Flooding in Ojai Valley

Re “Ojai Valley Group Pleads for County Flood Protection,” March 18.

Thank you for spotlighting the severe flooding our community has experienced and the importance of immediate remedial action. However, your article gives the impression that a neighbor’s private retaining wall had previously protected the tract from flooding. This is far from the case.

The flood waters, before the retaining wall broke, simply ran through the adjacent home and property, still causing flooding problems for homes downstream.

The point is, nobody’s individual retaining wall is going to protect the homes in this tract. The amount of water from local runoff and overflow from Thacher Creek is huge. Individual efforts to keep the water from affecting one home only send it straight over to a neighbor’s property with more force and destructive power.

This is why our neighborhood is organizing. We are imploring the county to develop a long-term, comprehensive solution to this disastrous flooding, in addition to short-term emergency mitigation. Flood Control’s plans to improve the capacity of the creek do not address the whole picture. In order to keep Thacher Creek within its banks, improvements also need to be made upstream and downstream of the tract.

Art Goulet, county director of public works, does understand the heart of the problem: “That subdivision was built in a different era, when people looked at development in a much different way.”

Ultimately, the county of Ventura permitted and allowed this development and should now take responsibility for protecting the properties and lives that are at risk.

LAURIE ZATKOWSKY

Ojai