Judge Upholds Newhall Ranch Water Report

In a setback for opponents of the 21,600-home Newhall Ranch subdivision, a Kern County judge this week rejected a legal challenge to a water report that clears the way for future development of the Santa Clarita Valley, water officials announced Wednesday.

A lawsuit brought by environmental groups and Ventura County in 2001 accused the Castaic Lake Water Agency and three other local water agencies of overstating water supplies and underestimating growth projections for the next two decades.

But on Tuesday, Kern County Superior Court Judge Richard Oberholzer let the water districts’ projections stand.

Mary Lou Cotton, a Castaic Lake Water Agency spokeswoman, said the ruling showed “we don’t pull numbers out of thin air. And we know how to manage our local water supplies.”

Plaintiffs Friends of the Santa Clara River and the Sierra Club share Ventura County’s concerns about the booming development occurring in the Santa Clarita Valley and its potential to suck up precious ground water. They are particularly worried about Newhall Ranch, which would be built on the Ventura County line, along the banks of the Santa Clara -- one of only two natural rivers remaining in Southern California.

Stephan Volker, an attorney for the environmental groups, plans to appeal the decision, saying the 2000 water report in which the projections were made was an “exercise in duplicity.”

The projections, he said, relied on water supplies that were nonexistent, or were contaminated by ammonium perchlorate, a cancer-causing byproduct of rocket fuel that has shut down five Santa Clarita Valley wells.

“The report is smoke and mirrors, with the result that the public will pay a very steep price, either with contaminated water, or over drafted ground water and dried-up rivers,” Volker said.

The other defendants named in the suit were the Newhall County Water District, Santa Clarita Water Co. and the Valencia Water Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Newhall Land & Farming Co., the developer of Newhall Ranch.

The plaintiffs argued that the water agencies should use housing estimates from the Southern California Assn. of Governments, which predicted the valley would see 5,300 new homes per year.

Using their own methods, water officials predicted that 2,240 homes would be built per year through 2020, Cotton said.

Water officials also contend the valley should be able to receive up to 95,200 acre-feet of water per year from the State Water Project, and up to 52,000 acre-feet from local wells. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons, enough water to supply two average-size families for a year.

The plaintiffs contend that much of the state supply is “paper water” that would be available only in the rosiest of scenarios. And Volker said the contamination of the local wells threw the availability of that water in question.

Cotton said the judge was won over by the water agencies’ ongoing attempts to characterize the extent of the contamination and efforts to finance the cleanup.