TEJON RANCH: A SPRAWL TOO FAR
Los Angeles Times
Dear Editor:
Construction of the massive Centennial and Tejon Mountain Ranch, proposed as 26,000 homes in three urban villages set 100 miles north of downtown LA, would spell jeopardy for the California condor and our regional environmental sustainability.
This suburban sprawl costs governments untold millions to serve the 70,000 or more drivers getting in line on the Interstate 5 and for new firefighters to protect the “village center” from being devoured in the next brush conflagration. With aquifers and reservoirs drying in the hot sun, thirsty golf greens will be looking for a fix…and native plants and animals in search of a home.
While I applaud environmental groups attempt to create a state park and protect the majority of Tejon Ranch from development, now is not the time to entitle urban condomania set among the grandeur of the Tehachapis, where the Angeles and
Jack Eidt
Director of Planning
Contact: Adam Keats (415) 436-9682 x 304, (415) 845-2509 (cell)
Ileene Anderson, (323) 490-0223
Tejon Ranch Deal Destroys Critical Habitat for California Condor,
Paves Way for Largest Development Ever Proposed in California
LOS ANGELES— Tejon Ranch Corporation and several environmental organizations announced a deal today that may pave the way for massive development in the Tehachapi Mountains north of Los Angeles. The deal allows for unprecedented
destruction of federally designated critical habitat for the endangered California condor to make way for thousands of luxury vacation estates. It also greenlights a behemoth city on the last wild edge of Los Angeles County.“While there are a few aspects of today’s accord we can celebrate, including the potential acquisition of 49,000 acres for a state park, this deal contains numerous ‘poison pill’ provisions, including the development of Tejon Mountain Village in the heart of condor critical habitat and Centennial, the largest single development ever to be proposed in California,” said Peter Galvin, conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We know that the environmental groups who have negotiated the accord did so with the best of intentions, but the Center for Biological Diversity could not sign off on this highly flawed agreement. Virtually all of the areas to be acquired or managed under the conservation easement are undevelopable anyway. On paper the deal sounds good, but a close examination shows that very little is gained biologically and far too much is sacrificed.”
“While Tejon claims to have pulled development off the important northern ridges, this pullback is illusory. The fact remains that development will still occur in active, occupied condor critical habitat. The heart of condor country is designated as critical habitat for a reason: the science clearly shows that it is essential to the survival and recovery of the species,” said Adam Keats, urban wildlands program director at the Center. “It cannot and should not be sacrificed.”
The deal would allow the building of Tejon Mountain Village, a luxury vacation resort in the wild and rugged highlands of the Tehachapi mountains, designated as critical habitat by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect condors. The designation imposes strong protections on the land, and its habitat qualities cannot be harmed or “adversely modified.” Housing developments are completely incompatible with this designation.
The agreement also allows the leapfrog sprawl development known as Centennial. Located in rolling native grasslands and wildflower fields on the northern border of Los Angeles County off Interstate 5, this development would add extreme pressures to the region, already gridlocked in development-related traffic and choking in pollution and congestion. The 11,600-acre city would house 70,000 or more automobile commuters, expose residents to severe wildfire threats, and destroy irreplaceable native habitat and wildlife linkages.
The Center has a different vision for Tejon Ranch:
Tejon-Tehachapi Park. “Tejon Ranch is a true gem of California and can never be replaced,” said Ileene Anderson, staff biologist at the Center. “Once these sprawl cities are built, they will further fragment Southern California from the rest of the state. Coupled with the hit that condor will take, this agreement deals away one of the greatest environmental opportunities that California has ever seen. And it will be lost forever.”Tejon Ranch covers over 270,000 acres of wilderness at the crossroads of Northern and Southern California. The Mojave Desert, the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains, the great central valley and the southern forests all converge on Tejon Ranch — the only place in California where four ecoregions come together.
“This deal does a disservice to the wildlands and wildlife of Tejon, to the people of Southern California who will suffer the consequences of overdevelopment, and to all Californians, who will pay the price,” said Keats. “We can and must demand better. We live in a world too fragile to allow this kind of sacrifice. Now is the time to say enough is enough.”
Preserving Tejon Ranch as a new national or state park would protect a bounty of native plant and animal communities, cultural and historic features, and scenic vistas.
http://www.savetejonranch.org .Tejon Ranch pact would allow 26,000 homes on the range
By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 8, 2008
The agreement ends years of debate over the fate of an untrammeled tableau of mountains, wildflower fields, twisted oaks and Joshua trees in the historic Tejon Ranch in the Tehachapi Mountains, about 60 miles north of Los Angeles.
The developer, the Tejon Ranch Co., has agreed to set aside 178,000 acres and provide an option for public purchase of 62,000 additional acres -- 49,000 to create a state park, 10,000 to realign a 37-mile segment of the Pacific Crest Trail through the heart of the wild lands and the rest to provide docent-led tours of sensitive habitat. It also will pull back development plans along some ridgelines considered crucial to the California condor.
In exchange, a coalition led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, Audubon California, the Planning and Conservation League and the Endangered Habitats League will not oppose the company's plans to build three urban centers, including more than 26,000 homes as well as hotels, condominiums and golf courses at the western and southwestern edge of the ranch.
