Environment Ventura County

Seeking to protect an endangered flower and frog recently found on Ahmanson Ranch, a state senator whose district abuts the site wants the state to spend $10 million to buy sensitive habitat and watershed areas on the property. Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) said he lined up budget money to persuade the developer of the 3,050-unit housing project to sell portions of the ranchland.

Bowing to complaints from Ventura County officials and environmental groups, the state Public Utilities Commission has agreed to hold a hearing on whether sufficient water supplies are available to serve the massive Newhall Ranch housing development.

Opponents of Ventura County's Ahmanson Ranch development have stepped up their campaign by launching a series of radio attack ads against Washington Mutual Bank, parent company of the land developer. The ads refer to Washington Mutual as "America's environmental enemy," and call on Southern California customers of the nation's largest savings and loan to withdraw their money to protest the Ahmanson Ranch development to be built just west of the San Fernando Valley.

Seeking to shield the Santa Clara Valley from large-scale development, activists in Santa Paula and Fillmore have announced plans to place growth-control measures on the November ballot. The campaigns were spurred in part by two recent actions. In Santa Paula, a land-use commission gave the city the green light to proceed with plans to more than triple its size.

A key stretch of the Santa Clara River could be taken out of private hands and run by the government to promote wildlife and nature parks under an ambitious new environmental recovery plan. The proposal, unveiled Monday, seeks to acquire and restore 6,400 acres of some of the best remaining stream-side habitat in Southern California.

A contingent of officials, biologists and staff members from two state and federal wildlife agencies visited Ahmanson Ranch on Friday to examine the habitat of a rare flower and an endangered frog on the site of a proposed housing project. The tour of the Ventura County property where a long-debated, 3,050-home development is proposed by Washington Mutual preceded an expected decision by the U.S.

When Ventura County officials agreed to update part of the Ahmanson Ranch environmental study last month, opponents of the housing project buckled down for a new fight. They knew the revision--prompted initially by the discovery of two endangered species at the site--offered a new opportunity to poke holes in the original 1992 environmental study. It was a chance to derail the 3,050-home project because of its impact on the environment, water and schools.

With state and Los Angeles County officials questioning their projections, Ventura County leaders on Wednesday were grappling with whether to do a new study of the traffic impact of the controversial Ahmanson Ranch project. The traffic projections used by Ventura County supervisors in approving the 10,000-resident project were under review after Los Angeles County officials said the figures understate by up to 20% the impact on the already-crowded Ventura Freeway.

Claiming state law and Ventura County planning policies were violated, two environmental groups have sued the county in an attempt to overturn plans to develop a golf course and a 16,000-seat amphitheater at Camarillo Regional Park.

A public hearing will be held at 10 a.m. today to accept testimony on the proposed Pacific Pipeline, a 171-mile line that would transport crude oil from north of Santa Barbara through Ventura County and south to Wilmington in Los Angeles County. The Ventura hearing is the fourth in a series of five presented by the California Public Utilities Commission, which is expected to make a decision on the project later this year.