated by the Ahmanson Ranch development.

Washington Mutual’s traffic numbers are based on wishful thinking at best.

Ventura County has become Washington Mutual’s lap dog. Repeatedly county officials have looked the other way when pertinent new information has been brought to their attention. They cannot be trusted to be objective and fair.

This is special interest at its worst, profits and tax revenue at the expense of quality of life and the environment. Anyone who lives or commutes in the West [San Fernando] Valley is well aware that traffic on our local streets and the freeway is already overloaded.

What is Washington Mutual hiding from?

The company should prove to the public and officials that its figures are correct by completing a new comprehensive environmental impact report on the entire Ahmanson City development.

JOE BEHAR

President, West Valley

Community Coalition

Woodland Hills

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The never-ending uproar over Ahmanson Ranch requires that we take a larger view.

More than 20 years ago, when the residents of Oak Park undertook to form of our own public school system, we assumed that Ahmanson Ranch (within the territory of the Oak Park Unified School District) would eventually be developed.

The heart of that area--Lasky Mesa--is not virgin open space. Long ago, it was graded and plowed and then used as a tree farm. A major water pipeline already enters Ahmanson Ranch, along with a commitment for a supply of water sufficient to serve the proposed development. The Tapia sewage plant was partially funded with fees levied on that property, fees that guarantee the right to connect houses to sewer lines running to Tapia.

I am not saying that the proposed Ahmanson Ranch project is good. However, the land is not pristine. The owners of that land expended significant funds toward development long before opposition to the project was ever expressed.

Rather than creating legal barriers against the Ahmanson Ranch project, the opponents should do what has been done elsewhere within the Santa Monica Mountains. They should buy the land--at a fair market price--and donate it to the National Park Service to add to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

DAVID E. ROSS

Oak Park