CALIFORNIA ALBUM : It’s Been a Rocky Road to Clear Slide : Three months after a winter storm sent rubble down onto the main highway, Lockwood Valley residents don’t believe government agencies are any closer to clearing the debris.

Life’s ebb and flow has always tended toward the languid here. But still, these past three months of isolation have seemed interminable.

Residents of this remote valley 60 miles northeast of Ojai have suffered an unnatural quiet since a winter storm sent hundreds of tons of rock plummeting onto California 33, blocking the area’s main link to the rest of Ventura County.

“It’s been rough on the whole community,” said Mike Virgilio, who owns an 1,800-acre ranch. Since the highway to town was closed Feb. 19, the cattle ranchers, alfalfa growers and shopkeepers here have grown restless.

What especially raises hackles is that the state Department of Transportation and the U.S. Forest Service have yet to clear the landslide so residents’ lives can return to normal.

“In the past when there has been a slide, there’d be people out there the next day cleaning it up,” said David Kenney, one of two Ventura County sheriff’s deputies who patrols this beat. “What people can’t accept is why it’s taking so long.”

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One obstacle has been the size of the slide. Another has been a dispute between government agencies over where to put the debris, which includes automobile-size boulders and trees.

Last week, after months of discussions, Caltrans and the Forest Service reached a tentative agreement to dispose of about 30,000 cubic yards of rubble--about 3,000 dump truck loads.

Originally, Caltrans had wanted to remove 150,000 cubic yards of rock and dirt--including the rubble on the road and unstable portions of the hillside it slid from--and spread it beside the highway in the Los Padres National Forest.

But Larry Hornberger, a Forest Service engineer, said Forest Service officials balked at the idea, citing laws that require lengthy environmental studies when a significant change to the landscape of a national forest is proposed.

According to last week’s agreement, the rubble blocking the highway will be discarded on a privately owned ranch about two miles away.

Hornberger said the agencies did not discuss the road closure with urgency until May 2, when Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) interceded in the three-month dispute.

Gallegly said he was pleased with the response of Caltrans and the Forest Service after he held a meeting with representatives from both agencies.

“It appears (that) after three months of indecisiveness by the agencies, we’ve gotten the matter resolved,” Gallegly said. “If they keep their commitment, the highway should be back in operation in 60 days.”

But residents are unswayed. They say they will believe it when the six-mile stretch of winding road between Pine Mountain and the Ozena Ranger Station is reopened.

“Nobody cares about us up here,” said Wen Carpenter, who said his alfalfa ranch is losing business because it has lost a direct route to horse owners in the Ojai area. “I bet if this was in a city, it would have been cleared by now.”

With the approach of Memorial Day weekend--which has traditionally swelled the population of the area from 1,000 to 4,000 as campers, backpackers, hikers and bikers flock to the forest--a sense of desperation has begun to set in among the area’s business owners.

“It has been very, very bad business-wise, and I don’t even want to think about what’s going to happen this summer,” said Meg Emord, co-owner of Sagebrush Annie’s, a roadside cafe on a stretch of California 33 north of the slide. “We’re just barely surviving now.”

Gayle Carpenter’s restaurant and bar is struggling even more than her husband’s alfalfa ranch.

“The locals are the only people who are coming,” said Carpenter, who has watched business at the Place drop by two-thirds since February. “A lot of our business is weekenders from Ventura. Now, if you’ve got a motor home, it takes $100 in gas to get up here. Even the bikers can’t get up here.”

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Residents have been forced to take a nearly 100-mile detour to go to the post office and pick up prescriptions in Ojai. What was once an hourlong one-way trip has become a half-day trek. A straight shot down California 33 has been replaced with a journey through Frazier Park to Interstate 5, south to California 126, west to California 150 and up California 33.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Virgilio is six months pregnant and her doctor is 3 1/2 hours away in Oxnard--on the wrong side of the roadblock. The Virgilios are considering living in Oxnard during the final month of the pregnancy if the road is still blocked.

Sheriff’s deputies joke that the longer drive to the county jail in Ventura gives drunk-driving suspects a chance to become sober.

Says Wen Carpenter: “It ain’t gonna make or break us and we sure as hell ain’t gonna die, but it would sure be a hell of a lot nicer if (the highway) was open.”