2,000 Unit Project Adjacent to the Santa Clara River Moves Forward with LAFCO Boundary Approval

In 1990, the City of Santa Clarita was devoted to acquiring and preserving broad swaths along the Santa Clara River as a linear park to connect all communities, provide recreation opportunities, and provide the needed buffer between humans and habitat for wildlife.

Now, in 1998, the City has approved a two thousand unit housing project with as little as 75 feet (half the depth of an average suburban lot) of buffer in some areas and an overall average of only 100 feet.

As mitigation for this reduced buffer, the developer will plant riparian vegetation in the River - an odd solution, since this is the very vegetation that the County claims it must remove to make way for the El Nino rains. Is this sufficient to protect the wild from urban encroachment?

Also, Valencia Co. admits they don’t have suitable acreage in the river for all the necessary replacement vegetation. Instead, they want to leverage - at a 4:1 ratio - the removal of invasive species against the removal of native riparian habitat, i.e., Valencia will remove 4 acres of Arrundo for every acre of native habitat removed. The key word here seems to be: "remove".

In their haste to expedite the annexation of Valencia Co. land along the river west of Bouquet, the City appears to be signing onto questionable science. County biologists were recommending much broader buffer areas before annexation was considered. But biologists paid by the developer (NL&F) said it was not needed

Habitat and floodplain protection is important, as is proactive city planning. Habitat and floodplain have been protected elsewhere in America. Few or none of the exemplary planning features for river & habitat protection - and related parkland development - occurred in other areas of the country because of benevolent developers. These became real and precious assets to the community because planning staff, commissions, and councils insisted on preserving the assets of the community, including recreational opportunities and the protection of wildlife.

Those projects won planning awards and are used as examples. What the City has approved eliminated the County-designated Significant Ecological Area along the River. The City did not go far enough to provide the needed buffer that will protect our drinking water quality, prevent property damage from flooding and protect the river habitat. We are disappointed.

With the January approval by the Local Agency Formation Commission of the annexation of this land into the City, this project awaits only a green light from the Army Corps of Engineers to move forward.