Oct 03 2011
Major Development Comes with Murky Financal History, Environmental Degradation
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will be holding a hearing tomorrow on Landmark Village, part of a proposed 21,000 unit Newhall Ranch development along the Santa Clara River in Northern LA County. Developers have been attempting to clear environmental, legal, and financial hurdles for the last 10 years. The project would be one of the largest single residential developments in California’s history. In 2007 the California Public Employees Retirement System (CALPERS) invested $970 million in the project. CalPERS lost its nearly billion dollar stake after the primary developer, Landsource LLC went bankrupt in March 2009. This financial malfeasance is overshadowed by the environmental impacts that the Newhall Ranch Development will have on the last un-channelized free-flowing river in Southern California – the Santa Clara River. The Environmental Protection Agency has classified the river as an Aquatic Resource of National Importance. The river is home to 18 threatened and endangered species, including the California Condor. The entire habitat would suffer from the proposed development, which would see over 20 miles of the river’s tributaries filled with dirt up to 30 feet deep. The Santa Clara River and surrounding areas also serve as major wildlife corridors between the Los Padres National Forest, Angeles National Forests, the Pacific Ocean, and the Santa Monica Mountains. Newhall Ranch developers are far from blind to the beauty of the landscape, using it as a selling point with their slogan, “connecting community to nature.”
GUESTS: Ron Bottorff is founder and Chair of Friends of the Santa Clara River(FSCR) since 1993; Lynne Plambeck is president of SCOPE (Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment) and a sitting board member of Newhall County Water District in the Santa Clarita Valley.
There will be two hearings at the LA County Board of Supervisors, Main Hearing Room, 500 W. Temple St.
Los Angeles 90012:
On Tuesday October 4th at 9 am for the Landmark Village – 1445 units in the floodplain of the Santa Clara River, and on Tuesday October 25th at 9 am for the Mission Village – 4200 units in the once extinct San Fernando Valley Spineflower Preserve area.
Email public comments to: publichearing@bos.lacounty.gov Subject: Attention: Landmark Village/Newhall Ranch
Find out more at www.scope.org and www.fscr.org.
One Response to “Major Development Comes with Murky Financal History, Environmental Degradation”
I read on another website that part of this development would encompass Indian Dunes Park where the horrific Twilight Zone accident occurred in July of 1982. (Actor Vic Morrow and two young children were slaughtered by helicopter that landed on them.)
If that’s true, why would anyone want to live where such a horrible thing happened?
I’ve lived on a site where bad things happened decades earlier (I didn’t know it the time; I was a toddler), and I had nightmares all the time, and both my sister and I saw some scary things.
People who visit the Native American burial ground at Bolsa Chica–also slated for a housing development–have gotten sick (myself included).
Just as we need to convert the weapons industry to peaceful endeavors, we also need to find other ways for developers to make money.