A bird’s eye view
Construction of 21,000 homes for Newhall Ranch moves along
The construction of 21,000 homes for Newhall Ranch is underway.
More than a half-dozen industrial graders were spotted moving across the dusty hills west of Interstate 5 and south of Highway 126 Thursday.
After years of back and forth wrangling in court with environmentals in-and-out of court, Newhall Ranch developer FivePoint reached a settlement in late
September that a variety of concerned groups.
The green light to build went on six months ago and since then FivePoint Holdings, LLC, owner and developer of mixeduse master-planned communities in coastal California, has been building one of the state’s most ambitious housing projects, according to plan.
One of the first jobs on the construction list is preparing the land for the infrastructure required for Newhall Ranch.
Grading more than 45 million cubic yards of soil on the naturally hilly terrain is part of the project’s first phase of development, a subdivision called Mission Village.
Green light
This past month, FivePoint received approval from the Santa Clarita Valley Sanitation District board to begin putting in pipes that would connect the first of those homes to the Santa Clarita Valley sewer system.
Members of the local Sanitation District board approved an agreement four weeks ago that now green lights construction of sewer pipes linking Newhall Ranch to the SCV.
The agreement, called the Joint Sewer Services Agreement, is between the SCV Sanitation District and the Newhall Ranch Sanitation District—was created by LAFCO in July 2006. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors confirmed the formation of the district in January 2011.
“The developer needs to provide that there will be a system in place by the time the first toilet flushes,” Ray Tremblay, spokesman for the Newhall Ranch Sanitation District, told The Signal last month.
The agreement means Newhall Ranch can now “start building its sewer system,” he said.
Members of the Newhall Ranch Sanitation District board are expected to approve the same commitment March 13.
Under the JSS agreement, the SCV Sanitation District is slated to treat water sent to it from the first 6,000 homes built in Newhall Ranch.
Laying sewer pipes is one chore, supplying each of the 21,000 homes with water is another.
Water Supply
Four new groundwater wells are expected to be built for Newhall Ranch in order to pump more than 7,000 acre feet of water every year to supply the new residents.
Long ago, before (former developer) Newhall Land got into the development business, it was a farming interest.
Its ranch spread across much of the SCV to the Ventura County line, and what it used for watering crops is now the water earmarked for the Newhall Ranch development.
Newhall Land (now FivePoint) plans to pump more than 7,000 acrefeet of groundwater each year, according to the specific plan for Newhall Ranch—the document reviewed by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in approving the development.
The plan states: “Newhall Ranch has historically used an average of 7,038 acre-feet per year for agricultural purposes. This water will be converted from agricultural use to urban use as Newhall Ranch develops.”
The four wells are expected to feed three reservoirs, two of which can contain 4 million gallons of water each. The third holds 3.3 million gallons.
Transporting water
Making sure water gets to each of the 21,000 Newhall Ranch homes calls for water to be transported through a pipeline built by the SCV Water Agency, formerly the Castaic Lake Water Agency.
The new Magic Mountain Pipeline would connect existing pipes to a holding tank called the Magic Mountain Reservoir to be built in Mission Village.
The first of three pipeline construction phases was to have started in March 2015 but was delayed because of a court ruling.
In light of a ruling by the California Supreme Court in November 2015, all pipeline construction was put on hold for at least 18 months.
The days of construction being sidelined, however, are now over.