Weed-Removal Project to Begin at Creek

Beginning next week, conservation crews will descend on a creek bed alongside Old Topanga Canyon Road to fight an invasion of nonnative plants in an effort to save and restore the native flora.

The city of Calabasas asked the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains to oversee its Valdez Road Exotic Plant Removal Project.

The $39,905 project, paid for with funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will remove giant cane, castor bean, tree tobacco, vinca and German ivy from the more than one-mile area between Valdez Road and Dry Creek Road.

The removal was required by the state Department of Fish and Game prior to reconstruction of Valdez Road, which had to be shored up following heavy landslides in 1992, said Steven Harris, Calabasas director of community development.

The city agreed to restore native vegetation in the creek in return for a permit to take out several hundred feet of the stream there.

Likening the project to fighting aliens from outer space, conservation biologist Rosi Dagit said the work involves repeated attacks on weeds and nonnative plants. Plant removal will be performed twice a year for three years. The city is notifying residents that the first phase is expected to begin July 22 or 23 and take 10 to 12 working days.

“The biggest and most ferocious attack will start with this first shot, and [we will] get out as much as we can,” Dagit said. “And hopefully each time it gets less and less and less. So we’ll be going out fewer days each subsequent time.”

Although the bulk of the work will be performed by a four-man crew pulling weeds and plants by hand, the process also will involve use of the herbicide Rodeo, which is painted on the plants to halt regrowth. Dagit plans to use as little of the herbicide as possible and confine it to the banks rather than the creek channel itself.

“We’re going to do the absolute majority of it simply with brute force,” she said.