Firm Hired for Study on Planned Project

The county Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to hire a company to do more study on the environmental impact of a long-debated 3,050-unit housing project near Thousand Oaks, prompted in part by the 1999 discovery of an endangered flower and frog on the Ahmanson Ranch property.

The review will supplement an environmental impact report approved in 1992, when Ventura County supervisors signed off on the project.

The board ignored a request by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) that it wait to get more public information, because Supervisor Judy Mikels said there would be plenty of time to dispute the study.

Anti-Ahmanson activists said the new study isn’t adequate and enough time has passed to make the 1992 report obsolete.

“There’s new information of significance requiring major study,” said Mary Wiesbrock, director of Save Open Space, a group opposed to the project.

Supervisors picked Rincon Consultants, which has done work on Santa Paula’s expansion plans and at the Cal State campus near Camarillo, to conduct the study.