VENTURA : Money for Harbor Plan Expected in ’90

Federal funding for a $6.5-million project to improve the safety of Ventura Harbor’s ocean entrance, called the most dangerous in Southern California, could begin this year, a harbor official said.

“I believe we will be included in the 1990 budget,” said Ventura Port District General Manager Richard W. Parsons at a meeting Wednesday.

The harbor’s entrance has been plagued, since its 1963 opening, with sand deposits that sometimes create breaking waves for incoming vessels or imprison them in the harbor.

Each year, the Port supervises a dredging operation to keep the entrance open, this year digging out 200,000 cubic yards of sand at a cost of about $400,000. On average, 640,000 cubic yards have been dredged a year over the past 17 years, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers paying for most of the work.

Parsons said lobbying in Washington, D.C., by a delegation last month yielded tentative approval of $750,000 in funding for engineering designs and test models on entrance improvements, the first concrete step toward actual work on the project.

If all goes well and there are no delays in funding, Parsons said, work could begin in 1993.

The project, an outgrowth of an extensive Corps of Engineers study, will deepen the sea entrance to Ventura Harbor from about 20 feet to about 40 feet.

It also will extend the offshore breakwater and the north jetty, plus add a 650-foot sea wall to the beach about 1,000 feet south of the harbor’s south jetty.

Last month, Ventura Port Commissioner Richard S. Hambleton called the entrance “the most dangerous in Southern California” at a meeting of the House Subcommittee on Water Resources. The subcommittee voted in favor of the project, virtually assuring full committee authorization, Parsons said.