$6 million sought to prevent pollutants leaching into Santa Clara River
Kathleen Wilson
Ventura County Star
07/27/2009
The Santa Clara River rarely interferes with the players lining up their putts on the Oxnard golf course above it.
That’s because the waterway, known to spread 2,000 feet wide in a flood, usually runs dry.
“It’s a nonissue most of the time,” said Tom Dunn, a marshal who monitors play at the River Ridge Golf Club in north Oxnard.
But with the manicured course built atop a closed landfill, flood-control officials fear buried trash could leach into the river and pollute it if the disaster known as a 100-year flood strikes.
They are proposing to spend $6 million on an erosion control project aimed at preventing contamination. Officials say the project would not only protect the river but help safeguard adjoining Ventura Road and neighborhoods full of homes from flooding.
“Historically, the project area has been hit quite a bit in many of the major storms,” said Norma Camacho, director of the Ventura County Watershed Protection District.
Other public officials are asking whether it’s the best use of taxpayers’ money at a time when they may have to spend tens of millions on levees to boost flood control.
“This was like icing on the proverbial cake,” Ken Ortega, Oxnard’s public works director, said last week after meeting with officials from the watershed district. “Because we have so many things looming on the horizon to provide flood control, would it be premature?”
Two weeks ago, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors tabled approval of an environmental document so managers could ask Oxnard city officials and a special district that monitors the landfill to pitch in some money. Otherwise they are looking at paying the entire bill from county property tax dollars.
Neither Oxnard nor the Ventura Regional Sanitation District, which monitors the landfill that closed in the mid-80s, has yet decided whether to help pay for the project. The Oxnard City Council and the sanitation district’s board won’t be able to hear the pitch until mid-September, Camacho said.
The project calls for lining 1,300 feet of the bank next to the landfill with rock and putting a series of rock revetments into the riverbed. Called “weirs,” the four revetments extend 120 to 150 feet into the channel and rise to a level of 4 to 8 feet. They would move the water away from the bank, easing the pressure at a severe bend in the river, said an official who is overseeing the project.
“This project is designed to withstand a 100-year flood,” said Peter Sheydayi, deputy director for design and construction in the watershed district. “It would eliminate the erosion around the bend.”
The strongest objections are coming from the Wishtoyo Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Ventura, and its Ventura Coastkeeper program. In 12 pages of comments, they called for a more exhaustive environmental report to be done.
Associate Director Jason Weiner said a full environmental impact report would require the county to look at what would happen if there were no project. Weiner said he is concerned not only about the impact on wildlife and vegetation, but whether this is the best use of scarce resources.
The money might be better spent on protecting the river against a landfill in Piru that has washed into the waterway up stream, he said.
Camacho said the Piru repairs were made after the 2005 flood and have held. “There is no exposed trash,” she said.
Weiner also suggested that the landfill may be where the repairs need to be made.
“Is it feasible to remove some of the landfill, especially if it’s not toxic, instead of channelizing the river,” he said.
County Public Works Director Jeff Pratt, though, doubted that was environmentally or financially feasible.
Consultant PBSJ of San Diego conducted the environmental study, which is required under the sweeping state law known as the California Environmental Quality Act. The consultant concluded that the effect on the environment could be reduced below a significant level, so a full environmental impact report was not required.
The Santa Clara River stretches 100 miles in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, ending at the Pacific Ocean. It remains in a mostly natural state, the last large river in Southern California that can claim that distinction, said Ron Bottorff, chairman of the Friends of the Santa Clara River.
Bottorff said the organization normally opposes anything that restricts the flow of the river, but did not in this project because of the landfill and the single-family homes in the area.
“I talked at length with the Watershed Protection District,” he said. “They convinced me there was a need for protection because of the landfill.”
