City’s Help Sought in Saving Creek Habitat

East Camarillo residents have asked the City Council to use its influence to assure that a Ventura County flood control project proposed for Calleguas Creek is constructed in an environmentally sensitive manner.

Officials with the county Flood Control District say the project is needed to help guard against flooding and soil erosion along the creek. The proposal calls for realigning the creek and constructing a new channel to the west about twice the width of the current creek bed.

The realignment, planned for a one-mile section between Upland and Adolfo roads, calls for parts of the creek banks to be lined with rocks and concrete, officials said.

If completed as proposed, the project would also make available for development land owned by Pardee Construction Co. and the Baldwin Co., who together are proposing to build nearly 500 new homes on sites north and south of the creek.

About 50 east Camarillo residents and area environmental activists attended a study session at Camarillo City Hall on Monday, where many asked the council to use its authority to make sure that a wooded bank of the creek, located roughly in the middle of the proposed project, be preserved as a plant and wildlife habitat.

“We must leave this as an area for wildlife,” said Michael Creadick, a Mission Oaks-area resident. “I am asking you to do what you can to make sure this place doesn’t get damaged. We have to make sure (construction crews) tread lightly here.”

Echoing Creadick was Cynthia Leake, vice president of the Ventura County Environmental Coalition and an east Camarillo resident.

“It is outrageous,” Leake said. “It’s the last little place of its kind in Camarillo that developers haven’t wrecked.”

County flood control officials said the modification, still awaiting final approval from the Board of Supervisors, will be done carefully to preserve the creek’s native habitat.

“We see this as a very good compromise,” said Dolores Taylor, a county flood control engineer. “We have come a long way from putting in a concrete-lined, U-shaped channel with two service roads.”

Taylor said once completed, the new channel will be able to withstand the force of a 100-year storm, or as much as 28,000 cubic feet of water per second. A construction start date has not yet been determined. The proposal is part of a larger, five-year project to control erosion along Calleguas Creek at a total estimated cost of between $4 million and $5 million.

Mayor Ken Gose cautioned residents that because the area is not under Camarillo’s authority, the city is limited in what it can do.

Still, Gose said the council and the city’s planning department hope to work with the county’s flood control department to ensure the area is not destroyed by the construction efforts.