PUC WILL CONSIDER HOUSING TRACT COMPLAINT.

Byline: Teresa Jimenez Daily News Staff Writer

The state Public Utilities Commission will decide in the coming weeks whether to hold hearings on a complaint filed by the Sierra Club against the Valencia Water Co. regarding its ability to supply water to Newhall Ranch.

The complaint, filed this week, asks the PUC to require Valencia Water to show the water sources for supplying its territory. If an adequate supply is unavailable, the complaint asks that the PUC restrict the number of customers the water company can serve.

``Newhall Ranch is a potential huge customer of water,'' said Martin Schlageter, conservation coordinator with the Sierra Club's Angeles Chapter. ``We want to make sure it's not the habit of the water company to say, oh sure, we've got water for you. We want them to show, Where are you going to get it?''

An administrative law judge will review the complaint, which comes just one month before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to discuss Newhall Ranch, an expansive 21,000-home project that could bring more than 60,000 people to the Santa Clarita Valley.

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors has written a letter in support of the Sierra Club's complaint against the water company, a subsidiary of The Newhall Land and Farming Company, the developer proposing Newhall Ranch.

Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn said that the water issue is crucial to his constituents because quality groundwater must be available for agricultural products such as avocados.

The supervisors have been particularly concerned that the Valencia Water Co. will increase its use of groundwater, despite the fact that the Newhall Ranch environmental report states that no additional groundwater will be pumped.

``It's not an adequate assurance at all,'' Flynn said. ``The Los Angeles County supervisors should require before approving anything that water be identified for the project, that water be approved for the project, that they have an intent-to-serve letter for water.''

Officials with Newhall Land and the water company did not return calls seeking comment.

The Los Angeles County board in July recommended that the proposed Newhall Ranch project be reduced by 3,500 homes. During the recommendation, Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich added that the company would not need to show a water source for the project to get the zoning change approved. Instead, the company would have to show a source of water when it seeks tract map approval.

The recommendation, which could be the basis for a project approval in October, gave Newhall Land time to establish a water source for the project. An effort by the Castaic Lake Water Agency to buy 41,000 acre-feet of state water for future Santa Clarita Valley growth has been mentioned as a solution.

But Flynn questioned the reliability of the State Water Project and suspected that Newhall Land could eventually find a way to pump more groundwater for its developments.

``This is a politically powerful, powerful land developer that has access to anyone in the state,'' Flynn said. ``If there's an open door and we let them put a foot in, they're going to manipulate things to get their hands on the groundwater.''

In addition, the Sierra Club argues in its complaint that allowing the land to be rezoned without a water source in place falsely increases the value of Newhall Land, a publicly held company.

``It is the position of the Sierra Club that this attitude and justification represents poor planning and can lead to unrealistic land-use entitlements that can be the source of financial and other abuse,'' the complaint states.

That concern is not unfounded, Flynn said. When the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission recommended the project to the board in December, Newhall Land's stock price went up significantly, he said.

The Sierra Club complaint also seeks to get the PUC's support in prohibiting the Valencia Water Co. from providing water to any new customers unless it shows water availability.

The water company has two expansion requests pending with the PUC to service the Stevenson Ranch area not yet developed and the Newhall Ranch acreage. Like cities, water companies must apply for annexations to extend their service areas.

In the document, the Sierra Club requests ``that the commission determine whether Valencia Water Co. has undertaken to supply more consumers or a greater number of acres than it can adequately supply, and if so, that the commission order or require the Valencia Water Co. to specifically limit the number of consumers or acres of land which it has attempted to supply.''

For Ventura County officials, the fight may just be starting.