If Plant Halts a Dam, Can It Stop Flood Too?

According to Thousand Oaks City Councilwoman Linda Parks, there are only 100 Braunton’s milk vetch plants left on the planet. Verdant Ventura County has recently provided a home for more than 6% of this particular endangered-species population. In fact, this rare plant seems to be sprouting up precisely where bulldozing is being battled.

Ironic, isn’t it?

Armed with the discovery of this rare plant, the Environmental Defense Center and the California Native Plant Society were able to trump an environmental impact report previously certified by the Oxnard Planning Commission. Discovering Astragalus brauntonii on a 10-acre site being graded by the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District gave the opponents of this project a well-timed reprieve as well. As a result, the state Department of Fish and Game was cordially invited to nose around and, of course, labor on the Oak Park undertaking ground to a halt.

In January, six more specimens of Braunton’s milk vetch, one in resplendent purple bloom, were discovered at the proposed site of the Lang Ranch dam by Parks, the same Linda Parks who vowed that saving an ancient grove of southern oaks from being ravaged by dam construction would be her top political priority.

The trees Parks is so crazy about can only be reached by mincing down a practically perpendicular path that snakes underneath a rocky outcropping where the dam would be secured. A stand of gnarled southern oaks, some 300 to 500 years old, cozies up to the banks of Lang Creek, luxuriant with chaparral and crowned with a canopy of willows. A fragrance vaguely reminiscent of sage competes with the unmistakable musk of a mature forest. It is, indeed, a serene, sylvan setting worth preserving.

But at all costs?

What about the folks who live downstream, primarily west of Erbes Road, whose businesses and bungalows would be inundated if a season’s worth of rain were dumped in a few hours? We’re talking about the runoff from the 2,257 Lang Ranch homes, a super-sized collection of Monopoly game pieces that now blanket what was once a bucolic hillside.

Let’s face it. The reason these lowlands are called “flood plains” is because they flood. Why should any resident of Ventura County have to worry about Mother Nature recarpeting one’s home sweet home in mud?

If you’re interested in charting the Lang Ranch dam timeline, you’ll have to go back to 1968. That’s when opportunistic developers envisioned a 5,000-house project--double the size of the present development. Fast-forward 16 years and you’ll find a federal judge, chafing at the seemingly endless delay, who actually orders a dam to be built ASAP or he would install himself as the “planning czar” of Thousand Oaks. Fast-forward but another 11 years and the Lang Ranch dam finally gets the official nod from the City Council. It’s been a long time coming.

Nearly $5 million in construction money, sluggishly accumulated over time by a Mello-Roos tax provision, is sitting pretty in the bank. The Ventura County Flood Control District, in an agreement with the city and the Lang Ranch developer, has been contracted to build a 66 1/2-foot-high, 345-foot-long earthen dam as well as a 3.3-acre debris basin. The number of oak trees that will give their lives to the project has been whittled down to an acceptable 47.

Yet the 2001 completion date continues to be stalled by the following burning questions: Do bone fragments constitute a Chumash burial site? Can a special tax assessment be used to finance a public project? Will Fish and Game insist on a post-milk-vetch environmental impact report?

These queries could occupy various experts for decades, but given the safety issue, can the city of Thousand Oaks (gentle reminder: The last time city mothers / fathers fiddled around, the price tag for the sewage spill totaled $2.8 million) afford to postpone this project any longer?

I have a question. Had the dam gone up before the moving vans arrived, would we still be engaged in this scintillating discussion?

All this foot-dragging has reaped a bitter harvest. NIMBY (as in “Not in My Backyard”) is an unwelcome weed that seems to be establishing a formidable foothold in the Conejo Valley. Perhaps the kudzu-like NIMBY possesses some sort of narcotic effect that causes high-end hillside dwellers to disregard the welfare of lowland neighbors.

Can an environmentalist be too green? Since Kermit the Frog doesn’t reside in Thousand Oaks, I thought I’d call on Mayor Dennis Gillette. He contends that the word “compromise” does not figure heavily in Parks’ vocabulary.

Perhaps someone should tell her that persistence in one’s opinion, at least according Cicero, is no virtue in politicians. In fact, the Roman sage contends that a constant refusal to seek the middle ground might cause some politicos, green or otherwise, to become endangered, if not extinct.

Ironic, isn’t it?