Wilson Declares State of Emergency in Fillmore

Gov. Pete Wilson on Thursday declared a state of emergency in Fillmore, where the rain-swollen Santa Clara River threatens to flood the city’s sewage treatment plant and flush 800,000 gallons a day of raw waste down the environmentally sensitive waterway.

The emergency proclamation allows city crews to immediately begin shoring up the riprap levee that shields the treatment plant from the river. Without the proclamation, the city would have had to receive state approval and put the project out to bid before beginning repairs.

It also allows city officials to apply for state disaster funds to help pay for the work.

“We were really scared,” City Engineer Bert Rapp said. “If we didn’t have this dry spell, I bet you we wouldn’t have a levee out there right now.”

Fillmore was the only Ventura County city to receive the emergency designation.

The governor proclaimed a state of emergency in nine counties Thursday, bringing to 16 the number that have received the emergency status as a result of damage caused by a series of winter storms that battered the state the past two weeks.

In other counties, the emergency declaration also allows residents who have suffered storm damage on uninsured property to apply for low-interest repair loans through the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

Fillmore officials requested the designation Wednesday after discovering that the Santa Clara River had chewed away at the base of the levee, Rapp said.

Instead of rebuilding the levee, Rapp said public works officials have decided to steer the current away from the treatment plant by building five 100-foot-long rock barriers along the riverbed.

The barriers--20 feet wide and 6 feet high--will angle the river’s flow away from the riprap levee that extends along the southern flank of the sewage treatment plant.

Construction is expected to be completed by early next week at a cost of about $100,000.

“That’s a lot for a city our size. We don’t have the money to pay for this,” Rapp said. “As it stands, we are going to have to borrow from Peter to pay Paul.”

The city has requested but not received permission from the state Department of Fish and Game to do the river work.

“We needed to get in and do some emergency repairs,” Rapp said. “I think a flooded sewage treatment plant would have done much more damage (to the river) than digging holes in the ground and putting rocks in.”

Fish and Game officials could not be reached for comment. The governor’s proclamation, however, allows the state to use its emergency powers to suspend state regulations.

The Santa Clara River, which flows from Acton in Los Angeles County to the Pacific Ocean between Oxnard and Ventura, is one of the few mostly natural river basins in Southern California.

Unlike the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers, which are almost entirely lined with concrete, the 100-mile-long Santa Clara’s banks are concrete-lined only in Santa Clarita and to the east for about six miles.

The Santa Clara River provides a habitat for two endangered species: a songbird known as the least Bell’s vireo and a fish called the unarmored threespine stickleback.

The $12-million sewage treatment plant, situated at the south end of C Street along the Santa Clara River, is operated by the Ventura Regional Sanitation District.

Fillmore Fire Chief Pat Askren, who doubles as the city’s emergency services coordinator, said city crews are hustling to finish the diversion project before another storm moves into Ventura County.

“My feeling is that if we hadn’t gotten this dry spell and gone in there to do this work, the levee would have been history,” Askren said. “With the next storm, we would have lost the entire thing.”