MOORPARK : City Accepts Grant to Fix Flood Channel

The Moorpark City Council has voted unanimously to accept a $64,000 state grant to improve a stretch of the city’s main flood control channel, despite concerns over ongoing maintenance of the improvements.

Under terms of the grant, awarded jointly to the city and the nonprofit Environmental Coalition of Ventura County, the city must agree to maintain the six-mile stretch of Arroyo Simi in perpetuity.

The funding will allow the city and the coalition to return the flood control channel to a more natural state and prepare a long-term plan to protect the sensitive wetlands, said Janet Murphy, president of the coalition’s Moorpark branch.

The stretch selected for restoration is a wildlife corridor for migrating birds.

Non-native vegetation will be removed from the area and native vegetation planted along the exposed banks of the arroyo, Murphy said.

In deciding to accept the grant at its meeting Wednesday, the council discussed the condition that would require the city to maintain the improvements indefinitely.

While some expressed reservations at leaving the city on the hook for replacement costs, the council eventually decided that the value of the improvements justified the risk.

“Once it’s done, you’re really not going to have to do anything to it,” Councilman John Wozniak said Thursday. “You kind of go in, get it back to its natural state and then leave it alone.”

Murphy agreed.

“We don’t see a real problem with long-term maintenance,” she said. “If you can restore it to its natural state, then it will take root and hopefully not revert back.”

Mayor Paul Lawrason said one potential maintenance problem would be if the city were subject to severe flooding.

In that case, he said, “we’d be stuck replacing the whole thing.”