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Today in S.C.V. History December 25
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Marianne Paris Sneider, a beloved long-time friend and patron of the Roar Foundation, died on July 21. Her generous spirit is reflected in her estate plan, which provides for a gift of $100,000 to the Roar Foundation in honor of Tippi Hedren, provided that the Roar Foundation receives $100,000 in matching grants within one year of her death.
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More than a dozen Val Verde and Castaic residents and community leaders came together on Tuesday, Dec. 17, to decry the “inaction and lack of concern” of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors around the public health emergency in the "diverse" community around the Chiquita Canyon Landfill operated by Waste Connections.
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The Gibbon Conservation Center in Saugus is offering the 2025 Gibbon Calendar for $15 plus $5 shipping. Purchasing a calendar or other items from the Gibbon Center Gift Shop helps support the care and feeding of the endangered small apes living at the Gibbon Conservation Center in Saugus.
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Exercising its mandate to improve transparency and accountability in law enforcement, the Los Angeles County Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission has created a special committee to investigate how the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department handles complaints made by members of the public against its deputies.
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Four students from California Institute of the Arts Character Animation program have been awarded scholarships by ASIFA-Hollywood’s Animation Educators Forum for the 2024-25 academic year.
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On Sunday, Dec. 15, nearly 2,000 people dressed in their favorite holiday outfits attended the Metrolink Holiday Express Train at the city of Santa Clarita’s Vista Canyon Multi-Modal Center in Canyon Country.
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The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is advising residents to not feed their pets raw food following a voluntary recall of Northwest Naturals Brand 2lb Feline Turkey Recipe Raw & Frozen Pet Food due to detection of H5 bird flu virus in product samples.
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The joy of the holiday season can quickly be ruined by scams, theft and fraud. Before you make a purchase or a donation it’s important to use caution. To help you navigate safely through the holidays
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The City of Santa Clarita invites the community to come together for a Unity Walk in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at Central Park, 27150 Bouquet Canyon Road, Santa Clarita, CA 91350, on Monday, Jan.20 at 8 a.m.
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Are you ready for storm season? During heavy rain, Los Angeles County is particularly prone to flooding and erosion because so much of the land is paved over and debris can cause stormwater drains to become clogged or backed up.
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Two CalArtian-directed films earned nods this year for Golden Globes in the Best Motion Picture – Animated category.
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The Mosaiq creative Collection will host a feel good pop-up market 11 a.m.- 3 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 26 at the Venue Valencia, 28678 The Old Road Valencia, CA 91355.
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Sometimes the best you can hope for when going against the best is to learn from the experience. And that's what The Master's University women's basketball team is hoping for after getting beat 97-77 by NAIA No. 1 Dordt University (IA) Wednesday, Dec. 18 on the final day of the Hope International Christmas Classic in Fullerton.
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Burrtec Waste Industries has partnered with the city of Santa Clarita to establish three convenient locations for residents to recycle live Christmas trees this holiday season.
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College of the Canyons women's basketball used a 22-point fourth-quarter outburst to get past host Oxnard College 46-41 on Tuesday, Dec. 17, winning its second game across its last three outings.
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College of the Canyons freshman kicker Luis Rodriguez has been named to the 2024 California Community College Football Coaches Association All-America Team, while also joining the group of five Cougars earning All-State Team honors.
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1965 - Signal newspaper owner Scott Newhall shows up for a duel (of words) with rival Canyon Country newspaper publisher Art Evans, who no-shows and folds his paper soon after [story]
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NORAD monitors and defends North American airspace 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. On Dec. 24, NORAD has one additional mission: tracking Santa Claus as he makes his way across the globe delivering presents to children.
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The Santa Clarita Valley is ablaze with holiday lights and displays. Here are few of the most popular spots to see the lights. Some displays wrap up on Christmas night, others will run through New Year’s Day. See them before they are turned off until next year.
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The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will increase patrols throughout the community and provide other traffic safety programs to help reduce the number of serious injuries and deaths on roads.
