Caltrans Crew Starts Cleanup of Trout Steam

In an effort to end a confrontation with state wildlife officials, Caltrans on Thursday began removing asphalt and other highway debris from sections of a protected mountain trout stream.

Ken Steele, Caltrans’ district director in San Bernardino, said the work along five miles of Deep Creek could take two weeks. The agency hired a contractor to dig through snow, and seven truckloads of snow and asphalt were removed Thursday.

“Our commitment is to do as much as we can, as long as the weather holds,” Steele said. “We’re using heavy machinery and it’s overkill from our perspective, but it’s indicative of our serious attempt to clean it up.”

But state Department of Fish and Game officials said they still plan to pursue misdemeanor charges against two Caltrans employees, two contractors and a company employee. The charges will allege that they illegally polluted and altered Deep Creek and two tributaries to Big Bear Lake. The regional water-quality board also is investigating.

Howard Sarasohn, deputy director of Fish and Game in Sacramento, said that staff members overseeing the work told him they are pleased with the efforts. “The reports I got back are that Caltrans is doing what needs to be done to protect the environment and live up to the statutes,” he said.

The confrontation between the two state agencies arose in November, when Fish and Game Warden Rick Coelho said he found millions of pounds of ground-up asphalt and other road debris dumped in and alongside Deep Creek, which parallels California 18. It had been removed from the mountain highway during resurfacing last summer and fall.

Bear, deer, mountain lions and other animals live near Deep Creek, a rare state-designated wild trout stream. No dead fish or wildlife have been reported, but the area is covered with several feet of snow, so the biological impact from the debris is unknown.

Fish and Game biologists fear that petroleum and toxic compounds are seeping into the water, and could poison the aquatic life and vegetation. The water is black in many places, and tests have detected the presence of petroleum hydrocarbons, Coelho said.

Coelho and Fish and Game fisheries biologist Mike Giusti said the Deep Creek contamination is the worst case of stream pollution ever in Southern California. Coelho said one Caltrans engineer told him that the agency “supersedes the law,” while another one said he would not “waste taxpayers’ money” to clean up the creek because no one cared about it.

Although Coelho says he repeatedly warned Caltrans crews to clean it up, top Caltrans officials said they did not understand how serious Fish and Game was until a Dec. 19 memo arrived ordering Caltrans to clean it up by Dec. 31.

Both sides said strong words were used in what Steele described as “confrontational and emotional” exchange between Caltrans engineers and Fish and Game staff.