Volunteers Patrol Creek to Keep Kids From Crossing

With rainwater racing down the Arroyo Simi on Monday, volunteers from Moorpark’s Police Resource Center stood ready to make sure no children tried to cross the rising stream.

Parents and Ventura County Sheriff’s Department personnel had guarded the arroyo during previous storms, trying to prevent another child from wading through the water near the place where 11-year-old Joel Burchfield drowned in January.

But Monday marked the first deployment of a system that organizers hope will keep kids out of the creek during each of this winter’s storms--a short-term solution until the city can put a bridge, temporary or permanent, over the flood channel.

On Wednesday, the City Council will consider a report on what could be a prohibitively expensive option--moving a temporary bridge up from Long Beach.

In the meantime, resource center volunteers, who usually spend their days passing out legal information or filing lost property reports, will patrol the arroyo during rainy days, said center coordinator Kathy LeClair.

*

Before school starts in the morning, and after it lets out in the afternoon, the volunteers will stand near some of the more popular crossing points and warn away children, who often wade through the stream as a shortcut to and from school.

Sheriff’s Capt. Mike Lewis, Moorpark’s top law enforcement official, will notify the center when bad weather is expected, LeClair said. “We plan on covering it whenever there’s inclement weather,” she said.

The no-crossing guards are just one of the ways city leaders are trying to protect children who continue using the shortcut in spite of Joel’s death. Moorpark officials, who have been trying to build a pedestrian bridge across the arroyo near Liberty Bell Road, may install a temporary bridge while the permanent structure is under construction.

But according to a report coming to the City Council on Wednesday, installation of the temporary span may cost more than $50,000, even though the bridge itself would be donated by a development company.

*

The city would have to pay for such items as moving the temporary bridge from Long Beach and having a civil engineer assess how to adapt the bridge abutments to the arroyo, according to the report from Public Works Director Ken Gilbert.

Furthermore, the temporary bridge is 50 feet shorter than the permanent span designed by the city and could impede the flow of rainwater through the channel during severe storms, the report states.

Mayor Pat Hunter said Monday he had not yet decided whether he favored spending $50,000 on a bridge that would be removed in about six months. He said, “It’s a lot of money.”

Rob Jacalone, one of the Moorpark residents who have pushed the council to build some kind of bridge over the stream, said he simply wanted the city to keep the kids away from the water, whether that meant building a temporary bridge or having volunteers stand guard.

“As long as the safety of the children is assured, I don’t care how they get there,” he said.