Bill to Protect Sespe Awash With Debate

Sespe Creek, which runs wild and free through 55 miles of rugged, scenic Ventura County backcountry, is roiling the county’s political waters again.

The present controversy swirls around legislation that Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ventura) plans to introduce next week. Lagomarsino proposes to grant Wild and Scenic Rivers status to 27.5 miles of the middle portion of Sespe Creek, protecting that area from development of any kind. The proposal would leave the stream’s northern and southern sections open to the possibility of development.

Local environmentalists say that leaving the upper and lower portions of the creek open to reservoir and dam development would open the door for more people and other development in the area.

County agricultural and business interests contend that the legislation, even though it would only protect a portion of the Sespe, would cut off a potential source of precious water to a growing county.

The Sespe, according to the U.S. Forest Service, is one of the last free-flowing rivers in Southern California and runs through one of the largest roadless areas in the United States. The Forest Service estimates that about 10,000 people a year use the area for recreation.

The Sespe lies about an hour’s drive from metropolitan Los Angeles and flows through spectacular wilderness. It begins at about 6,000 feet in the vicinity of Pine Mountain, although its main source of water is springs in the middle section of the creek.

The Sespe passes through the camping area at Rose Valley, north of Ojai, which is often jammed with weekend campers during summer. After 20 miles of meandering eastward, past the much-visited Sespe hot springs, the creek turns south toward the community of Fillmore.

It is this southward path that is so spectacular, where the Sespe rushes past ancient Chumash Indian sites and surges into the condor sanctuary through a colorful gorge without trails, reminiscent of a canyon of the Southwest and strewn with smooth, house-size boulders. It is this area that is proposed for wild-river status under Lagomarsino’s proposal.

While environmentalists and the water-rights interest groups argue the merits of the Lagomarsino bill, Alasdair Coyne, a Sespe hiker, and William P. Price Jr., a water engineer, are seeking changes in the proposed legislation before it is introduced. Each thinks that the present bill is a compromise favoring the other side.

Coyne, 34, is a member of Keep the Sespe Wild, a group of a dozen people who want to see the entire Sespe Creek protected. What they fear is the eventual building of a reservoir in the upper reaches of the stream north of Ojai and a dam on the lower Sespe that would flood a scenic gorge just upstream. They say this flooding would cause the submersion of geologic formations found nowhere else in the world, and the loss of irreplaceable Chumash sites and rock art.

In addition, members of Keep the Sespe Wild say, if a dam is built, the loss of sediment flowing into the Santa Clara River and on into the ocean would drastically increase the erosion threat to beachfront property from Oxnard to Port Hueneme and past Point Mugu.

“We are out to protect a unique resource,” Coyne said.

But Price, 78, a former general manager and chief engineer of United Water Conservation District, contends that Lagomarsino’s bill, if enacted as written, will spell economic disaster for the county.

“We will either need Sespe Creek water, plus a good deal more, to keep Ventura County ‘water solvent’ in the future, or a plan to get rid of a lot of people and water uses from the county economy,” Price said.

For Coyne, the fight for the Sespe has become a personal one because of his love for the area.

“My first hike down the Sespe . . . really got me hooked,” he said. “There’s about six or eight of us that are all very excited about the beauty of the backcountry, and we want to see it preserved for future generations.”

Coyne said that while he has not hiked the entire Sespe, he particularly loves the creek’s last 10 miles, which remind him of Arizona canyon country.

Since there is no trail down that portion and mountaineering skills are needed because of the steepness of the gorge, Coyne said, hiking through the area is guided by “word of mouth,” a sort of verbal map from one hiker to another.

Coyne said he and other members of Keep the Sespe Wild have talked to a representative from Lagomarsino’s office about the effects of the proposed bill “but they haven’t been listening. I guess that’s just politicians. . . . I’m not a political person, but I believe it’s necessary to get involved to sustain the environment.”

Price, on the other hand, became involved in county water issues as head of United from 1954 until 1971. He now has his own water engineering consulting firm in Santa Paula and has done independent projects for United, which serves Santa Paula, Fillmore, Piru, Oxnard and parts of Ventura and Camarillo.

