Community Victorious in Six-Year Battle
Against Outside Developer
Powder Canyon will remain undeveloped as an open space wildlife corridor in perpetuity. On May 29, Whittier Council member Bob Henderson announced that escrow has closed on the sale of the entire Powder Canyon parcel. The buyer is a "Joint Powers Authority" (JPA) composed of the City of Whittier, the Hacienda Heights community, the office of County Supervisor Deane Dana, and the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts. This Joint Powers Authority ("The Puente Hills Landfill Native Habitat Preservation Authority") was established in 1993 to offset the negative impact of the Puente Hills Landfill on the Whittier-Puente Hills environment (see page 3).
The sale of Powder Canyon represents both the end of a divisive issue for the City and the beginning of a new dimension in our quality of life. The sale also achieves a major goal of our City's founders. One of the primary concerns in the Incorporation movement was the preservation of Powder Canyon. (Page 2 sets out the history of Goal No. 8 of the General Plan.)
This parcel is a notable community amenity that has been enjoyed for years by horse riders, joggers, bird watchers, mountain bikers, biologists and other scientists, and residents in search of a bit of refreshing seclusion. It has also acted as a significant buffer zone between the urban sprawl of the San Gabriel Valley and our own neighborhoods. Property is more valuable in the Heights than in other areas near our City because our community offers solitude and privacy. Powder Canyon enhances our natural rural setting and protects us from the crowded cities and traffic patterns to our north.
As a wildlife corridor, Powder Canyon can never be turned into a county or city park. It will never affect our City's maintenance budget or resources. At no cost to residents, the property will be patrolled by rangers working for the JPA, whose job will be to help preserve and maintain this key environmental asset. As the only undisturbed self-contained watershed in Los Angeles County, Powder Canyon is the "keystone" parcel in the regional wildlife corridor that runs north from the Cleveland National Forest and west into the Whittier Hills. Preservation of this parcel is critical for the survival of the entire corridor. (Page 5 shows an area map.)
The dream of our City's founders will now become a reality. For more than forty years twenty years prior to Incorporation our community has been protecting our secluded life style from encroachment by outside developers. In the late 1980s, a proposal by Forum Country Clubs represented another possible intrusion on our life style that would have destroyed our General Plan. In order to protect our community, hundreds of Heights residents joined together to form the Committee to Protect the General Plan and expended their time and money to successfully defeat the project. They participated in Planning Commission and City Council meetings, they donated money for mailing fact sheets citywide, and they voted in the crucial elections of November 1993 and April 1994. We are all elated by the successful preservation of our natural heritage.
Now it is important to move forward as a community. Together we can
maintain and improve the quality of life in La Habra Heights. We are pleased
that this chapter of our history has had such a happy ending. It is time
to devote ourselves to the challenges of the future.