BATTLE OF THE PANHANDLE CHUMASH INDIANS, DEVELOPERS AT ODDS OVER POSSIBLE SETTLEMENT SITE.

Byline: Susan Abram Staff Writer

SAUGUS - Very soon, Mati Waiya plans to revisit the place where his ancestors once lived, aunts and uncles who settled along the banks of the Santa Clara River.

He may come across remnants of his past along the part of the river that meanders through Saugus - relics or burial grounds or pieces of his Chumash heritage. Whatever he finds, Waiya plans to protect it.

``We're looking into a lot of different issues in regard to waterways,'' said Waiya, a Chumash ceremonial priest and executive director of the Ventura County-based environmental group the Wishtoyo Foundation. ``We're looking into cultural protections, and we're going to make sure we're going to enforce them.''

The area Waiya speaks about is known locally as the Panhandle, where the Santa Clara River runs and what environmentalists say is home to scores of plants, animals, birds and even thousands-of-years-old Chumash Indian settlements.

Officials of The Newhall Land and Farming Company envision a housing community there of more than 1,100 homes and apartments, together with some commercial property along Newhall Ranch Road.

An environmental impact report, to be complete by the end of the year, is expected to address any archaeological sites in the area.

Though development on the river is likely to draw criticism by environmentalists, developers have said the river simply will be a focal point of a ``sensitively designed community.''

``We're still in the process of preparing the EIR so we can circulate it,'' said Santa Clarita assistant planner Wendy Deats. ``There is an archaeological section that is being prepared as part of the EIR, but depending on what it says, we'll look at how we can or can't mitigate it.''

Deats said that, despite a Los Angeles Conservancy report last week in which Santa Clarita earned an F grade for preservation efforts, the city has goals and policies in place to preserve any historic resources in the area.

``The California Environmental Quality Act requires us to look at that very closely, to mitigate or to avoid those areas,'' Deats said.

Plans for the project, known as Riverpark and located in the heart of the city and surrounded on all sides by established neighborhoods, include a mixture of homes and retail. Riverpark will be divided by 744 units of multi-unit housing and 439 single-family homes. The commercial component will include 40,000 square feet of retail space. More than 300 acres of the site will remain in its natural state as a buffer between the river and the housing project.

Despite developer proposals to keep some open space intact, local environmentalists say it is not enough and are awaiting completion of the impact report.

Already, local environmentalists were handed a blow this week when a federal court judge ruled in favor of a company planning a massive quarry in Soledad Canyon, saying that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service followed federal laws to protect an endangered fish found in the river.

``People look at that river as some chunk of dirt,'' said Teresa Saviacki, a member of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment. ``The buffer zones are not enough. I think, in Santa Clarita, the developers have long had their way. You can't see our river anymore. Somewhere, we need to draw a line in the sand and say we need open space near the river.''

Susan Abram, [phone]

susan.abram(at)dailynews.com