Urban Sprawl on Valley’s Horizon

Ventura County’s Santa Clara River Valley is Southern California’s last largely undeveloped river corridor. For most of its length, the Santa Clara River flows through natural and agricultural landscapes, including some of the region’s best remaining river woodlands. Newhall Land & Farming Co. is about to change all this with its proposal for a new city of 70,000 people, larger than Camarillo, on five miles of Ventura County’s border.

Residents of Ventura County must either respond to this challenge or face losing this unique and beautiful valley to sprawling urban development. How we respond to this threat will go a long way toward determining the future of the Santa Clara River Valley. Will future generations see a natural river flowing through a valley of mostly open landscapes? Or will they see a waterway tamed by levees or flowing through a ribbon of concrete, and urban sprawl that stretches over once-rich farmland toward the ocean? The latter threatens to be the fate of the valley unless we act now to stop or at least curtail Newhall Ranch.

Ventura County’s Guidelines for Orderly Development have largely been successful in containing development within our city boundaries. In Los Angeles County, however, countywide urban sprawl is accepted. Newhall Ranch, contiguous to five miles of Ventura County’s border, is the largest single development ever proposed in Los Angeles County. A good system of regional planning should long ago have been put in place to preclude such massive step-out development on county borders. Unfortunately, none exists.

Newhall Land and Farming owns more than 15,000 acres in Ventura County, extending down the river valley to the vicinity of Piru. The company says it has no plans to develop this portion. Yet in its corporate brochure, the company openly discloses that its major thrust is land development, with farming operations used only as an interim activity.

Furthermore, the company is allowing the Williamson Act to expire on its Ventura County holdings. It is quite evident to any thinking person that Newhall plans to develop here, the only questions being how soon and what strategy they will employ to gain the support of a future Ventura County Board of Supervisors.

RON BOTTORFF

Newbury Park