SUITED UP
Anti-Ahmanson Forces Contest Ventura County
By Michael Collins
Ventura County Reporter - January 23, 2003
The five Los County Board of Supervisors sat impassively, January 14th, as an attorney representing the Ahmanson Ranch project pleaded for them not to sue the County of Ventura for signing off on the massive Ahmanson Ranch project. That scheme is designed to build 3,050 luxury homes in the hills of eastern Ventura County hard on Los Angeles County’s border.
“Today you have an opportunity to authorize the County to file another lawsuit against Ventura County regarding the Ahmanson Ranch project,” said Nicki Carlsen of the Los Angeles-based law firm of Weston Benshoof Rochefort Rubalcava MacCuish. The law firm is defending Ventura County and is being paid for by the project’s developer, Washington Mutual. “I guess the only way to sum it up is ‘here we go again.’ About ten years ago, when the Ahmanson Ranch project was first approved, Los Angeles County and a slew of others filed nine lawsuits against Ventura County challenging the original approval of the project. None of those lawsuits was successful. The reason we think they were not successful is because Ventura County took care to present a solid project,” Carlsen continued. “We think Ventura County has taken the same care with the Supplemental EIR (Environmental Impact Report) and the master track plan map today. We think (Los Angeles) County is in a pretty severe budget crisis right now. We don’t feel that the County should spend more time, money and effort fighting the Ahmanson Ranch project and instead should use that money for desperately needed public services needed in the County.”
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky was clearly unimpressed by Carlsen’s presentation. “I appreciate Ms. Carlsen’s concern for the County budget but spare us the crocodile’s tears. If the Ahmanson Ranch project (was) truly concerned about the County budget crisis, they’d suspend their project and spare us the millions and tens of millions of dollars that we are going to have to spend to mitigate traffic impacts by this massive development whose impact is totally imposed on Los Angeles City and County residents, none of which is imposed on Ventura County residents. This is a horrible project. It has not been diligently pursued and reviewed by the Ventura County Board of Supervisors. On the contrary, the Board of Supervisors of Ventura County rushed to judgement on this trying to beat the end of the year deadline when a new Supervisor was sworn in and might have changed the balance on the Board. I think they are extremely vulnerable and we should join in protecting our interests as a county. Much of the area to be impacted is unincorporated county territory in the west end of Los Angeles County. (We should) join with the city of Calabasas and others who are going to file a lawsuit, or have filed a lawsuit, on this matter. We should be at the table advocating and pursuing our own interests.”
Without objection, the Board of Supervisors then passed a motion to pursue litigation against the County of Ventura. And they are not alone. The City of Los Angeles filed its lawsuit against the project January 21st and the cities of Malibu and Agoura Hills filed a joint lawsuit January 17th. On Tuesday, the Thousand Oaks City Council voted to join in a suit with the city of Calabasas buoyed by the offer of famed attorney Ed Masry’s to supply free legal services in the lawsuit.
The Ventura-based Environmental Defense Center (EDC) has also chosen to sue the County over Ahmanson Ranch. The EDC is representing a coalition of environmental groups including the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, Save Open Space and Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch. Previous lawsuits against the project have repeatedly failed but opponents of Ahmanson Ranch say that circumstances this time around have changed.
“Everything is different this time,” John Buse, staff attorney for the EDC told the Reporter. “The facts, the circumstances are entirely different. I don’t think there is a single claim that somebody raised or litigated before. So it’s a whole new ballgame. We want to emphasize the impact regarding the issues that are (important) to the environmental groups: the impacts of the project to sensitive species and the adequacy of some of the measures to deal with it like the red-legged frog and the Valley spineflower. We want to emphasis the project’s extensive impacts on wetlands and the stream system of the upper Malibu Creek watershed and the impact to water quality to the Malibu Creek watershed. We definitely don’t want to ignore the issues related to perchlorate and Rocketdyne issues. We also want to emphasize the project’s impact on cultural resources. That’s not to say that we aren’t mentioning some issues that other groups are like traffic and air quality. Those are vitally important as well.”
