Advertisement

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S ENVIRONMENT At the Crossroads : Resources: <i> A TOLL ON THE TREASURES OF THE LAND</i> : Undammed Sespe Creek Is Focus of Water Fight

Share

A mere trickle in late summer, the last free-flowing river in Southern California surges to life in the winter with the arrival of the rainy season and plunges 55 miles down the mountains in Ventura County’s Los Padres National Forest on its way to the sea.

The annual awakening of Sespe Creek draws thousands of hikers, rock climbers and fly fishermen to the pristine canyon wilderness, an ancestral homeland of the Chumash Indians that is only 75 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

“Almost all the rivers in Southern California’s flatlands have been channelized, dammed, diverted or dried up,” says Steve Evans of Friends of the River. “The Sespe still provides a lot of recreation for thousands of people who hike and camp in the largest roadless expanse adjacent to a major metropolitan area in the nation.”

Advertisement

For years the exclusive domain of hikers and fishermen, Sespe Creek now is being coveted by new groups--developers and farmers. They see it as an answer to the problem of finding enough water to support Ventura County’s booming population.

On their side is Rep. Robert Lagomarsino (R-Ojai), who has authored a bill to place the middle 27.5 miles of Sespe Creek in the national wild and scenic river system, but leave the upper and lower stretches open to possible dam construction.

Supporters of Lagomarsino’s bill argue that the dams would provide water for continued development below while creating a year-round flow in the canyon stream bed, which is lined with willow and cottonwood trees and strewn with purple boulders as large as houses.

“Our concern is not that we have dams on the Sespe now or even five years from now,” says Carolyn Leavens, a local rancher and spokeswoman for the Ventura County Economic Development Assn. “We only want to maintain our option to build dams there. Eventually, perhaps within 10 years, we are going to need that water.”

On the other side are conservation groups, including the Sierra Club and Friends of the River. They back an opposing bill authored by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) that would place all 55 miles of the Sespe in the national wild and scenic river system.

Conservationists contend that dams on the Sespe are unnecessary. Ventura County’s future water needs, they argue, could be met more easily and at less cost to local residents by implementing water conservation techniques in homes and businesses and by building waste water treatment plants.

Advertisement

“If there were other rivers of equal quality still around in Southern California we wouldn’t be making such a fuss,” says Alasdair Coyne, co-founder of a grass-roots organization called Keep the Sespe Wild.

“Two dams on the Sespe don’t make sense,” Coyne said. “They’d flood a pristine area, make a mess of a native trout stream, kill off a remnant steelhead run and intrude on the California Condor Sanctuary. It’s not worth it.”

Advertisement