Key Habitat: A River Runs Through It : A timely opportunity to protect area’s last wild waterway

From its origins in a narrow gash of the San Gabriel Mountains to its mouth on the Pacific Ocean near Oxnard, the Santa Clara River has thus far escaped the fate of every other natural waterway in Southern California. Simply put, it is the region’s last wild river. As much as practically possible, it ought to remain so.

Along a 100-mile route that runs through parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, the river sustains the region’s largest and best preserved riparian woodlands.

Among the many living things that depend upon its largely pristine condition are five federally endangered species, including a few that could one day be as famous as the snail darter and the spotted owl. The river’s habitat, for example, with its cottonwoods, coyote bush and mule fat, shelters the rare unarmored threespine stickleback, a fish that dates to antediluvian times. Three endangered birds also find a home along the Santa Clara: the brown pelican, the least Bell’s vireo and the California least tern.

The Santa Clara is a wild river in every sense of the term, having claimed lives and destroyed homes and orchards. It drains an area the size of Delaware, often in dramatic fashion. Dry for most of the year along much of its length, its flow can change from five cubic feet per second to more than 75,000 in heavy rains.

There are many who have designs on this river, and their plans have little or nothing to do with preserving its unique and fragile habitat. The Santa Clara is threatened by a variety of competing interests that, if allowed to proceed unchecked, could forever destroy its natural splendor.

Eleven gravel mining companies that operate along the natural waterway, for example, are seeking permits to remove 320 tons of material from the riverbed over the next 50 years. That would amount to a 50-fold increase in their operations there. Developers want to line with concrete 30 miles of the riverbank between Santa Clarita and Fillmore in order to construct, among other things, a 14,000-employee industrial park and thousands of homes. Farmers fearful of the river’s unpredictability say that they ought to be allowed to bulldoze miles of increasingly rare habitat in order to protect their orchards from flooding.

It is true that federal environmental laws would prohibit some of these actions, even if local governments approved them. But the concern here is that the Santa Clara could suffer the fate of a river that was once very similar to it--the Los Angeles River, which decades ago was put into a straitjacket of concrete along all but three of its 50 miles. Proposals are now under consideration to restore part of the L.A. River to its former state, to help save some of the valuable rainwater it now carries out to the sea.

In the case of the Santa Clara, what must not be lost is the chance to find a proper mix of development and preservation that will ensure that the river and its surroundings continue to flourish. The projects advanced by developers, farmers and others are excessive; the river’s natural attributes must be factored into the consideration of any proposed encroachment.

We are pleased, therefore, to note that government officials, property owners and others are collaborating on a $710,000 study that will determine, to a great extent, the Santa Clara’s future. There will never be a more timely opportunity to protect the region’s last wild river.