Price, like the ranchers and farmers who have property in United’s area, believes that the Sespe is a prime source of water because it supplies 60% of the water that flows down the Santa Clara River--water that he and the farmers and ranchers contend could best be used for crops and a growing Ventura County.

“Lagomarsino’s bill takes away all the good opportunities to harvest the water. The environmentalists say that if we build the dam, we will encourage people. That’s not so. The people are already here, and we are living on our savings account of water,” Price said.

$83-Million Proposal

Twenty years ago, when Price was with United, the water company put an $83-million proposal before voters to pay for the building of three projects on the Sespe. Those included two reservoirs--one at Cold Springs north of Ojai and the other at Topatopa, where the Sespe turns south above the gorge. The third project was to be a diversion dam at Oat Mountain north of Fillmore. Although the proposal was narrowly turned down by voters, Price and agricultural interests have never stopped discussing the need for the projects, particularly in dry years.

Of particular importance to water conservationists is Topatopa, which is in the middle of the area that Lagomarsino’s bill will declare off limits for any kind of water development, Price said.

“If there’s no way to dam the site at Topatopa, there is no way to utilize the water in a cost-effective manner,” he said. “There are dozens of dam sites on the river, but no storage behind them like at Topatopa.”

That middle section of the Sespe is of particular importance to members of Keep the Sespe Wild because of its environmental beauty. But Price said that although environmentalists “may have their legitimate concerns, they use those concerns as a weapon” to stall projects that ultimately cost the taxpayer millions more than the original proposals.

Steelhead Trout

He scoffs at Keep the Sespe Wild’s claims that the Sespe is the most southerly creek on the West Coast to host a remnant steelhead trout population and should be kept protected because of its “wild trout stream” status.

“State and federal fisheries personnel, in a two-year investigation, found three steelhead trout,” Price said. The results “would not indicate a major fishery . . . and many experts concluded that the three fish were, in any event, strays.”

Price said he has talked to Lagomarsino many times about the effects his Sespe bill would have on water conservation in the area “but it hasn’t done any good. I think Bob is walking on a tightrope of a very large environmental group in Santa Barbara, people who don’t give a hoot about Ventura County.”

Lagomarsino, who narrowly won reelection in November after a tough fight for his seat with state Sen. Gary Hart (D-Santa Barbara), particularly over environmental issues, had introduced similar legislation concerning the Sespe last year. That bill died in committee. He said the present bill is “exactly the same bill with a few minor changes.”

Acknowledging that the proposal is “either a very bad bill or a very good bill,” depending upon the concerns of various county interests, Lagomarsino said he based the legislation on the recommendations of the Forest Service, which surveyed Sespe Creek as part of a National Rivers Inventory mandated by Congress.

Thinks Concerns Addressed

Lagomarsino said he believes that the bill does take into account the concerns of water conservationists.

“I think the water part of it makes a lot of sense. . . . We talked to the water district. They told us they could live with that. But there are other people who are talking about parts of the river that don’t qualify as ‘wild and scenic.’ They want lines to be drawn so it will be impossible to consider building a dam. I believe we should at least be able to reserve the right to look at that possibility in the future.”

A Forest Service spokesman said the plan for the Sespe came about after more than seven years of intensive study, with a final environmental impact report released on the Los Padres National Forest in March, 1988.

“We had a lot of input, approximately 8,000 comments on our plan. We looked into all of the positions. We did not disenfranchise anybody, we don’t feel. Our recommendations are based on what we feel Congress will accept,” said Earl Clayton, Forest Service public affairs officer.

Flooding Potential

The Sespe, which meanders like a creek during most of the year, has its darker side. In January, 1969, the Sespe went on a rampage, pouring floodwaters into the Santa Clara River, which overflowed its banks, killing 12 people and ultimately causing $43 million in damage to private and public property from Ojai to Ventura Harbor.

Because the Sespe is unpredictable and most of its annual flow runs into the Santa Clara during the winter rainy season, the water does not lend itself to easy management. It is the Sespe’s unpredictability, water conservationists say, that makes the building of the two reservoirs and diversion dam desirable. Those projects would prevent damage such as the 1969 flooding. And the stored water, when released properly, would replenish ground water that is being seriously overdrafted, they say.

