NATURAL COMMUNITY OR NATURAL DISASTER IN RIVER VALLEY?

Byline: Karen Brandon Chicago Tribune

The Santa Clara River Valley is a picture-postcard world.

The Santa Susana Mountains, their peaks occasionally tipped in white, create a majestic, jagged frame. Their high chaparral gradually gives way to faded yellow cottonwoods that dot the banks of the pristine Santa Clara River. With deer darting among the gnarled live oaks, the canyons and mesas remain largely as they were 150 years ago, when rescuers were dispatched from a Spanish mission outpost in the valley to save speculators stranded in Death Valley during the Gold Rush.

Nearly as startling as the natural beauty is the valley's location, only 30 miles north of teeming Los Angeles. This enchanting vision of Southern California - lost nearly everywhere else but in history - is what Newhall Ranch is selling.

This is also what its opponents say it will destroy.

The Newhall Ranch project now exists only on paper, the largest master-planned development in Los Angeles County history and a flash point in the national debate over suburban sprawl. If built, the ``community by nature'' will comprise five villages, 19 square miles, 21,000 homes and some 70,000 people.

As he stood on a sage-scented mesa near a region of the property called Windy Gap, James Harter, a senior vice president of The Newhall Land and Farming Company, pointed out where the shopping malls, golf course, schools, houses and multiacre estates will be built.

``When I look at this, I see opportunity,'' Harter said, imagining a day when residents will ride bicycles and horses along the river and hike deep into the mountains to see its hidden waterfalls.

Pointing out stands of trees and mountain highlands that will be preserved, he added: ``People will be able to relax and enjoy it. They'll be able to leave L.A. behind.''

Of course, critics believe Newhall Ranch will accomplish just the opposite. They say it will bring Los Angeles to the Santa Clara.

``This vista will be gone,'' said Lynne Plambeck, gazing glumly from state Highway 126 to the valley she would like to see stay just as it is.

Plambeck is the first vice president of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and Environment, a nonprofit group. Her group opposes the project, with support from other environmental groups and some government officials.

Over their objections, the project recently won tentative, unanimous approval to proceed from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

``L.A. County approves everything,'' Plambeck said. ``They don't know how to do anything but say yes.''

Many obstacles might have stood in the way of Newhall Ranch.

``The project should be a legal impossibility,'' wrote Mike Davis, a recent MacArthur Foundation genius grant recipient, in his new book, ``Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster.''

The project is nearly 10 times as large as what is allowed under the county's General Plan. It would bring additional traffic to an area that exceeds federal ozone standards. The river is home to an endangered fish called the unarmored threespine stickleback fish and a bird called the California least tern.

Moreover, at present there is not enough water for the project - an obstacle that has never before given Los Angeles pause.

Officials in Ventura County, which lies right next door to the behemoth project, fear that the development will threaten the amount and quality of water necessary to sustain the region's fertile citrus groves, which have been in operation for more than a century and now produce some 400,000 tons of fruit annually. Aware of their neighbor's legendary history of sucking other regions dry, Ventura County officials have threatened a lawsuit that is likely to open yet another chapter in this state's legendary water wars.

Detractors say there is one reason the project is proceeding: money.

``I think campaign contributions did it,'' said John Flynn, a member of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors for 22 years. ``If you looked at them you would see that money was thrown everywhere up and down the political tree.'' Added Davis, ``As you look at the campaign (finance) statements of all the county supervisors, about 75 percent of all campaign contributions come from developers or development-related interests, and that's been true since probably the '20s.''

Newhall Land is the legacy of Henry Mayo Newhall, a Massachusetts-born auctioneer who ventured to California during the Gold Rush. His lucky strike wasn't gold. It was land. When he died in 1883, he left his five sons six California ranches totaling 143,000 acres. That same year, Newhall Land, now publicly traded on the New York and Pacific stock exchanges, was born.

The Newhall name is ubiquitous in the area. It is the region's major landholder and developer of a nearby master-planned community, Valencia, which was included in a 1993 book, ``50 Fabulous Places to Raise Your Family.''

The villages of Newhall Ranch will bear names such as Oak Valley, Long Canyon and Potrero Valley. ``We like to use the names that the cowboys gave to the area,'' Harter said. ``We'd like to keep that alive.''

But their detractors say this is only window dressing.

``What they're turning to is theming these developments to the lost world of Southern California,'' Davis said. ``It's all the more surreal that you will begin to despoil the last remnants of that to create this community.''

Such projects, he and others argue, are fueling white flight from the aging, decaying San Fernando Valley.

The criticism angers Harter, who says the company has bent over backward to preserve much of the region's natural beauty and to answer environmental concerns by using reclaimed water for landscape irrigation and by creating communities that are less reliant on cars.

Many services are within walking distance of homes, and businesses, a potential source of employment, are near.

He argues that California will have to build into more of its wilderness if it is to accommodate its growing population.

With 32 million residents, California already is the nation's most populous state. By 2025, the U.S. Census Bureau projects, the population will reach 49.3 million, and the state will have grown by a population equivalent to adding all the residents of New York state.

By planning for large projects, Harter argues, Newhall Ranch can avoid many of the pitfalls of other areas.

But Plambeck and others question the company's commitment.

In an earlier project, the company pleaded no contest to criminal charges that it illegally lined a creek bed with concrete. And, though it has touted its commitment to improving schools and libraries in regions it is developing, Plambeck notes that lawsuits were necessary to reach such agreements in earlier projects.

Resentment about the region's growth surfaced in November's elections in Ventura County, where voters approved a series of urban boundaries around fast-growing cities and stripped their elected supervisors of the power to rezone farmland and open space without voter approval.

For now, the Newhall Ranch remains a working ranch, where cattle and horses graze, and gas and oil wells appear amid the shrub. It stands in stark contrast to the landscape just south along Interstate 5, where suburban residents graze at fast-food restaurants, and the oil and gas landmarks are self-service filling stations.

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MAP: NEWHALL RANCH