CHAPTER PRIORITY CAMPAIGNS:
Watersheds in Los Angeles and Orange Counties

The Santa Clara River Greenway Campaign

For more information or to get involved,contact Lynne Plambeck at (661) 255-6899 More information can also be found at http://www.scope.org/ or http://www.fscr.org/html/newhall.html The Santa Clarita Group meets each second Tuesday of the month (not Aug or Dec) at 7:30pm at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church. 24901 Orchard Village Rd, Valencia. Call to confirm.

Development goliaths have set their sights on turning the floodplain of the Santa Clara River - the last major wild river in Southern California - into tens of thousands of unaffordable cookie-cutter tract homes. Even worse, these developers are from out of state. The Lennar Corporation, one of the largest development leviathans in the US, is now on a shopping spree in Southern California, hungry to buy up the company with the most valuable land holdings in the United States: Newhall Land and Farming Company. Newhall, one of the largest landowners in California, plans to build a new city with nearly 21,000 housing units in northern Los Angeles County right on the banks of the Santa Clara. That city, the proposed Newhall Ranch development, is now in Lennar's shopping cart, with a price tag of $990 million.

Newhall (or Newsprawl) Ranch is a poster-child for sprawling, unplanned growth in southern California. "This isn't Smart Growth," said LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, "this is dumb growth with a capital D."

Some of the destructive trends of sprawl include:

Increasing air pollution and corresponding public health problems like child asthma
Increasing water pollution by destroying wetlands - nature's water filters
Increasing traffic and continuing the trend of auto dependency
Abandoning and neglecting existing urban infrastructure and marginalized communities
Exposing communities to flooding and fire risks by pushing development into hazardous locations and putting pressure on natural systems
Threatening to destroy endangered species and their natural habitat
Diverting, altering or destroying streams, tributaries, and floodplains
Breaking up communities in favor of distant, tract housing and strip malls accessible only by car
The destruction of parks, farms and open space
Spending tax dollars on development subsidies instead of improving existing communities

This acquisition by a nationwide developer profiles the conflict of interest inherent in the ownership of a water company by a private company, especially a developer," said Juliette Beck of Public Citizen's Water for All Campaign. "The profit goals of the parent developer may tempt the water company to over-report water supply, build facilities for new development paid for by the rate-payers instead of the developer or disguise pollution problems in order to obtain entitlement approvals for its parent company. The Public Utilities Commission should hold public hearings on this matter and deny approval of this acquisition."

All of these destructive trends will be greatly exacerbated by the scale of planning proposed by Newhall and the company's takeover by a distant development giant.

As if this weren't bad enough, imbedded in the sale of Newhall to Lennar is the Valencia Water company, whichserves 81,000 people in the Santa Clarita Valley. Water privatization has already been attempted in the LA area, and has failed due to concerns of conflicts of interest

The fight is far from over. This corporate takeover will put the Santa Clara River and our water supply in the hands of an outside corporation accountable only to its stockholders, not the people and the environment of Los Angeles," said Lynne Plambeck, Chair of the Santa Clara River Greenway Campaign

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This page last modified: 6/27/2004

CHAPTER PRIORITY CAMPAIGNS: Watersheds in Los Angeles and Orange Counties

The Santa Clara River Greenway Campaign

CHAPTER PRIORITY CAMPAIGNS:
Watersheds in Los Angeles and Orange Counties