L.A. County Team Joins Santa Clara River Study : Environment: Supervisors to let their staff work on a waterway research project to determine how development, recreation and wildlife can coexist.

A comprehensive effort to improve and preserve the Santa Clara River, a 100-mile waterway that is one of the last in Southern California largely untouched by development, took a key step forward Tuesday.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to allow its staff to work on a study of the river, which stretches from Aqua Dulce to Oxnard, as part of a joint project involving local, state and federal agencies.

The intent of the $710,000 study, officially called the Santa Clara River Enhancement and Management Plan, is to investigate ways for development, recreation and wildlife habitat to coexist on the river.

“Its peers--the San Gabriel River, the Los Angeles River and the Santa Ana River--are all extensively concrete-lined now,” said Cat Brown, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife who has pressed for the study. In contrast, only 6% of the Santa Clara watershed is lined in concrete and 60% retains its natural vegetation.

“With the Santa Clara, we think we’re early enough in the game to protect the natural values and still allow the development that’s expected,” she said.

Brown said the county’s assistance is worth far more than the $75,000 in staff time approved by the board because of the county’s expertise in coordinating multi-agency studies.

Coincidentally, on Tuesday county supervisors also approved the use of concrete and steel to shore up a portion of the riverbank in Santa Clarita that is eroding. Brown said a goal of the management plan would be to make such extreme flood-control measures unnecessary. She acknowledged, however, that in more urban areas along the river, where controlling floods is crucial, this might prove impossible.

The California Coastal Conservancy is scheduled to vote Aug. 21 on a $200,000 grant for the river study. Other state and federal agencies, as well as Ventura County and cities along the river, have said they are interested in participating in the study, but they still must make formal decisions on how much money and staff time they are willing to contribute.

City officials from Santa Clarita, which helped increase public interest in the river by developing its own improvement plans for the 14 miles of the river that are within city limits, hope the broader study will eventually lead to a mountains-to-ocean trail system.

“We’ve found a lot of interest, a lot of excitement about the idea of working together to come up with a plan,” said Jeff Kolin, a Santa Clarita deputy city manager, who last summer took copies of his city’s plans to communities all along the river.

Santa Clarita plans to begin construction of trails along the south fork of the river in a few months, Kolin said. The city also has raised $2 million to build trails along another section.

But Kolin said the city realized soon after it began its own study two years ago that improving a river piecemeal won’t work.

“Rivers are so dynamic, you can’t really control a small portion without looking at the whole,” Brown agreed.

Brown said the river-long study would take about a year to complete and that implementation of its recommendations, if accepted by the various government agencies and by homeowner associations, would occur over the next five to 10 years.