Santa Clarita Urged to Buy Water Firms in Bid to Limit Housing

A citizens group urged the Santa Clarita City Council on Monday night to take over local water companies and withhold water to limit construction of new housing.

City acquisition of the Valencia Water Co. and Santa Clarita Water Co. was suggested recently by three council members when one of the firms applied for renewal of its franchise to serve the area.

If the water companies were under city control, said Councilwoman Jan Heidt, Santa Clarita would have greater power over development in unincorporated Los Angeles County territory outside the city limits.

John Drew, chairman of Citizens Assn. for a Responsible Residential Initiative on Growth--CARRING--told the council Monday night that “the council’s idea appears to be the most practical and realistic approach of all the suggested plans for controlling growth in the county that CARRING has studied in the last 10 months.”

Drew spoke during a public forum, attended by 40 people at Santa Clarita City Hall, on a proposed slow-growth initiative drafted by CARRING.

The measure, patterned after ordinances enacted by Thousand Oaks and scores of other California cities, would allow 475 new housing units in the city each year. CARRING members said the figure reflects the average growth rate of Los Angeles County during the 1980s.

Most people attending the forum supported the initiative, although many offered suggestions to fine-tune the measure.

The lone speaker against the measure was Scott Voltz, chairman of a rival citizens group, Santa Clarita Residents for Responsible Planning. Voltz said a numerical cap on development was not necessary because growth could be regulated through higher development standards.

Voltz, however, praised many elements of the CARRING initiative, especially a point system that would rate the public benefits a proposed development would provide.

Slow-growth sentiment has been building in Santa Clarita in recent years, but the move to impose growth controls gathered strength last summer while the City Council and homeowners were engaged in an often fractious debate over the proposed 1,452-unit Santa Catarina condominium project in Canyon Country.

The City Council, bowing to the objections of homeowners, eventually rejected the project.

CARRING members have viewed the defeat of the Santa Catarina project as a watershed for the local slow-growth movement. When the group’s members released the slow-growth initiative last year, they staged their initial press conference near the hillside site of the canceled project.