Ahmanson Ranch Development Concerns
Re: the June 30 article, Babbitt Hails Ahmanson Ranch:
The Ahmanson Ranch developers can’t address Heal the Bay’s watershed concerns. Without public disclosure, the Ahmanson developers grabbed the water rights to Las Virgenes Creek in 1998. Many of the responsible agencies believe that Las Virgenes Creek was to be “non-impacted” as shown in the environmental documentation.
It’s like the children’s book “The Emperor Has No Clothes.” Heal the Bay board members now being lobbied need to be told that the developer is not saving Las Virgenes Creek. That is what is implied by their slick brochures. The developer will be pumping this sensitive ecosystem to serve the water needs of his project. This water rights grab was done without public disclosure and without environmental review. Sadly, this powerful billionaire developer is getting away with it.
This new Ahmanson mini-city in open-space-zoned land will further gridlock commuter routes already at capacity and further dirty our air with 200 tons of smog a year. This development is urban sprawl at its worst in the last large open-space area left in the Greater Los Angeles area, the most park-poor metropolitan area in the nation.
This development is opposed by representatives of more than 9 million people, homeowner groups representing more than 300,000 people and all the environmental groups.
Las Virgenes Creek is the only pristine headwaters of our national park, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. That is why the sensitive red-legged frogs are found nowhere else in the entire SMMNRA zone. You can find out how to help save the integrity of the SMMNRA by standing up to save its headwaters, Las Virgenes Creek, at the Web site https://www.ahmanson.org.
This rich and powerful developer recently tried to shut down this Web site but was handed its first legal defeat by a world court ruling in favor of free speech.
This Web site gives the real facts, not the developer’s lobbyists’ spin, on the Ahmanson Ranch issue.
Mary E. Wiesbrock
Agoura
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