GREENBELT AROUND CITY TO EXPAND; CONSERVANCY ACQUIRING 500 ACRES FROM BROWNING FERRIS.

Byline: Erin Gebroe Daily News Staff Writer

With new homes and businesses sprouting as fast as weeds in a grassy field, the city is striving to preserve a piece of why many people moved here in the first place - to escape urban grime.

The desire to preserve open space has materialized with the ongoing creation of a greenbelt of undeveloped land surrounding the city. Land is purchased, thereby rescuing it from private development, through a partnership between the city and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

``We want to maintain that small-town feeling, a feeling of country,'' said Rick Putnam, city director of Parks and Recreation.

The next piece of the perimeter will be filled during the next few months with 500 acres the conservancy is acquiring from Browning Ferris waste management company, said Rorie Skei, the conservancy's deputy director for natural resources and planning.

Browning Ferris Industries had to donate the land in the Santa Clarita Woodlands in exchange for permission to expand the Sunshine Canyon landfill in Granada Hills, Skei said.

The idea for the greenbelt started in Santa Clarita's General Plan, which was adopted in June 1991. In 1993, the city joined with the conservancy to form the Santa Clarita Watershed Recreation and Conservation Authority.

The conservancy then buys land with Los Angeles County and state bond money and private donations, Skei said.

With the current acquisition from Browning Ferris, the conservancy will own 4,000 acres of the Santa Clarita Woodlands, the dense forest visible on the west side of the Golden State Freeway.

``It's very comforting, very relaxing, very pleasing to the eye to cross over the Newhall pass into the San Fernando Valley and see preserved area on either side,'' Putnam said. ``It's important to keep that perimeter.''

If the city is looked at like a triangle pointing south, the Woodlands make up the triangle's eastern side.

On the west side and top of the triangle is the Angeles National Forest.

Toward the bottom of the triangle, the city owns 63 acres at the front entrance of Ed Davis Park in Towsley Canyon, Putnam said. The city bought the parcels for $2 million about three years ago, he said.

That is the only chunk owned by the city; the conservancy so far owns the rest of the greenbelt.

To help close the perimeter at the bottom of the triangle, the conservancy is working to buy land in Whitney Canyon and land next to Placerita Canyon, Skei said.

``The long-range plan is to secure more of the land of the other parcels that are in the rough geographic area of the Santa Clarita area,'' she said.

Karen Pearson, founder of the Santa Clarita Valley Sierra Club, said she is especially concerned about Whitney, Placerita and Elsmere canyons.

``Our county at one time wanted to wreck all three of them,'' she said, citing recent efforts to put a landfill in Elsmere Canyon and build an off-highway vehicle park in Whitney. ``It's been a continuous battle to keep these beautiful canyons.''

But more than offering the city natural beauty, the greenbelt helps prevent damage from natural disasters.

Since the conservancy or the city own various areas, people cannot build homes on those parcels. Therefore, the possibility of homes being enveloped by fire or rocked by earthquakes is eliminated.

``It's like a double benefit when we preserve areas like the Santa Clarita Woodlands,'' Skei said.

All in all, the greenbelt is well under way.

``We have maybe one-quarter to one-third of the city bounded in a triangular fashion by protected space,'' Putnam said.