Plan to Protect Santa Clara River Snags on Political Issues, Red Tape

An ambitious plan to protect the Santa Clara River has become bogged down by missed deadlines and the overwhelming task of finding consensus among 25 people with conflicting interests.

But through the sometimes contentious rounds of meetings among farmers, aggregate miners, environmentalists, local officials and regulators, there is hope, even determination, that the plan will succeed.

Indeed, supporters of the plan say it must succeed if the Santa Clara, one of Southern California’s longest and wildest remaining rivers, is to be preserved as a whole and not torn apart, piece by piece.

The 100-mile-long river faces daily competing demands: Fish and wildlife depend on its banks and water for food and habitat; cities draw their underground water and discharge treated sewage into its course; aggregate miners need its rock for concrete; farmers need to protect their land against its winter rages by shoring up its banks; and a developer east of the Ventura County line wants to add a new city of nearly 25,000 homes along its banks, shoring up its sides with riprap.

Without a plan, development or any of the other competing uses might continue to fragment the river’s natural resources, breaking apart the system that is interdependent from start to finish of the long waterway.

A plan, supporters say, is a way to look to the future to ensure the survival of the river as a working system.

“It’s the way a river like the Santa Clara should be managed,” said David Castanon, ecologist and chief of the North Coast regulatory section of the Army Corps of Engineers.

“But the Santa Clara is a big system, with a lot of complex issues,” Castanon said. “A lot of these plans take years to develop.”

The Santa Clara River Management and Enhancement Plan--which will be the first of its kind in the region when it is completed, possibly late next year--is a far-reaching blueprint for how the river can be preserved as mostly natural, but used at the same time.

The vision is of a plan that would somehow allow endangered fish and frogs and their stream-bed habitat to be protected on some stretches of the river, while less valuable habitat in other areas might be relinquished for flood protection, aggregate mining or other uses.

“We don’t expect for everybody to walk away completely happy,” said Cat Brown, a biologist with U.S. Fish and Wildlife who has coordinated the plan effort. “But we expect everyone to get something of what they need. The point is to look for new solutions.”

Just mapping the resources and uses of the Santa Clara as it meanders through two counties--sometimes spreading out into a 2.5-mile wash and at other times forming a series of small braided streams--is a daunting task in itself.

But organizers must also contend with a 25-member steering committee, each person with an agenda, and a paid consultant who has missed report deadlines.

Despite frustration with the firm that is being paid $400,000 to compile and write the plan, however, those coordinating the effort say they can get back on track.

“I think we can get out of this sort of limbo we’ve been in by February,” Brown said. “I still think it can work.”

Not all the parties in this round table, however, are convinced the result of nearly two years of meetings will protect their interests.

Bill Berger, vice president of operations services for Southern Pacific Milling Co., which has been frustrated in its quest for permits to mine in the river, chose his words carefully.

“Not everybody trusts everybody else,” he said of steering committee members. “Our sense is that in the end, our participation is not going to carry the same weight as the other interests in the river.”

In addition, he said, the final plan may only amount to more restrictions on private property.

“People forget that the Santa Clara is privately owned,” he said. “You own property but can’t do anything with it, and now you have another group telling you what to do with your property.”

Jim Harter, a sometimes spirited voice of dissension on the steering committee, represents the interests of the largest landowner on the river, the Newhall Land and Farming Co., which owns 20 miles of river predominantly on the Los Angeles County side.

He agrees that the process has hit a lull and that meetings have been acrimonious at times. But it is important for Newhall and other landowners to maintain a place at the table to help shape the plan, and to see it through to the end, he said.

“The real test will come when we see the plan and what the ultimate compromises will be,” he said. “Once the plan is in, then I think the discussion will get exciting.”

To construct the plan and bring all the elements of the river together, each of six groups has written a report detailing the background, concerns and needs they represent.

The six elements are biological resources, aggregate mining, recreation, water resources, flood protection and cultural history.

A separate section had been planned for agriculture, but growers said they could not afford to write such a report. Agriculture issues will now be folded into other sections.

All drafts of the reports are in, most of them filed in a box in the corner of the office of Vicki Musgrove, who monitors the plan and its progress for the Ventura County Flood Control Department.

Now, the principals are reviewing the reports, answering questions and criticisms, and revising the reports to prepare final plans.

Then, the consultant will begin working on a multifaceted map, showing first the geography of the river, its depth, width and length.

Next, superimposed on the map will be transparencies showing locations of endangered species or sensitive habitat, where the private property lies, where crops are grown, where there are potential mining sites, where water is diverted, where flood control projects exist.

With that map, regulators can see whether a proposed new mining permit or a flood control project would affect important fish habitat, for instance.

“With a plan, we could identify areas of low habitat values, where certain kinds of uses might be considered acceptable,” said the Corps’ Castanon, whose agency holds one of the key permits for any work in the river.

Developing a plan rather than attacking each permit in a piecemeal fashion could also show how one use might benefit another, how mining could help flood control or flood control could help biological resources.

The steering committee has been meeting for nearly two years, and has been waiting for reports to be complete for nearly 18 months. Many of the reports prepared by the sectors have been late coming in.

The biological resources report that was prepared by the paid consultant was the last to come in, arriving just 15 minutes before a meeting planned weeks ahead to review the plan.

“All of those reports are puzzle pieces that will lock around the biological report because the goal of the plan is to protect the resources while allowing the other uses in the river,” said Brown of Fish and Wildlife.

She expressed frustration with the hired consultant, who is preparing the plan.

“There has been a significant delay,” acknowledged Mike Savage, the project manager for the consulting firm CH2M HIll, an international firm with offices in Southern California. “It was a hard one to get started because it required public access to private land.”

In addition, he said, there were problems coordinating work with subcontractors. But, he said, things will move quickly once they begin combining reports and compiling all the information.

Ron Bottorff, chairman of the Friends of Santa Clara River, said he still has hope that the plan will come to fruition.

But he wonders how much protection the plan will afford the river on the Newhall property, which extends from the Ventura-Los Angeles County line 20 miles to the east. That is the point where Newhall proposes to build Newhall Ranch, a city of 70,000 people, with 24,680 homes along five miles of the river just east of the county line.

“That’s the most sensitive part of the river, right at the county line,” Bottorff said. “It’s all Newhall property. But I don’t think the plan will be in place in time to affect Newhall Ranch.”

Newhall, he complained, has not provided enough buffers between homes and the river.

“I think whatever Newhall does will become the plan through that section,” he said.

Harter, senior vice president at Newhall, hopes Bottorff is right.

“I think the river plan will adopt our proposal for handling the river because we think it’s extremely sensitive,” he said. Harter said that, while Newhall does propose to shore up the banks of the river with rocks, it does not propose to concrete the bottom or any section of the river through the area.

Carl Blum, deputy director of Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, co-chairs the meetings with his counterpart in Ventura County, Alex Sheydayi. Blum agreed there is still skepticism among some members of the steering committee on whether the plan will work, when and if it is finished.

“There are a lot of people concerned with their piece of the action, and they should be,” he said. “But they are still at the table, and as long as we’re all sitting down and talking, we’re making progress.”