County listens on Tejon Ranch
Environmental impact debated for massive 19,000 home development
Meet the twin brother of Newhall Ranch, Tejon Ranch.
On Thursday, planners with the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning held a public meeting in Gorman to get feedback on plans to build 19,000 homes at the Kern County line, 35 miles north of the Santa Clarita Valley and future home of Newhall Ranch’s 21,000 homes.
Tucked inside the extreme northwest corner of Los Angeles County, Tejon Ranch is the planned home for 19,333 new homes next to 8.4 million square feet of land set aside for commercial and industrial use.
Tejon Ranch, covering more than 19 acres, comes with new schools, parks, fire stations and a sheriff’s station. The development is split by the river-like California Aqueduct, and dotted with crops and some grazing cattle.
County planning staff is reviewing reports drawn up to reflect its impact on the environment which staffers have labelled as “significant.”
What county planners needed Thursday, however, were comments and input from the community on those anticipated environmental impacts.
Planners consider such “significant, unavoidable and cumulative” environmental impacts as including impacts to the land itself, dust, noise, population, housing and employment.
Those who wish they had attended the meeting and still want to express themselves, still have a little more than two weeks to share their concerns.
The public review and comment period - which includes being able to put
concerns in writing - runs from May 18 to July 17.
In order for the Centennial Project to work, a number of zoning changes have to be made.
Changes would have to be made to the vision laid out in the Antelope Valley Area Plan Land Use Designations and to the county’s General Plan of Highways - specifically, to change zoning for open space to zoning for residential and commercial.
The developer would also require a conditional use permit from the county to grade more than 100,000 cubic yards of earth.
Building the infrastructure to support more than 19,000 homes and a business park covering at least 7.3 million square feet would mean building: roads, sewers, bridges, water pipelines, flood control structure, electrical, gas, composting,
solid waste handling, water retention and treatment and upgrading the highway intersection.
If and when all plans and permits are approved, construction of the Centennial Project would mirror the construction anticipated by the builders of Newhall Ranch which calls for 21,000 new homes off the same interstate.
The two massive housing developments would be situated on either side of Pyramid Lake and Castaic Lake, bookend style - if their respective Draft EIRs are approved and deemed environmentally-friendly.
It was the environmental impact of Newhall Ranch that was challenged in court by environmentalists and which ultimately stalled the project.
Developers building Newhall Ranch must satisfy California’s top court that its development will not adversely impact the SCV environment - specifically, the protected unarmored threespine stickleback and SCV’s air in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
In November, citing the effects of greenhouse gas emissions and insufficient protection for a tiny endangered fish, the California Supreme Court tossed out the developer’s report concluding 21,000 planned homes in the Newhall Ranch project would not adversely affect the environment.
The court ruled that Newhall Land Development Inc. – now FivePoint – failed to provide evidence in its Environmental Impact Report to prove its project was consistent with meeting state guidelines to control harmful greenhouse gas.
The court also concluded that measures calling for capture and relocation of the unarmored threespine stickleback — a species of fish protected by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife — amounted to illegal movement, or “take,” of the endangered indigenous fish.