Stream of Consciousness

The sharp smell of turpentine was the first sign something was wrong. Then the water quickly turned cloudier and the smell grew stronger.

It was probably paint that was being washed into Las Virgenes Creek.

“Oh God, this is exactly the problem,” said Heather Lea Merenda, storm-water program manager for Calabasas. “I can’t believe it.”

She and other city officials are trying to prevent such pollution with a communitywide effort launched this year to change people’s attitudes toward the creek--to view it as a valuable resource rather than a drainage ditch.

As part of that effort, the city has commissioned a $29,000 study of Las Virgenes Creek, which should be completed in June.

City leaders also held a public workshop in March, where residents could share their ideas about how to protect and better utilize the creek.

“This is my whole job, to be down that creek and protect it,” Merenda said during a hike along the creek Thursday. “Stuff like this happens a lot and it just never gets caught.”

Merenda discovered the offending chemical Thursday morning in a littered section of the creek behind Arthur E. Wright Middle School and Las Virgenes Road.

She immediately pulled out her cellular phone and called a city inspector for help in locating the ecological culprit. She suspected that the paint source was a nearby commercial construction site or private home.

Plastic foam cups, plates and plastic bags clog the waterway that children walk by each day on their way to school. Merenda said she once found a couch in the creek.

On Saturday, residents will meet at Juan Bautista de Anza Park at 10 a.m. to clean up the watershed in honor of Earth Day.

“I hope my education program works so I don’t find more couches,” Merenda said. “It’s not a dumping ground. It’s not a sewer. It’s a living, breathing thing.”

During the city workshop in March, Merenda and Bradley Owens, a graduate landscape architecture student at Cal Poly Pomona who is conducting the study for the city, met with residents to discuss how to protect and use the watershed.

Owens’ study will include a history and aerial photographs of Las Virgenes Creek, a shallow watercourse that roughly parallels Las Virgenes Road and flows into the larger Malibu Creek.

Residents were more interested in preserving the creek than using it for recreation, although they proposed building a small amphitheater near the watershed, Owens said.

“Their vision is having a healthy creek, an amenity, something they can hold up and say, ‘We have this great, flourishing stream,’ ” said Owens, 38, who is doing his master’s thesis on Las Virgenes Creek.

Owens believes children could learn from the watershed.

“It can be used as an educational laboratory, from grade school on up, a place to observe wildlife and do studies,” he said.

The watershed’s concrete-lined channels block the movement of fish and make the stream inaccessible to coyotes, deer and bobcats, he said. The concrete channels also make it harder for people to reach the creek.

“People drive by it every day, but they don’t think about it,” Merenda said. “It’s hidden by brush.”

Carl Gibbs and his wife, Babette, have taken a passionate interest in the creek. Both are members of the city’s Environmental Commission and a volunteer group that monitors the creek’s water quality.

Gibbs, 58, said he would like to establish a habitat for steelhead trout in the creek.

“What few people realize is that outside of our creeks we have no water in this area,” Babette Gibbs said.

Mark Abramson, stream team coordinator with Heal the Bay in Santa Monica, has been monitoring Las Virgenes Creek and other watersheds for three years. He has found high phosphate and ammonia nitrate ratings in the creek.

“You should expect it to be good water quality,” he said. “For some reason, we’re not getting that.”

Sheep and cattle grazing could contribute to higher-than-normal nitrate levels in the creek, Abramson said.

Still, those who care about the creek are optimistic about its prospects. Babette Gibbs said she looks forward to a time when people will peacefully enjoy the creek’s beauty.

“This is a place to go and sit by a stream and be quiet,” she said. “There is nothing as nice, if the creek is clean, as taking off your shoes and putting your toes in the water.”

For more information about the Saturday cleanup, from 10 a.m. to noon at Juan Bautista de Anza Park, 3701 Lost Hills Road, or the creek-monitoring program, call (818) 878-4242, Ext. 293.

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Creek Cleanup

* What: Cleanup of Las Virgenes Creek

* When: Saturday, 10 a.m.-noon

* Where: Juan Bautista de Anza Park, Calabasas

* Information: (818) 878-4242, Ext. 293