Watershed Cleanup Flounders

A far-reaching experiment to protect water supplies and restore the environment in fast-developing eastern Ventura County is in danger of collapsing under the weight of its lofty aspirations and a legal settlement that was supposed to make things better.

Five years ago, one of the most ambitious environmental reclamation efforts in Southern California history was launched to fix Calleguas Creek, which drains what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers one of the region’s most seriously damaged watersheds.

A narrow stream whose four major tributaries spread like moist fingers across a patchwork landscape of farms and cities from Simi Valley to Oxnard, the creek appears devoid of consequence or romance.

But its plainness belies its importance. Four in seven county residents live near Calleguas Creek, and its watershed provides as much as half their water needs, from drinking water to irrigation for crops and parks. Ventura County’s population has more than tripled in the last 30 years, mainly because of people who fled Los Angeles and Orange counties to escape urban problems.

“Most people moved into the urban environment long after streams were turned into open sewers or a flood-control conveyance,” said Catherine Kuhlman, associate director for the water division of the EPA’s California office.

“In some parts of the L.A. region, you look into a river and see TVs and shopping carts in it and you don’t even think of it as a waterway. If [the reclamation effort] works, it will be awesome, and we can apply some of the lessons to other places. But if it doesn’t, it joins a lot of other watershed efforts that have failed.”

The ambitious goal of the cleanup effort--which brought together 34 participants as disparate as the Navy, farmers and developers--was not only to restore the creek bottoms but also to track and eliminate thousands of upstream pollution sources. These include everything from splattered oil droplets on highways to farm fertilizers and industrial contaminants.

After five years and $3 million, there’s little to show for the effort. Everyone agrees on what needs to be done, but no one can agree on how to do it.

Although the outcome of the effort is still uncertain, one early lesson shows that tackling problems across an entire watershed in Southern California unleashes a multiplicity of complications.

“They don’t always work. They are clearly not a silver bullet for cleaning up pollution,” said Kuhlman. “They tend to work when local people come together to deal with issues they care about, on things like salmon, where there is automatic consensus. But in Southern California, it gets more complex.”

For Los Angeles County, state officials in January approved standards to require new building projects to limit urban runoff that fouls ocean waters. The program requires major new developments, from shopping centers to gas stations, to collect and filter storm runoff that flows from roofs, parking lots and other pavement.

The goal is to eliminate 85% of runoff from new development to help clean beaches from Long Beach to Malibu.

The Ventura County effort is similar to attempts in Orange and San Diego counties that target more limited areas.

Numerous studies have been conducted, but no consensus has emerged on even the most basic issue of how to select a cleanup method for Calleguas Creek from among many proposals.

“There’s no commitment whatsoever that any of these plans are going to be used. It’s just a wish list at this point,” said Kim Uhlich of the Environmental Defense Center in Ventura.

Partly, the effort is groaning under the weight of its own ambition. It’s understandable, given the loftiness of its goals: Preserve agriculture, conserve open space and wildlife habitat, safeguard private property, benefit the economy, coordinate local land uses, reduce erosion and flood dangers, stop water pollution, restore ground water supplies and save Mugu Lagoon, a prized marsh.

Legal wrangling over how fast to get to work has also complicated the process and pushed it to the breaking point.

“It potentially can derail this effort, and it’s frustrating,” said Donald R. Kendall, general manager of the Calleguas Municipal Water District and co-chairman of the watershed planning committee.

Lots of Pollution From People, Industry

Calleguas Creek is both a gem and a gutter.

The most polluted of three major Ventura County watersheds, it is born nearly a mile above sea level at the Santa Susana Pass.

The creek’s northern branches--Arroyo Simi and Arroyo Las Posas--bisect Simi Valley and Moorpark. Conejo Creek gushes out of Thousand Oaks through Hill Canyon to join Calleguas Creek near Cal State Channel Islands in Camarillo.

Farther downstream, Revolon Slough disgorges coffee-colored agricultural runoff into the stream. Calleguas Creek spills its turbid, tan waters into Mugu Lagoon and from there into the Pacific, 30 miles from its headwaters.

Over time, human activities have damaged the creek. Wetlands were cleared for crops. Today the watershed contains 37 industrial outfalls, 400,000 people, four major highways and a Navy base. Virtually every drop of rain and rivulet of driveway runoff, every toilet flush and gallon of drainage from irrigation sprinklers in a 343-square-mile area ends up in the creek.

Trying to survive in this hostile environment are 53 rare plant and animal species.