However, members of Keep the Sespe Wild maintain that the Freeman Diversion Improvement Project, which is to be completed next year, will help replenish the ground water. That $18-million project, which is on the Santa Clara River near Saticoy, will spread the water coming from the Sespe so that it can sink back into the ground-water system.

Paul Pebbel, president of Keep the Sespe Wild, said information from several engineering consultants shows that the Freeman project will return more water to the overdrafted ground-water system than Cold Springs reservoir ever could. Because of the expense of building a reservoir, the cost of water, the consultants estimate, would jump to $1,000 an acre-foot--many times the price for water that agriculture could afford, Pebbel said.

Fighting a Ghost

However, Pebbel acknowledged that his organization is, in effect, fighting a ghost because the Cold Springs and Topatopa reservoirs and the Oat Mountain dam are not live proposals.

“If a dam were proposed, we could do an in-depth study. Sometimes it’s like fighting a ghost. No one says there’s a dam, but they might want a dam sometime,” he said.

Another local environmentalist, Russ Baggerly, who is administrative director of Citizens to Preserve Ojai, said the whole issue of the Sespe boils down to the development of Ventura County.

“What really is happening is that a certain element of society is trying to find a reason to keep populating the Oxnard Plain. What follows is a classic pattern of overdevelopment, then an overdraft of the water supply and then the fight to supplement the water supply. It’s called the California syndrome.

“Keep the Sespe Wild is right--the dam fight is a ghost, a ghost the development community would like to resurrect. What you get from a dam on the Sespe is precious little, and what you lose is a whole lot.”

‘Misperceived’ Situation

However, Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, a nonprofit corporation that represents 1,200 farmers and ranchers in the county, said the water situation in Ventura County is misperceived by most of the people in the area.

“We’re not asked to ration; we’ve not suffered true deprivation. Water is misperceived as not being an issue,” he said.

Laird, who said he was expressing his opinion and not that of the board of the farm bureau, characterized the issue of Sespe water “as having the capacity to generate . . . emotionally charged opinions. The very subject develops extremely strong feelings at opposite ends of the spectrum. Unfortunately, it makes it difficult to arrive at a decision that is both appropriate and in the best interests of all concerned.”

He said the estimate that the building of Cold Springs reservoir on the Sespe would increase the cost of water to $1,000 an acre-foot “does not surprise me,” adding that there are farmers in the county who are now paying $300 to $350 an acre-foot.

Laird said the fight for water with Northern California and the cost of fossil fuel to pump that water into this area is a real concern to people in the agricultural community.

Agriculture’s Future

“The future of agriculture is going to depend on our ability to use ground water. Is it any less wrong to continue to degrade the ground water than it is to look at the Sespe? One is not worse than the other.”

Members of Keep the Sespe Wild say they intend to continue their fight for the inclusion of the entire Sespe Creek in Lagomarsino’s legislation.

Because of the concern over the loss of sediment to local beaches should the Oat Mountain diversion dam be built, the organization plans to send letters to beach homeowner associations and to several gravel-mining companies that operate along the Santa Clara River.

Coyne said he believes that beach homeowner associations and the gravel-mining industry will get involved once they see the information that Keep the Sespe Wild has gathered.

“We know the gravel-mining industry won’t want to see half of their supply cut off. But a dam would never pass an environmental impact report,” he said. “The Santa Clara River is the largest river system in Southern California. Thirty-five percent of that river is already blocked. If they blocked off the Sespe, that would be another 25%” of the sediment flow blocked.

Coyne said his organization is on a waiting list to see Lagomarsino.

“We hope to meet with them really soon. We are also hoping that various sides will sit down and discuss the issue,” he said.

Fred Gientke, general manager of United, said the district has been in touch with Lagomarsino.

“We’ve talked to Bob and he is in the process of introducing the bill,” Gientke said. “Our feeling is to let the legislation go through, and we will work with him to modify the legislation.”