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The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has confirmed a human case of H5 bird flu in an adult who was exposed to livestock infected with H5 Bird flu at a worksite.
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The International Film Festival Rotterdam unveiled the first highlights of its 54th edition, set to take place in the Netherlands from Jan. 30 to Feb. 9. Among the lineup are world premieres by two filmmakers who graduated from California Institue of the Arts.
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Established in honor of the late Edward G. “Jerry” Gladbach, a past Association of California Water Agencies president, Santa Clarita Valley Water vice president and longtime local, the 2025/26 Edward G. “Jerry” Gladbach Scholarship application is available.
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21 Comments
The street by Sams Club is appropriately named “McKeon Way”.
IT REALLY DOES’NT GO ANYWHERE.
Can you change that hat to a arse hat!???? truly I don’t help the people person!!
I remember with great sentiment the one and only event in my memory, where Santa Clarita’s staunch Republicans and its environmentalist Democrats came together, the fight against the Cemex Mine. Reading BLM’s termination letter addressed to Cemex, I realize that Cemex and the BLM were guilty of “sneaking up” on Santa Clarita, making plans and agreements in the dark between 1999 and mid 2002.
In late 2002, thanks to Santa Clarita’s City Council, “the people” finally understood what was going on, and participated in a huge anti-mine pep rally in a high school gym. Then, the City chartered buses to take a horde of Santa Claritans down to County Hall in Downtown L.A. to oppose the County granting land use permits to Cemex. The City provided anti-mine T-Shirts for its residents to wear. My 11 year old daughter and her dad rode on the bus and I met them. (Just last month my now 24 year old daughter found her tiny anti-Cemex T-Shirt in the back of her closet!) The Board of Supervisors chamber was packed with people, hundreds of them. Supervisor Mike Antonovich was so revved up with indignation about the potential traffic impacts on his constitutions, in Santa Clarita, Agua Duce, Acton, Palmdale and Lancaster, he could not contain himself. If the middle of the presentation by Cemex’s lawyers in favor of their project our Supervisor became so outraged, he made a motion to stop the hearing and deny the permits. The other Supersivors voted to support him and it was over. Everyone applauded with joy…except for those of us who understood the process.
Despite beautiful legal work by the City’s lawyer, a notoriously cranky Federal judge later erased the Supervisors vote and ordered the County to issue Cemex its permits.
Years passed, and as Darryl Manzer and SCVNews point out, millions of Santa Clarita taxpayer dollars where dumped into complex maneuvers to kill the mine legislatively, without the BLM’s cooperation. Through the end of 2014 BLM was vehemently opposing cancellation of the mining program, because its managers wanted the cash flow to fund their other programs.
Now, this letter called a BLM Record of Decision has arrived, with page after page of carefully written description, from BLM’s point of view, on how Cemex failed to perform on its BLM contracts, casting BLM as the aggrieved party, not Santa Claritans. In the last few pages of that Record of Decision, BLM includes language which tips off any lawyer that there IS more to come. BLM says it will pursue “the sureties” (insurance companies) for payment on the bond posted by Cemex to insure its performance on the contracts. BLM gives notice to Cemex that Cemex has a right to appeal the letter’s termination of the contracts.
The entry of surety bond insurance companies into a problem situation is never good, because they have but one objective: Not paying money. Under many legal theories the surety bond holder can step into Cemex’s shoes and pursue that appeal. So the “problem” of the mine will not be gone until BLM has the surety’s money. Perhaps more check writing by the city, to make BLM whole, and take the surety out of the picture, will be necessary. So Santa Claritans, don’t be angry if you hear that the city has to write more checks to make BLM whole under the last pages of that Record of Decision letter.
Outside of Santa Clarita, BLM’s world is very different. Senators Harry Reid and Dean Heller of Nevada have a wonderful relationship with BLM’s senior management in Washington. During the frenzy of legislation passed by Congress at the end of 2014, Nevada’s Senators were able to convince BLM to relinquish fee title ownership, including mineral rights, to more than 100,000 acres of BLM land in Nevada, giving the land to the state, to Clark County and to several Nevada cities. Prior to that 2014 Nevada BLM bill, Senator Reid had previously twice killed a proposed Cemex gravel mine in the south end of the Las Vegas Valley, near the M Casino if you know it.
