Environmental Study Urged for Project

VENTURA COUNTY — Prompted by the recent discovery of an endangered flower and frog on the Ahmanson Ranch property, county planners are recommending more environmental study of a long-debated 3,050-unit housing project near Thousand Oaks.

Senior planner Dennis Hawkins said Monday his department will ask the Board of Supervisors in the next few weeks for about $50,000 for a consultant’s study on how to protect the California red-legged frog and the San Fernando Valley spineflower--and the potential ripple effects of those measures.

That review would supplement an environmental impact report approved in 1992, when Ventura County supervisors signed off on the project. The Ahmanson proposal, which would add 10,000 residents to the area, includes two golf courses, a school and commercial development, parks, trails and open space on rolling hills abutting the Los Angeles County line.

A spokesman for Washington Mutual Inc., the parent company of Ahmanson Land Co., said it agrees with the county.

But Mary Wiesbrock, director of Save Open Space and a leader of the opposition to the project, said a supplemental report is not good enough. Instead, Wiesbrock, whose Agoura Hills home is not far from Ahmanson Ranch, is urging officials to throw out the 1992 report and start over, saying information is outdated and inadequate.