Skeptics Hear Proposals to Manage Santa Clara River : Environment: Santa Paula forum on how best to manage the estuary gives landowners a first chance to air concerns. Many fear government interference.

The competing demands on and dreams for the 100-mile-long Santa Clara River were starkly apparent Thursday as Los Angeles and Ventura County landowners scrapped with bureaucrats over how best to manage the estuary’s watershed.

The forum in Santa Paula was organized by the Santa Clara Valley Property Owners Assn. and attended by representatives of county, state and federal agencies working on a proposal to develop a comprehensive management plan. It provided the first occasion for landowners to publicly air their concerns about the proposal.

The mood among the nearly 100 present was confrontational, as citrus farmers, gravel mine operators and water agency representatives defended their respective activities and assailed efforts to curtail them, especially efforts by the government.

“I’ll be right down your throat if you do what other agencies have done,” warned Mary Ann Berrington, a Piru citrus farmer. “Why don’t you see if you can protect a truly endangered species--the California farmer.”

Landowners said they are concerned about how the plan could affect property values, land-use practices, flood control, public access across their land to the river and whether the plan would complicate existing regulatory processes.

Developing a blueprint for the river’s future was first envisioned by Ventura County Supervisor Maggie Kildee and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who were independently searching for ways to mediate the divergent interests in and along the channel that runs from Agua Dulce through Santa Clarita to Oxnard.

Kildee said people had come to her wanting to use the river valley for water and oil pipelines, rail lines, housing developments, expanded gravel mines and citrus orchards.

“It became very clear that all of those things cannot be done in the same space, that we’re going to have to listen to each other,” Kildee said at Thursday’s forum.

Advocates for the proposed Santa Clara River Watershed Management and Enhancement Plan sought to assure landowners that they are not interested in grabbing property or power. Rather, they said, they are trying to head off more serious conflicts by developing a plan to protect and manage the vast resources of what is considered one of Southern California’s best-preserved rivers.

“The opportunity to do something with the Santa Clara River is now. It’s still in its natural state,” said Carl Blum, a representative of the Los Angeles County Flood Control District.

Many government entities with jurisdiction over the river--including Los Angeles and Ventura counties and the state Coastal Conservancy--already have signed on to help with money or manpower in developing the management plan. It is expected the work will cost about $710,000 and take at least a year.

Backers of the plan emphasized that a 13-member committee, which is to include four landowners and one representative each of farming and mining interests, would have veto power over everything from the scope of the study to its final recommendations.

“Before this plan can go anywhere, you guys have to approve it,” said Reed Holderman, a grants program manager with the California Coastal Conservancy. “We’re not crazy--I mean, you own the property.”

Thursday’s meeting made it clear, however, that to win that approval, project proponents will have to overcome the landowners’ deep distrust of past government efforts along the river. Those efforts have included the proposed federal designation of 4,500 acres as critical habitat for the endangered least Bell’s vireo (a small songbird), and tight restrictions on attempts to protect farmland from flooding, such as bulldozing of earth barriers.

Jim Sandoval, a farmer who also mines sand and gravel in the river, said the State Department of Fish and Game, in an effort to protect wetlands, had prohibited his company from digging a channel in the Santa Clara’s main tributary, Sespe Creek. “Last year’s flood caused the problem that we predicted,” Sandoval said. “You lost your wetlands. I lost my trees.”

Though often just a trickle, the Santa Clara can wash over an area far beyond its banks within hours during major storms. It most closely resembles the Los Angeles River in its size and fluctuating flow, but far less of the Santa Clara--only about 6%--is lined with concrete.

It is just that unpredictability that caused some of those who own land along the river to criticize any management plan, particularly one that might call for more recreational activities along the river and less shoring up of its banks.

“You should see what happens when that river goes--it goes all over,” said Fred Malzacher, a citrus farmer from Santa Paula. “We have no protection at all.”