“You pull the fish out of the water and almost every one of them have open lesions from chemical problems,” said Deborah Smith, assistant executive officer for the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Long-lived pesticides, some banned nearly 30 years ago, also continue to leak from fields and threaten wildlife. Irrigation runoff sweeps contaminants into creeks and dumps them into Mugu Lagoon.

Mussels in the lagoon contain four times more toxaphene, DDT, dachtal and chlordane than mollusks found in Los Angeles Harbor. Light-footed clapper rails, an endangered bird, are having a hard time reproducing because of pesticide accumulations.

Development has altered the landscape and the flow of water. As more pavement coats the land, less soil is available to absorb rainfall. Slick city surfaces whisk away water, turning storm drains into torrents and causing erosion and flooding downstream.

Cleanup Committee Formed in 1995

Howard Jones has seen the rising tide of development ravage his 60-acre raspberry and lettuce patch in the Santa Rosa Valley. Conejo Creek swells during storms to devour his land. Two acres have washed away in recent years.

“See all of that?” Jones said, pointing to saturated banks above the roiling stream. “That’s loose mud. When a big storm comes, it just rips all that out and washes it away. It’s the same process that made the Grand Canyon. No one wants to talk about this problem.”

But people were talking. And they decided to do something before things got worse.

In 1995 the Calleguas Creek Watershed Management Plan steering committee was formed, and within a year members were brainstorming solutions. There was every prospect of success. The county’s most powerful interests were engaged: farmers and environmentalists, politicians and the Navy, government regulators and businesses, cities and developers.

One thing that made this effort unusual was that it was all voluntary. No federal bureaucracy had come in and pointed shaming fingers and set rigid deadlines with the threat of steep fines. The attempt also differed from traditional approaches in focusing on the entire watershed rather than on isolated problems. It was grass-roots democracy at its best and most public-spirited.

The stakes were high. The outcome could decide which crops are grown, how much people pay for sewer service and whether enough water is stored in aquifers as a hedge against drought. It could determine how often beaches are closed to swimming, which open spaces will be spared the bulldozer’s blade, even how well shampoo lathers up during a shower.

“We’re trying to maintain what we have. We don’t want to see mass urbanization in Ventura County that drives away agriculture,” said Kendall of the Calleguas water panel. “Water is going to dictate a rational and logical policy for all of these different interests to coexist in a healthy manner. Water is what links us all together.”

But water is a bond easily broken. As in a shotgun wedding, the stakeholders may be holding hands and walking toward the altar, but there is no guarantee that they will ever say “I do.”

Simi Valley has questioned the need for a costly cleanup that benefits downstream users. Other cities worry that controls will affect sewer plants and raise rates. Farmers blame development for ruining irrigation water. Developers object to drainage controls on parking lots, strip malls and subdivisions. Environmentalists feel they are underrepresented. And everyone wonders whether the watershed committee, led by county Supervisor Judy Mikels, can keep it all together.

Even so, in four years of brainstorming, the Calleguas Creek committee has identified several possible solutions.

One calls for a $450-million public works project to divert nearly all of Calleguas Creek and its tributaries into a 30-mile-long pipeline. Like big faucets, valves along the pipeline would open and close, sending brine to the ocean and clean water to cities, farms and wildlife areas and mixing it with ground water to restore tainted wells. Congress appropriated $2 million in the past two years for a study of the project.

“I don’t see any other way we’re going to deal with our problems if we don’t build this,” Kendall said.

But there is also concern that it could be used as a dump chute.

The California Coastal Conservancy proposes tearing down some levees and acquiring sensitive lands to slow stream flows, filter pollutants, reduce flooding and restore wildlife habitat. Other potential remedies include low-salt household water softeners, preservation of open space, greater use of drip irrigation to stem agricultural pollution and catch basins for storm water runoff.

Today the watershed management project faces the most serious test of its resolve--and its viability. It comes in the form of government intervention, the very threat the committee was formed to avoid.

Settlement of a 1997 lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council requires the EPA to accelerate cleanup to a pace that many say cannot be met, potentially shattering the delicate coalition.

Environmentalists do not apologize for forcing the hand of the local committee. They say tough controls with hard deadlines are long overdue.

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Troubled Watershed

Calleguas Creek and its tributaries are vexed by human-induced problems that threaten their ability to provide water for wildlife, agriculture and growing cities. About half of Ventura County’s residents live within the watershed, and water flowing in the streams supplies half their needs. Farming and urbanization have fouled the water supply with silt, pesticides and salts. An effort launched five years ago to fix it has progressed slowly, prompting a lawsuit to kick the cleanup into high gear. But it could unravel a coalition working to save the streams.