Uphill Battle To Save Oak Trees

Jeanette Sharar’s fight to save four oak trees near her Newhall home has all the most troubling elements of present-day life in Santa Clarita Valley: floods, erosion, new tracts on the hills above, and frustration with the faraway Los Angeles County bureaucracy.

Anxious to complete a flood control project before winter storms arrive, the county’s Public Works Department has created a summer storm of controversy in Sharar’s neighborhood at the end of Valley Street, a quiet oak-studded oasis in Newhall.

Oak trees sprout from the median in the center of the street, and the road jogs at one point to avoid an especially large oak tree.

Sharar, who is one of the leaders in the Santa Clarita Valley’s cityhood drive, has offered to let the county use her land for the drain rather than remove the trees.

But so far, she said, county planners have given her only “lip service.”

The flood control project was requested by Patrick Reardon, one of Sharar’s neighbors, who was inundated with mud during winter storms in March 1983.

Reardon took his problem to Fifth District Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who represents the Santa Clarita Valley on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. A plan to construct a flood control debris basin and drain resulted.

All the Public Works Department needs to proceed is a permit to remove the four oak trees.

A public hearing on whether the permit should be granted was held yesterday at the Regional Planning Department in Los Angeles.

Richard Frazier, chief of the permit section, decided to accept written comments until Aug. 22 after last-minute telephone calls from anxious tree-lovers made him 10 minutes late to the hearing.

Frazier held out little hope for the oaks, however.

“I don’t know of any reason why you should not receive an oak tree permit, at least from the director,” he told the Public Works Department representative.

Linda Anderson, project manager for the Department of Public Works, said the oak trees are in the way of the best route for a flood control main.

She said the county will save $14,000 in construction costs by removing the three trees in front of Sharar’s home at the end of Valley Street.

The large oak the road jogs around will also be removed, Anderson said, because the county regards it as a traffic hazard which will increase when the Urban West tract in the hills above Sharar’s house is completed.

In the event of an accident involving the tree, it is possible that a trial court might find the county negligent for not removing it.

Frazier said the final decision will be made after the Department of Public Works has reviewed comments from the residents, either by planning director Norman Murdoch or zoning administrator John Schwarze.

Anyone can appeal the decision to the Regional Planning Commission by filing an appeal with the commission’s secretary within 15 days of the decision and paying a $100 fee.

Frazier said he “presumed” that everyone who writes will be notified of the decision.

Sharar said she would appeal a decision to remove the oaks.

She also said she foresees a long fight ahead to preserve the other oaks in the area.

One developer, for example, is proposing to remove 750 of 1,150 oaks on the land south of her property.

“So the battle goes on,” she said. “It takes a lot of tenacity to outwit them.”

Sharar plans to help organize a coalition of west Newhall homeowners associations in the area from Peachland Estates to Newhall Avenue, so as to have a stronger position dealing with the county.

“We shouldn’t be in adversarial positions,” she mused. “The whole purpose of the oak tree ordinance is to protect the oak trees.”