Those groups and others had threatened a campaign against development of the property, saying it would extend Southern California's suburban sprawl to the Central Valley, add to regional traffic and air pollution woes, and harm endangered species such as the condor.
The pact was the second major truce among environmental groups and developers in as many months in Southern California, where such projects can be tied up in court for decades. Last month, conservationists struck a deal with a Houston oil company that would allow for offshore drilling this year in exchange for early retirement of several large-scale oil facilities along an otherwise pristine coastline in Santa Barbara County.
In a prepared statement, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the success in reaching the Tejon agreement underlines how "we can protect California's environment at the same time we pump up our economy."
Some environmentalists expressed reservations about the accord, to be announced today. Ilene Anderson, a biologist and spokeswoman for the Center for Biological Diversity, said her group remains worried about habitat for the condor.
"So while we support significant open space," she said, "it's precedent-setting that critical habitat for a species just brought back from the brink of extinction would be written off for development."
Eight times the size of San Francisco, the unfragmented 270,000-acre property embraces the juncture of four ecosystems: Mojave Desert grasslands, San Joaquin Valley oak woodlands, Tehachapi pine forests and coastal mountain ranges.
Like Louisiana Purchase
The 165-year-old ranch, first cobbled together by Edward Fitzgerald Beale, was owned for decades by an investment group led by former Los Angeles Times owner Harry Chandler and land developer Moses Sherman.
"For Southern California, this is the ecological equivalent of the Louisiana Purchase," said Bill Corcoran, senior regional representative for the Sierra Club. "It is the only place in the region where within a few minutes a visitor can ascend from Joshua tree woodlands to oak-filled canyons on up to vast plains with views across the coastal range."
Permitting for residential and commercial development of the remaining 30,000 acres is expected to be easier with the agreement, although plans still must be approved by state and federal regulatory authorities, as well as Los Angeles and Kern counties, according to Robert A. Stine, president and chief executive of Tejon Ranch Co.
"Our vision has always been to preserve California's legacy and provide for California's future, and this agreement does exactly that," Stine said in an interview. "It's good for conservation, good for California and good for the company and its shareholders."
Finding common ground between the nation's most powerful environmental groups and the Tejon Ranch Co. wasn't easy.
"We've come a long way from where we started," said Joel Reynolds, senior attorney and director of the Southern California Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This was an extremely complicated deal, but also a once-in-a-lifetime conservation opportunity."
The agreement guarantees Tejon Ranch Co. the right to proceed with massive development projects near Interstate 5: Centennial, a planned community of 23,000 homes east of Quail Lake in northern Los Angeles County; and Tejon Mountain Village in southern Kern County, which will include a resort featuring spas and boutique hotels, commercial space, golf courses and 3,400 estate homes. The Tejon Industrial Complex in the Kern County portion of the ranch is already home to IKEA's 2-million-square-foot main distribution warehouse, among others.
In each project, Stine said, "a whole set of design parameters will be reviewed by all parties to ensure that all development activity that takes place will consider all green opportunities into the future; that means transportation, building and landscape materials, water usage. Everything."
The agreement also creates an "independent Tejon Ranch Conservancy" composed of 12 members appointed by the company and its environmental partners to manage the preserved land in perpetuity. The company will provide about $800,000 a year for seven years to get the conservancy off the ground. Later, it will be funded through transfer fees from the sale of residential properties.
"It's not enough to simply set aside land," Reynolds said. "We also need an entity whose focus is restoration and conservation."
Tejon Ranch remains a vast wildlife stronghold where deer, elk, bobcat and wild turkey flourish. Canyon bottoms are full of oaks. Along old lumber roads edging the brows of hills, flocks of wild pigeons rise. On the uplands, pine and cedar hold their own, and golden eagles ride warm air currents from coastal mountains to the Sierra.
Graham Chisolm, director of conservation for Audubon California said, "There is probably no more important property for the future of the California condor." Only a week ago, he said, roughly half of the 38 California condors in Southern California were foraging on the property.
4 ridgelines spared
A key to unlocking the stalemate was the developer's agreement to pull back from four of five northern-facing ridgelines, including one hemming scenic Bear Trap Canyon, that are prime foraging grounds inside critical California condor habitat.
"By removing the potential obstacles that have plagued similar development efforts in California, we'll be able to move ahead with the entitlement processes on our current development projects in a much more timely fashion," said Michael H. Winer, portfolio manager for Third Avenue Management, Tejon's largest shareholder, and a member of its board of directors.
The company had been seeking an "incidental condor take permit" from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which would have relieved it of liability in the event that its projects were linked to the death of any of the endangered raptors. However, the company recently determined that such a "lethal take permit" was no longer needed given the reconfiguration of development plans under the agreement.
Reynolds, of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said he was satisfied that the condor would be protected under the new plan.
"The condor is a very high-profile species, and there's been significant public investment in its recovery," he said, "and throughout these negotiations an enormous amount of attention was paid to ensuring that this agreement would be consistent with its recovery, and we believe it does so."
louis.sahagun@latimes.com