TRAIL WORK SET TO BEGIN IN AGOURA; SITE DONATED IN DEAL FOR AHMANSON RANCH.Byline: Cecilia Chan Daily News Staff Writer Workers on Monday will begin creating a three-mile trail on a parcel donated to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is an agency of the state of California in the United States founded in 1979 and dedicated to the acquisition of land in the Santa Susana and Santa Monica Mountains and the Simi Hills, north and west of Los Angeles, for preservation as open as part of the controversial Ahmanson Ranch development. Plans for such improvements on the 2,633-acre site are more than a year ahead of schedule due to help from AmeriCorps, a national program created by President Clinton. Volunteers ages 18 to 25 work for a year on public service projects in exchange for money for education. ``We will have AmeriCorps for eight weeks, but they will only work on the project for four weeks,'' said Rorie Skei, deputy director of natural resources for the conservancy. A crew of volunteers from AmeriCorps worked on projects at the conservancy last year. Fourteen new crew members from the program's San Diego San Diego (săn dēā`gō), city (1990 pop. 1,110,549), seat of San Diego co., S Calif., on San Diego Bay; inc. 1850. San Diego includes the unincorporated communities of La Jolla and Spring Valley. Coronado is across the bay. base arrived Thursday and will work alongside park rangers A park ranger is a person charged with protecting and preserving protected parklands, forests (then called a forest ranger), wilderness areas, as well as other natural resources and protected cultural resources. and trail crews in creating a hiking, biking and equestrian trail in the upper Las Virgenes area, Skei said. ``The route they are following is an old road that was part of the ranch operations many years ago,'' she said. ``It'll provide really nice views, and there's a potential linkage to Cheeseboro Park.'' Skei said it will take two months to complete the trail. The cost of the work has not been calculated. ``A lot of it is simply cleaning out old weedy, exotic grass and non-native grass, smoothing out the bed and providing erosion-control devices,'' she said. Although the land is open to hikers, mountain bikers and horseback riders, most of the acreage remains protected as a wildlife habitat, Skei said. Once the trail is completed, plans call for erecting informational kiosks, installing gates and signs, and possibly printing a trail map brochure using the $30,000 from Ahmanson Ranch that was part of the land transfer. Ahmanson Ranch transferred the 2,633 acres to the conservancy in exchange for the Ventura County Board of Supervisors' approval of a $1 billion mini-city between the Ventura Freeway The Ventura Freeway is a freeway in southern California running from Ventura to Pasadena. It is the principal east-west route through Ventura County and in the southern San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County. and the Simi Hills The Simi Hills are a low rocky mountain range in Southern California. Geography Simi Hills is located on the western edge of the San Fernando Valley, United States. They run east-west and they extend 26 miles east-west, and 7 miles north-south. . The 5,433-acre project involves 3,050 housing units, 150,000 square feet of commercial and office space, two schools, two golf courses and a 300-room hotel. Last year, Save Open Space, a vocal opponent of the development, sued the conservancy for accepting the land, saying it was not adequately tested for potential contaminants. The land is near Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Santa Susana can refer to several places:
Conservancy officials, however, said they were not obligated ob·li·gate tr.v. ob·li·gat·ed, ob·li·gat·ing, ob·li·gates 1. To bind, compel, or constrain by a social, legal, or moral tie. See Synonyms at force. 2. To cause to be grateful or indebted; oblige. to further test the site, which showed no toxics during an initial review. |
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