After 30 Years, Clock Strikes (Net-) Zero for Newhall Ranch Opposition
- Josh Stephens
- Jan 29, 2018
- 7 min read
From the homebuilding boom of the 1980s, the recession of the early 1990s, the recovery of the 2000s, and the embrace of smart growth from the late 2000s onward, one development proposal has withstood it all: Newhall Ranch. Located in northern Los Angeles County, Newhall Ranch envisions 21,500 units on 12,000 acres, making it potentially the last major greenfield master-planned community in the Los Angeles area.
By many accounts, it is arguably the most heavily analyzed, litigated, and protested project in county history.
Last July, after withstanding protests, lawsuits, redesigns, changing fashions and fluctuating economies, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors finally voted, 4-0, to certify the environmental impact report for the project’s first two of the project’s five phases. The certification consisted a "re-approval” following a 2015 certification that was upended when opponents sued, claiming a faulty greenhouse gas analysis in its EIR and improper approvals by the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and took the case to the California Supreme Court.
(That case set a precedent requiring detailed, contextualized analysis of greenhouse gas emissions in EIRs and, by extension, climate action plans. EIRs cannot simply refer to statewide greenhouse gas goals but rather must explain how it relates to those goals. See prior CP&DR coverage.)
The project cleared its final major hurdle in September when developer FivePoint entered into an agreement with four opponents — the Center for Biological Diversity, the Wishtoyo Foundation/Ventura Coastkeeper, the California Native Plant Society and the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. These groups agreed to drop further lawsuits in exchange for certain concessions, including a $25 million fund to protect endangered species and the Santa Clara River, which runs through the Newhall Ranch property; it is Southern California’s only free-flowing river.
“It certainly isn’t perfect but it’s been thoroughly evaluated,” said Mitch Glaser, assistant administrator for Current Planning at the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Department. “We feel pretty confident that we’ve addressed all of the concerns and mitigated all the impacts as much as they can be.”
