City Worker to Oversee Land, Water, Air Cleanup : Ventura: The community’s efforts have been applauded, but there is concern that the task may be too large for one person.

In a commitment to the environment that few municipal governments have made, the city of Ventura has hired an environmental coordinator to oversee programs to clean up the air, land and water.

The City Council created the position to meet the growing demands of a public that is increasingly aware of the environment and its fragile condition, City Manager John Baker said.

“It is something whose time has come,” Baker said.

Steve Chase, 38, moved into a City Hall office Nov. 13 as assistant to the city manager in charge of environmental issues. As Ventura’s equivalent of an environmental czar, Chase must coordinate efforts in all the city’s departments to follow the environmental agenda set by the City Council.

“It is my job to make sure we all go at this with the same vision, to make sure we are walking down the same path,” Chase said.

Officials in environmental quality offices in other California counties and cities have applauded Ventura’s efforts to make the environment a high priority for city finances and employee time and energy.

But the goal--to organize a cohesive environmental program for the city--could prove too large for one person to handle, said Norman Covell, director of Sacramento County’s Environmental Management Department.

“It’s questionable how much one person will be able to accomplish,” said Covell, who oversees division heads and their staffs in departments that monitor air pollution, hazardous materials, code enforcement and environmental health.

Others, including environmentalist Russ Baggerly, who has been appointed chief aide to Supervisor-elect Maria K. VanderKolk, wondered whether Chase’s duties as assistant to the city manager will supersede his obligations to the environment.

But the city has Assistant City Manager Lauraine Brekke to handle administrative and personnel matters and Carol Green, an assistant to the city manager, takes care of public relations.

The City Council is committed to using Chase’s expertise on the environment, said Councilman James Monahan, who owns an oil-related business on Ventura Avenue. “Most council members and city managers are not very well-versed in environmental affairs. It’s wise to have someone on staff to advise in this very environmentally conscious climate.”

Chase moves into the job with a strong background in environmental affairs, Monahan said. For the past five years, Chase was an aide to Supervisor Susan K. Lacey, who praised his work on finding solutions to water contamination problems. He has worked for planning departments in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and holds a bachelor of arts degree in environmental studies from UC Santa Barbara.

In his new position, which is still evolving, Chase will coordinate the city’s efforts to reduce waste and recycle what is left. He will also work with engineers in developing a plan to reduce traffic tie-ups and the resultant air pollution.

He will oversee the employee ride-sharing program to cut down on pollution created by people driving their cars alone to work. And he plans to look into whether the city should buy methanol-powered cars for travel on city business.

He will oversee the city’s hazardous materials program, ensuring that the city remains diligent in monitoring the removal of leaking underground gas tanks and that businesses comply with safety regulations for storing their chemicals.

He will also help develop more stringent regulations to restrict potentially polluting materials that are dumped into storm drains. Many of the drains from the city and the Ojai Valley empty into the ecologically fragile Ventura River.

The storm drain restrictions will be a central part of the city’s plan to clean up the Ventura River, where only a remnant of the once-thriving steelhead trout population remains.

Chase will also be responsible for creating a wilderness park with interpretive trails at the Ventura River estuary. And he will help coordinate the city’s development of a water master plan, which will examine both long- and short-term solutions to the drought.

“The public is going to learn that it’s all part of a comprehensive package,” he said.

Creation of a position that is responsible solely for environmental affairs marks the first such commitment in Ventura County and one of the first in the state, Chase said.

The cities of Camarillo, Oxnard and Thousand Oaks have hired recycling coordinators to comply with new legislation requiring cities to reduce the trash they generate by 50%. But their duties are limited to recycling, officials in those cities said.

Simi Valley reorganized its entire City Hall into four departments in March, 1989, creating an Environmental Services Department to oversee planning, solid waste, transit and social services, Assistant City Manager Mike Sedell said.

But the department does not serve as a watchdog for the environment as Chase will, he said.

The League of California Cities had no statistics on how many other cities in the state have or have had similar positions. Several cities, including Sacramento and San Francisco, have environmental coordinators or have had them in the past. But their duties are restricted to ensuring that the city complies with the regulations of the California Environmental Quality Act, Sacramento officials said.

Whether unique or merely unusual, the position the city of Ventura created shows a strong commitment to improving the environment and sets an example to other cities, Monahan said.

“I look for the other cities in the county to have similar programs in the near future,” he said.