Officials Find Newhall Ranch Study Lacking

A study of a proposed 25,000-home development just outside Santa Clarita virtually ignores the project’s impact on Ventura County, even though the development could put a mini-city of 70,000 just over the county line, officials said Tuesday.

That conclusion forms the basis of a letter Ventura County’s Air Pollution Control Board will send to Los Angeles County officials evaluating the Newhall Ranch project, a planned community that would include shops, 12 parks and an artificial lake west of Santa Clarita.

The Ventura County-Los Angeles County line forms the project’s western border.

Board members and Pollution Control District staff said Tuesday that Newhall Ranch could have a significant impact on air quality and traffic in the Santa Clara River Valley and Ventura County as a whole. But the draft environmental impact report detailing the project’s effects on the environment deals only with Los Angeles County, they said.

“The EIR kind of pretended that Ventura County didn’t exist at all,” said district planner Chuck Thomas.

Los Angeles County’s Department of Regional Planning will accept comments on the report’s current draft until Feb. 11.

A final draft will incorporate those comments.

During a pollution control board meeting Tuesday, members and district staff pointed to a series of what they considered flaws in the report--some described as omissions and others as details that should be addressed.

The report, they said, must examine the effects on Ventura County’s air. Construction, expected to take 25 years, could send dust drifting down the river valley, possibly causing such health problems as San Joaquin Valley fever.

“The health of our citizens will be impacted by this project in many ways, but certainly air is the most important one,” said board member and county Supervisor Kathy Long.

Board members also complained that current projections for the amount of traffic Newhall Ranch will dump onto county roads are too low.

The report states that only 2% of the average daily vehicle trips coming from the new neighborhoods will enter Ventura County, but the Ventura County Transportation Commission believes the actual figure would be closer to 4%. That translates into 15,480 new trips each day on Ventura County roads.

Several board members also complained that by adding pollution to Ventura County’s air, the project would force the county to place tougher controls on local businesses that pollute, in effect punishing county businesses for Newhall Ranch’s pollution.

“It is going to hurt our business economy because we’ll have to become more restrictive to meet state and federal standards,” said Judy Lazar, a board member and mayor of Thousand Oaks.

The air pollution board is made up of the county Board of Supervisors and five city officials from throughout the county. The Board of Supervisors has not taken a position on Newhall Ranch.