In 2014 Nevadans got ownership of all of that BLM land “for free” at the same time Congressman McKeon, retiring Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, one of the most powerful Congressmen “on the Hill”, was unable to get his Cemex-solution bill through the Senate, because of the last minute intervention of an obscure junior Senator from New Mexico, Martin Heinrich, the son of Shirley Bybee, a member of a politically powerful western family which includes a rather infamous Federal judge Jay Bybee. Senator Heinrich sided with BLM and put a “hold” on Buck’s Cemex-solution bill, negating Buck’s “juice”. I won’t speculate on the Heinrich-Bybee-McKeon connection but perhaps other Santa Claritans can figure it out.
Even assuming that BLM has wiped the slate clean with this Record of Decision letter, removing Cemex from the picture, Santa Clarita is STILL at risk because that mine-able aggregate will still be sitting in those mountains northeast of Santa Clarita’s boundaries, waiting for BLM under some President’s administration to decide that cash flow from sale of mining rights is needed. It is absolutely essential that Santa Clarita or Los Angeles County obtain the same thing as Senators Reid and Heller delivered for their constituents last year. A gift of fee title ownership of the BLM land, including mineral rights, covering both the former Cemex mine site and additional BLM land to the north which Leon Worden identified, long ago, as being another candidate for a BLM mine which would be disastrous to the public health. How can that happen? Only if Santa Clarita figures out how to move BLM’s decision makers the way Senator Reid could for his constituents. Only through the gracious offices of Senators Feinstein and Boxer, with the cooperation of BLM officials who are still controlled by President Barack Obama, at least for the next 15-1/2 months.
A clue as to how far into the bubble Buck went was when his wife ran for local office! They thought they were invincible. So we find out what some of us have always thought: the McKeon’s are “takers”. And after 15+ years of political stagnation, the SCV can finally move forward. Thank you Sen. Boxer!!!!
Can we count on Darryl to pay the bill when it comes in the mail?
People will be sorry when they want to build a new patio, pool deck, etc…and there is a concrete shortage…typical not in my backyard mentality.
At least I can breath clean air from my backyard!
Yeah…mining sand and gravel is not a pollutant..
Maybe! But the pollutants from the hundreds of trucks traveling in and out of the canyons at all hours would. Plus if you enjoy viewing scarred mountainsides then more power to you but I’m certain you live nowhere near the would be impacted area. Have a nice day Amy!
All I’m saying is there are WAY worse things that could be coming to SCV. And we all benefit from concrete, Believe or not. Without it cost of living goes up. It really isn’t that bad. Take Care. Congratulations.
Thank you!
Wow, two people with opposing views not calling each other names on Facebook!? What a breath of fresh air. Thanks Amy and Frank!
Amy, perhaps those patios should be built with sustainable materials so that we can all continue to have a back yard and slightly less polluted air.
Hahaha. Are you kidding me. You must not live near the site or the 14 fwy where they planned to truck all this cement!
Thanks Ethan..yes people can debate opposing opinions without being jerks! Just want some people to hear the other side. Everyone needs to realize cement is used for a lot of things that we all will want or need at some point. Not just patios. And it does affect all of our costs of living.
Nothing is “over” and if any of you believe that you’re mistaken or like false hope! They, (someone) WILL mine there, period!! There is no other use for the land in question! The best reading the “pollution” argument…which is simply not the case nor has it ever been! When LA country run out of material, soon…most will eat crow and find another person or company to blame for the rapid rise in the cost of living!
Im sure there are other locations to obtain what is needed for patio material. That’s the least of our worries !
Manzer is right on the money with this one!
?can’t believe your liberal commit. Buck did more for Santa Clarita in spite of Boxer.thats like thanking Obama for our weak economy!
Are you sure it’s weak????