Ventura Takes 1st Step to Clean Estuary : Environment: The city allocates $100,000 to restore the river bottom. But 250 homeless people need to be moved.

The city of Ventura has taken a historic first step toward restoring the polluted Ventura River estuary to the way it was in Chumash Indian times.

City and state officials have allocated $100,000 to study the estuary--where fresh water from the river meets salt water from the ocean--and restore it as a habitat for many species.

“It will be the only river like that in all of Southern California. It will almost be like stepping back in time 100 years,” said Donald Villeneuve, a Ventura councilman and teacher of environmental science at Ventura College.

For that to happen, however, about 250 homeless people who live on the dry river bottom will have to go, supporters of the plan concede, and city officials say they have no place to put them.

“Fundamentally, the only way to clean up the area is to have them move,” said Charles Price, president and co-founder of the Friends of the Ventura River, a nonprofit group that has lobbied for the restoration for nearly 20 years.

Backers of the restoration effort say it is a recognition of the estuary’s historical significance.

“First the Mission, then agriculture and then oil development were possible because of the availability of water from the Ventura River,” said Mark Capelli, a biologist and Friends member who pushed for the study. “This town has its roots on the banks of that river.”

Development, however, has all but destroyed the estuary. In 1958, completion of the Casitas Dam blocked the river’s natural flow except during a few winter months. Now, most of the fresh water in the estuary is storm-drain runoff from city streets, oil facilities and other industrial sources along with treated waste water from a city sewage-treatment plant.

Parts of the estuary have turned emerald green with algae. Trash and biological wastes left by the homeless add to the pollution.

On Oct. 19, the Coastal Conservancy awarded Ventura a $50,000 grant to study the estuary and design a plan to restore the river mouth. The City Council voted Monday to add $35,000, mostly in staff time, City Manager John Baker said. The state Department of Parks and Recreation chipped in another $15,000.

The ultimate price tag for actually restoring the estuary could run into the millions, which officials hope will be covered by state and federal grants.

The study area includes 160 acres at Emma Wood State Beach, the state’s Ventura River Group Camp, the city’s Seaside Wilderness Park, county-owned land north of the Main Street bridge, and private land owned by developer Arnold Hubbard.

Price and Villeneuve acknowledged that the largest obstacle to restoring the river bottom may be the homeless people who camp there along the Main Street Bridge. Lacking toilets or trash cans, they have littered the grassy, reed-covered area with refuse.

Villeneuve said Ventura and Oxnard are redoubling their efforts to find a shelter for the homeless. Before Ventura passes an ordinance making overnight sleeping in the area unlawful--as it has done for beaches and city parks--it must find housing for the homeless, he said.

But shelters won’t work for many of the homeless, said Michael Starr, a 48-year-old transient who has wintered in the riverbed for the past seven years.

“I just don’t get along with people,” he said, standing on what he calls his patio, a sunny area near his dome tent among the riverbed’s tall reeds. He and his brother, Mark, 32, recycle cans and bottles to support themselves.

Rousting the homeless from the riverbed “wouldn’t last very long,” he said. “There’s a lot of people down here who don’t have nothing else. Their entire life is here at the river bottom.”

Villeneuve said he believes that solving the homeless problem will be an important component of the restoration plan and that the project is too important to abandon for any reason.

“We are in a new era statewide--and possibly worldwide--of recognizing these natural resources that we have neglected and destroyed out of ignorance for so many years,” he said.

Villeneuve and Price credited Capelli with pushing for the project. Capelli led a two-year study on the river bottom’s plant life by the Herbarium at UC Santa Barbara. The Herbarium study will become one section of the three-part restoration study, which will include sections on wildlife and river hydrology.

The city intends to hire a private consultant in January to write the study and draft the options for restoration.

“We want a management plan that works toward preventing us from making mistakes that would hurt the sensitive habitat without our knowing it,” Villeneuve said.

The city is already looking for grants to study how it can reduce the toxic impacts on plants and wildlife from storm drains that empty into the river.

The restoration plan, when completed in early 1992, will document and address the effects of pollutants.

“We have high hopes that this will result in recommendations to drastically restore life down there,” Price said. “You have to define what the mess is before you start to clean it up.”

The plan will outline how best to protect the habitat of the endangered California least tern, the brown pelican, the tidewater goby, the least bell’s vireo and Belding’s savannah sparrow that nest in or migrate through the estuary. Also found in the estuary are snowy egrets, herons, terns, pelicans and other aquatic life.

The plan also will suggest how to eradicate the non-native plants and trees--such as the giant reeds, pampas grass and ice plant--that choke out the native species of plants the endangered birds need for nesting.

A portion of the plan will discuss how the city can fulfill its goal to build nature trails and set up interpretive programs at the city’s Seaside Wilderness Park. It also will consider how to prevent further destruction of the sand dunes along Emma Wood State Beach and city property west of the river.

“The public,” Villeneuve said, “will eventually be able to go to the estuary and see what the coastline looked like before human interference.”