Panel Meets to Plan Future of Santa Clara River : Environment: The 25-member committee, representing diverse interests, will determine how to best use various segments of the waterway.

Farmers, political representatives, consultants and conservationists from Ventura and Los Angeles counties packed a small meeting room in Ventura on Wednesday to begin charting the future use of the Santa Clara River.

The 25-member Santa Clara River Management and Enhancement Plan steering committee met at the Ventura County Government Center with the consulting team hired to provide technical assistance and write the river plan.

Michael Savage, a water resources engineer who is the Santa Clara project manager with the firm CH2M Hill, encouraged all the steering committee members to participate.

“Each of you has something to bring to the table,” he said.

Charles Gardiner, who will act as facilitator to keep the group on track, told committee members that they will have to trust each other to make the project work.

The committee should “focus on goals and interests and not personalities,” said Gardiner, an employee of the consulting firm.

The committee was created to develop a plan for the Santa Clara River after U. S. Fish and Wildlife biologists decided that the river should be governed as a whole rather than in pieces.

The 100-mile-long Santa Clara is among the best-preserved rivers in Southern California, with only about six miles of its banks in concrete and the rest remaining in natural habitat.

At present, the agency considers each request for mining or erosion protection for farmers one at a time. But a new plan would determine how to use various parts of the river, biologists said.

Although the committee represents diverse and opposing interests, Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Cathy R. Brown, who sits on the committee, said that members are working well together.

“They do not seem as scared of the process anymore,” she said. “They are starting to have faith.”

Alan F. Camp, a property owner along the river who represents the Ventura County Farm Bureau, said the group is moving in the right direction but must remember that the property owners’ rights should also be considered.

“Preserving habitat and accommodating special-interest groups is noble, and something we will try to do as well as long as it is done in a way that is equally accommodating to our ownership,” he said.