Ruling on Dredging Dispute Favors City

The city of Ventura has the legal authority to charge Ventura Keys homeowners about $2,000 apiece every year to dredge silt from their backyard waterways, a Superior Court judge has ruled.

City Atty. Pete Bulens said the judge’s 48-page ruling vindicates the city’s position. “In a lengthy and well-reasoned fashion,” he said, “the judge agrees with every point the city has been making for years.”

But residents in the luxury waterfront development on Tuesday criticized the judge’s decision and said they would take the matter to a higher court.

“We have been waiting for this so we can appeal it,” said Paul F. Masi, a Keys homeowner. “We all expected this judge to rule against us. We had to get a petition together to force him to make a decision.”

In March, Keys homeowners sent a complaint to the state’s Commission on Judicial Performance to pressure Kern County Judge Stanley P. Chapin to issue his final opinion. The 48-page ruling was filed last week, 11 months since the last court hearing on the issue.

Keys residents have battled the city for years over who should pay for removing silt and debris that wash down barrancas into their backyard canals. Homeowners argue that runoff from county and city storm drains is responsible for clogging their waterways and therefore the dredging costs should be spread around to a wider group of residents.

But city officials decided that the 300 Keys waterfront homeowners benefit the most and should pay about three-quarters of the cost. Chapin agreed.

“The Keys channels are, in essence, the ‘backyards’ of the Keys properties,” the judge wrote. He cited how residents of the waterfront community have exclusive rights to dock their boats there.

“The Keys residents will surely receive a special benefit from dredging silt out of their channels,” Chapin wrote. “Facilitating the docking of private boats by owners of waterfront property is as far from a general public interest as a public improvement can be.”