Agency Seeks Monitoring of Newhall Water

A Ventura County official proposed a program Monday to test ground water supplies around the upper Santa Clara River, where developers of the massive Newhall Ranch suburb insist they can marshal enough water to supply the new community.

The planned mini-city in the Santa Clarita Valley would not only need enough to satiate up to 70,000 people who may someday live in its 21,600 homes, but enough to sustain them without desiccating Ventura County’s citrus groves to the west.

Last June, a judge blocked the project until the developer can prove there is adequate water for the project.

On Monday, a Ventura County water agency that had sued to halt the development proposed using more wells, regular monitoring and a new database to better measure how much water flows through underground aquifers and surface streams--and how clean it is.

Steve Bachman, ground-water manager for the United Water Conservation District in Santa Paula, described the plan at a hearing of the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission. The commission is considering whether to approve the latest environmental reports by Newhall Land and Farming Co., which conducted further studies of water availability to comply with the court order.

“The primary concern has always been that any additional ground-water pumping in the Santa Clarita area could have an effect on the water that ends up flowing to Ventura County,” Bachman told the commission. He said United plans to team up with other local water agencies, including the Castaic Lake Water Agency, Newhall County Water District, and Valencia Water Co., to collect data.

Dana Wisehart, United’s general manager, asked the planning commission to require the monitoring program as a condition of approval for Newhall Ranch.

In other testimony, about a dozen speakers objected to the proposed development. Several Santa Clarita homeowners raised concerns that increased pumping could spread a plume of polluted water throughout the Saugus aquifer, an underground basin where Newhall hopes to inject water for later use.

“I think before this project is approved, they ought to have a cleanup plan in place,” said Berta Gonzalez-Harper of Santa Clarita. “And who’s going to pay for it? If it’s my money, I want to have a say.”

Newhall officials are expected to respond in detail to the concerns during the commission’s Aug. 27 meeting.. If the new environmental plans are approved, they head to the Board of Supervisors and then back to the judge who ordered them.

The project has been knocked several years off schedule by court challenges from Ventura County and environmental groups. Construction of Newhall Ranch’s first housing tract is on hold until 2003.