After a year of study, a top Defense Department official has concluded that development of three large projects on Tejon Ranch would not interfere with training flights over the Tehachapi Mountains or diminish the nation's military readiness.
Navy Rear Adm. J. L. Betancourt, writing on behalf of military services in California, said in a letter to Tejon Ranch executives that a military analysis of the projects has allayed his concern that construction of the proposed new city of Centennial, near Gorman, would prevent low-level training flights by Navy, Marine and Air Force combat pilots.
Federal regulations prohibit military flights lower than 1,000 feet over cities, while military pilots often train at altitudes of just 200 feet.
"The Department of Defense does not, from a conceptual standpoint, oppose development," Betancourt wrote in a recent letter to Robert Stine, president of Tejon Ranch.
"I believe we have come to a mutual understanding that the existence of [Defense Department] Military Training Routes over Tejon Ranch Co. development ... should not preclude your planning efforts with regard to these three areas," Betancourt wrote.
In the fall of 2003, Betancourt requested that then Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger intervene in the development of the Centennial project, or move it away from flight paths.
Betancourt requested that Schwarzenegger's statewide planning office devise a regional strategy to consider Centennial and two other projects planned on the sprawling ranch along Interstate 5 in Kern and Los Angeles counties.
A new law gave that office expanded powers in resolving development disputes related to the military.
Representatives of the governor's Office of Military Base Retention and Reuse assisted in early meetings last year, officials said.
Now, according to Betancourt's letter, potential problems have been ironed out.
A military analysis, he wrote, "has not identified any threshold issues that would render Tejon Ranch development plans incompatible with [Defense Department] operations along [training routes] in the vicinity."
The military will maintain its training routes, which include flights over the Antelope Valley high desert, where 70,000-resident Centennial would be built, Betancourt said.
But he suggested that flight paths could be altered to coexist with planned urban development.
