College’s Plan to Pave Hills for Parking Lot Draws Ire

VALENCIA —  An owl peered down from a massive valley oak tree set among rolling hills overlooking College of the Canyons.

Other than two teenagers hiking along the narrow dirt paths that crisscross what conservationists say is one of the last remaining valley oak habitats in the Santa Clarita Valley, the scene looks much as it did two centuries ago.

The unspoiled savanna was once home to Native Americans who harvested acorns for food and used wild tobacco as a muscle relaxant, conservationists say. Today, horned lizards, leaf-nosed bats and migratory birds still live among the valley oaks, Mariposa lilies and other native plants.

“This is a little oasis of nature,” said Cynthia Neal-Harris, a Newhall resident and member of the Santa Clarita Oak Conservancy, an area preservationist group. “It is a very pleasant and peaceful place.”

But the silence will be broken next month when bulldozers begin plowing under the savanna to make room for 1,870 parking spaces for the community college about 40 miles north of downtown Los Angeles.

College officials say the $4.5-million parking lot is necessary to accommodate a projected surge in student enrollment from 10,000 to 20,000 by 2008.

Since its founding in 1969, the college has grown from a handful of students taking after-hours classes at Hart High School in Newhall to a sprawling 154-acre campus nestled in the coffee-colored Santa Susana Mountains.

The school was originally built near Camp Plenty Road in Canyon Country on a site previously designated for an elementary school. But residents’ complaints prompted the switch to an area that was then planted with onions.

Last Thursday night, the Santa Clarita Community College District Board of Trustees unanimously approved College of the Canyons’ plans to uproot 32 valley oak trees, level rolling hills and remove 525,000 cubic yards of dirt from the 15-acre site at the campus’ southern end along Rockwell Canyon Road.

In return, college officials plan to set aside 10 to 15 acres of land for a permanent conservation area that would include 300 oak trees, native plants and hiking trails.

Even so, the plans did little to mollify local environmentalists who say college officials should scrap the parking plan and leave the savanna intact.

“I am flabbergasted,” said Virginia Colwell Kilpatrick, president of Citizens for Government Integrity, a local government watchdog group.

“I found it very difficult to accept the fact that elected officials would ignore the will of the public,” said Kilpatrick, a Valencia resident, whose group is considering filing a lawsuit against the college.

Opponents contend college officials have brushed aside residents’ concerns about the environment by not drafting a full environmental impact report for the project, but rather issuing a plan to lessen the parking lot’s impact on the community.

College spokeswoman Sue Bozman vehemently denied the charges, saying the school has put forth a concerted effort to balance the needs of students and residents.

“We are caught between a rock and a hard place,” Bozman said. “We are mandated to serve our students’ educational needs. At the same time, we have changed the project several times to reduce the number of trees and land that would be impacted.”

School officials have tried to be sensitive to the environment by reducing from 114 to 32 the number of trees targeted for removal, Bozman said.

Originally, campus officials planned to dig up 525,000 cubic yards of dirt and pile it on top of rare valley oak trees, she said. Now, construction crews will haul 300,000 cubic yards off campus, saving 82 trees.

School officials issued a less-comprehensive mitigation declaration for the parking lot project, Bozman said, because the college plans to draft a full environmental impact report to accompany its 10-year educational master plan to be drafted later this year.

Until the new parking lot is completed in February, Bozman said the college will continue to operate a shuttle service between the campus and Valencia Town Center, and encourage students to carpool or use public transportation.