‘Dairylands’ Agricultural Preserve May Be Broken Up

For 25 years, the “dairylands,” a large agricultural preserve near Chino, has served as an attractive, if malodorous, buffer between urbanized Los Angeles County to the west and the booming Inland Empire to the east.

Within the 17,000-acre preserve, there are about 200 dairies and an estimated 200,000 cows--the source of most of Southern California’s milk.

Early next month, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors is expected to decide if the land will continue to be used for agriculture or if it will be opened to commercial development. Their decision should end, at least for the time being, a dispute that has raged for years.

Some dairy operators want the agricultural preserve to be broken up, so they can sell their increasingly valuable land for real estate or commercial development.

Broer Vander Dussen, who operates two dairies and also has a dairy real estate business, said a recent survey showed that almost 80% of the property owners within the preserve want to get out.

Many of Dutch Descent

But others want to keep the dairies and the close-knit family and church life that has developed around them. Many of the dairies in the preserve are operated by families of Dutch descent who moved to Chino 25 years ago when residential development pushed them out of southeast Los Angeles County. San Bernardino County designated the area as an agricultural preserve in 1968.

If the preserve is to be broken up, the San Bernardino County supervisors must agree to let property owners terminate their contracts under the state’s Williamson Act--a 1965 law that seeks to preserve California farmland and to control suburban sprawl.

The law grants substantial tax breaks to property owners if they agree to restrict their land to agricultural uses for at least 10 years.

If the supervisors, who are scheduled to consider the issue Jan. 5, agree to break up all or part of the preserve, property owners would be permitted to withdraw from their Williamson Act contracts over a nine-year period, during which their tax rates would rise gradually to market value. Or they could buy their way out of the contracts in one year by paying substantial penalties.

In recent years, as county planners studied the issue, the supervisors seemed to be leaning in the direction of breaking up the preserve.

But the election last June of two new supervisors--Jon Mikels, former mayor of Rancho Cucamonga, and Larry Walker, former mayor of Chino--brought a change. Both Mikels and Walker are considered to be less friendly to developers than the supervisors they replaced.

Walker made the dairylands a major campaign issue and promised to maintain it as an agricultural preserve for at least 10 years.

“The people have spoken,” said young dairy operator Geoff Vanden Heuvel, who wants to remain in the preserve. “Vander Dussen is out of step. People are not at all happy with the way county government has been run--there’s been too much influence by developers.”

But Jennie DeBoer, who would like to sell the large dairy she and her husband Fred operate, said Walker should vote to break up the preserve because “a majority of the people who live in the ag preserve want out, and he should go along with them.”

DeBoer, Vander Dussen and others who want to sell do not think the supervisors will agree. Vander Dussen said he expects a majority of the five supervisors to side with Walker in maintaining the preserve for at least 10 years.

The Jan. 5 meeting is a “last-ditch effort,” Vander Dussen said. “We’ll show up there with a lot of people and make our presentation, but I don’t think we have much of a chance.”

Incorporation Effort

If the supervisors vote to keep the preserve, Vander Dussen and others who seek to break it up say they will attempt to incorporate a new city and pass land-use policies that would supersede those of the county.

“We can get it done in 12 months,” Vander Dussen said.

But James M. Roddy, executive director of the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission, noted that there have been “no incorporations of that nature” anywhere in the state since the law establishing county LAFCOs was passed in 1963.

His reference was to “special-interest incorporations” such as those of the City of Commerce, the City of Industry and Cerritos, the latter one of the cities that was formed after the dairies were expelled from southern Los Angeles County.

“It was the emergence of this kind of effort that led the state to believe there should be third-party review” of new incorporation efforts, Roddy said. “There would be some significant hurdles for that group (would-be founders of a new city in the dairylands) to clear.”