CAMARILLO : Another Link of Storm Drain Is Completed

A multimillion-dollar drainage system near Camarillo that would ease flooding and crop damage passed its latest inspection Tuesday, drawing praise from flood-control experts who examined the partly completed project.

In the works for three decades, the miles-long Santa Clara Drain is designed to handle water flow from the Santa Clara River to Mugu Lagoon during a 50-year storm, said Steve Jewett, the U.S. Department of Agriculture official supervising the project. The drain system is more than three-quarters completed, he said.

Slicing through hundreds of acres surrounding the proposed California State University campus off Beardsley Road, the concrete channels are designed to divert more than 4,100 cubic feet of storm waters every second.

“This is the northern part of the Calleguas Creek watershed we’re improving,” Jewett said. “When the intersections are flooded, people can’t get to work,” he said of the 2,300-foot section of the storm drain.

Budgeted at $2.3 million, the latest phase of the project cost almost $1,000 per foot. But Ventura County Flood Control officials and nearby farmers say the added drainage is badly needed.

“We have flooding throughout the watershed,” said Hugh Clabaugh, project engineer for Ventura County Flood Control. “This will take care of the whole [Santa Clara] basin.”

Scott Scarbrough of Paramount Citrus, which grows lemons on 116 acres just east of the flood-control channel, said he has lost thousands of dollars to crop damage in recent storms.

“This will improve the whole area,” Scarbrough said. Flooding “would continue to be a problem with the development in the area.”

Construction foreman Tim Farr of the San Diego-based Vadnais Corp. said fierce January storms prevented his crews from finishing the stretch of channel any sooner.

“We would have been done a couple months earlier,” Farr said. “But overall, it’s gone real well.”

Cal State officials earlier this year bought about 260 acres near Central Avenue and Beardsley for the county’s first public university.

The drainage improvements are needed before the campus can be constructed, CSU officials said. It is unclear when the flood project will be completed because further construction depends on the availability of federal funds, Jewett said.