Volunteers Clear Ventura River Bed of Camp Debris

Blankets, batteries, radios, boots, beer cans, bicycle parts, suitcases, sleeping bags, stripped wire, broken couches, rusty lawn chairs and five-gallon plastic drums full of mysterious substances.

It sounds like a yard sale. But to the surprise of about 150 volunteers, these items were just part of a long list of junk pulled from the dusty floor of the Ventura River during a massive cleanup effort Saturday launched by a local service club.

Picking up where the city of Ventura left off in February, members of the Ventura Avenue Lions Club dismantled homeless encampments and cleared debris from the east bank of the river between the Main Street Bridge and Stanley Road.

Ventura officials paid $178,000 to clean debris left by January’s floods from the riverbed between the mouth and Simpson Street. But that effort only covered the section of the river in the city’s jurisdiction, not unincorporated county land, project coordinator Frank Ybarra said.

So on Saturday, the volunteers hit the hollow remains of about 40 squatter camps scattered upstream. They systematically bulldozed and hauled away the remnants of encampments, most hidden by willows and bamboo, that housed hundreds of homeless people until floods washed them out earlier this year.

“I think I have walked every inch of this river bottom,” said Sgt. Carl Handy, who headed the Ventura Police Department’s special enforcement team charged with keeping homeless residents out of the river after the floods. “It does my heart good to see this.”

Since the floods, Ventura police have cited homeless people trying to move back into the area, including a brazen squatter who set up camp by the Ventura Freeway bridge just three days ago, he said.

But for the most part, few have tried to come back, he said. All that remained of their existence in the river was the remnants of their ramshackle homes--until Saturday.

Marching down a dirt path to an encampment that was being bulldozed, Handy pointed to a small pile of wood and tarp that was once a house.

“We called it the condominium,” he said, gesturing to an empty clearing surrounded by bamboo reeds and willow trees. “This was a huge structure with several rooms.”

Volunteers pulling out debris were startled to learn that people were actually living down in the river brush, and were angered at the amount of debris they uncovered.

“I am a little shocked at how much trash is down there,” said Doreen Amendt, who volunteered Saturday with her 13-year-old son, Matt.

The pair hauled old toxic batteries and buckets of stale human waste out of the brush, and marveled at what would have happened if it had been left on the river’s floor.

“He surfs out there,” she said, pointing to the mouth of the river, “we swim out there, and I want it to be clean water, cleaner than it is.”

Matt added, “I don’t think I’d like to see some of that stuff floating by me,” he said.

Initially, some environmentalists expressed concern that the clean-up crews might do more harm than good if too many people tromped through the sensitive habitat.

“Originally, we felt it could have been coordinated better,” said Russ Baggerly of the Friends of the Ventura River. “It didn’t turn out to be a huge endeavor with a lot of equipment out there. We are not too concerned.”

Handy and other volunteers said the alternative to cleaning the river would be worse, however.

“Knocking a few bushes down, in my opinion, to get this stuff out of here is a small price,” he said. “What’s worse, cutting trails or leaving what’s in here?”