SCHOOL SITE RUNS INTO PROBLEMS; CRITICS POINT TO LANDSLIDES, NEARBY FAULT LINE.

Byline: Bhavna Mistry and Jason Takenouchi Staff Writers

In the shadow of Los Angeles' Belmont fiasco, plans for Santa Clarita's next high school face mounting scrutiny and myriad complications.

The proposed 2,400-student, $61 million Golden Valley High School is in an ideal location to meet future residential development, but is planned on a site that is prone to landslides, near an active quake fault, surrounded by oil fields and crossed by high-pressure gas lines.

And now, just weeks away from the start of the massive grading for the school, the William S. Hart Union High School District, with $1 million and two years of studies invested in the site, is still unsure whether the controversial project can be built.

The district is still testing the soil on the 50-acre site for toxic contamination - if it finds major, unexpected pollution it would likely kill the project - and the failure of a recent $52 million school bond has put the project's finances into question.

Even as contractors prepare bids to move millions of cubic yards of dirt - turning landslide-prone hills into buildable flatland - the district is working to reassure residents that state regulators will ensure the site, if built, will pose no health hazards to students.

``They have a process to ensure that they're not going to have another Belmont,'' said school district Superintendent Bob Lee, referring to the Los Angeles Unified School District's controversial attempt to build a high school on a contaminated lot.

``If there is a school site,'' he said, ``it will be the cleanest school site.''

The district was drawn to the property because it is near the city's undeveloped core, where thousands of homes are planned. The site is also close to what will be its feeder school, La Mesa Junior High, and the acreage was available at an affordable price, a rarity in the booming Santa Clarita Valley.

The proposed 50-acre Golden Valley High School site has never been developed, which means it likely will be deemed safe after a study by state environmental regulators.

But critics say the area's geology and off-site hazards pose the real dangers for Golden Valley High School.

According to its environmental impact report, the school site is covered with landslide zones, lies within a few hundred yards of an active fault, and - at a cost of about $1.5 million - will require the removal of two high-pressure natural-gas transmission lines that run beneath the site.

Among other possible hazards:

Two Department of Water and Power high-tension power lines, each carrying about 500 kilovolts, run alongside the eastern and western border of the site.

The high school site sits atop nearly 59 million gallons of oil reserves, according to Berry Petroleum, a Kern County-based oil production company that has oil extraction rights in the area.

Fourteen known oil wells are within a half-mile of the high school site.

More wells may be built even closer to the school site.

Under a deal cut this year between the school district and Berry, the school district will grade three oil pads for future drilling just south of the school site. The district agreed to ask the state to fund Berry's installation of drilling equipment on the pads.

The deal - negotiated in closed meetings - also includes a warning system that would provide ``air emission notification developed by Berry to the parents of high school students attending Golden Valley High School,'' according to an April 9 letter from Lee, the district superintendent.

Project engineer Bill Rose of WRA Engineering Inc. said the nearest well could be as close as 500 feet from the school. But that estimate, like much of the high school project, is still very preliminary.

In fact, the district has changed several details of the project since earlier this year when the project's environmental impact report was completed.

First, after facing resistance from NTS, a defense contractor that owns land just north of the school site, school planners moved the school's academic facilities to the south, far closer to a planned roadway that will be among the busiest in the valley.

The change puts the middle of the school campus above a water injection well that will have to be capped, and closer to the San Gabriel Fault Zone. It also raised the overall elevation of the school by about 15 feet.

But the changes, which put the school farther from the top-secret testing facilities of Calabasas-based National Technical Systems, has done little to alleviate the concerns of project opponents, including NTS Chief Executive Officer Jack Lin.

``Just because it's cheap doesn't mean it's sensible to build a school there,'' Lin said. ``Why not pick a different site?''

Santa Clarita resident Cam Noltemeyer agreed.

``Common sense tells you no one would buy a piece of property like that for a school,'' she said. ``I'm not going to have my grandchildren go there and be guinea pigs for all the contaminants out there.''

But project supporters say the site is a good choice, given the difficultly in finding buildable, accessible high school sites in the burgeoning valley.

The mere presence of possible problems does not mean that the school site in inappropriate, said Allan Cameron, a development consultant who formed the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment, a local environmental group.

``The question is, upon investigation, do these specific circumstances create a hazard for children?'' Cameron said.

``It doesn't mean they may not start grading and find something,'' he said. ``But the probabilities are exceptionally high that this will be a safe site and a good high school.''

School district officials say they are still committed to building the project to ease worsening overcrowding in area high schools. And although the site is far from ideal, the project's environmental report says builders can address the worst environmental hazards.

But even its biggest backers have a contingency plan if the school fails to pass state muster or if environmental tests reveal major pollution on the site. That plan - made possible because a private corporation, not the school district, is coordinating the project thus far - includes the development of high-density housing, commercial buildings and a business park.

In fact, the school site is just part of 135 acres owned by the private, nonprofit Santa Clarita Valley Facilities Foundation.

The foundation, formed in 1997 to assist the school district, is funded entirely by the school district's lease payments on the high school site. The foundation used those payments - derived from developer fees paid to the district - to purchase the entire 135-acre property and pay for design and investigative work.

``The foundation, in looking at this (school) property, may end up developing the rest of the property,'' said school district lawyer Wendy Wiles, who served as the foundation's lawyer until recently. ``This foundation can do some things differently than the school board does, such as the development business.''

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Map: Golden Valley Road High School Project