Coastal Agency Acquires River Restoration Land

The California Coastal Conservancy has acquired hundreds of acres along the Santa Clara River in Ventura, the first step in its plan to buy and restore a 15-mile swath of private riverbank land, the agency announced Monday.

It also is close to deals for two parcels in Santa Paula, one for 225 acres of the Valley View Ranch property and another for 150 acres next to the Santa Paula Airport. Peter Brand, the group’s project director, said it is also eyeing three other properties.

Brand called the project the largest Southern California land acquisition effort in the conservancy’s 24-year history.

The just-purchased land includes 220 acres in the Montalvo area of Ventura sold by attorney Allen Camp. The Coastal Conservancy is granting the private Nature Conservancy the $4.7 million needed to buy the land. The link to the Nature Conservancy, which will manage the parcel, is one of several partnerships the Coastal Conservancy hopes to form with nonprofit groups to preserve river land.

The parcel is near the Ventura Freeway bridge connecting Ventura and Oxnard. “When you go by on the 101, nobody really has a sense of a river down there,” said Wendy Millett, area director of the Nature Conservancy, which buys land for open space. “It’s just wonderful, and people say, ‘I had no idea.’ ”

The grant to purchase Camp’s property comes from a $9.1-million budget that the Coastal Conservancy has dedicated to buying land along the Santa Clara River. The money was generated by last year’s passage of Proposition 12, a statewide bond issue that raised $2.1 billion in part to preserve open space and wildlife habitat.

Last year, the conservancy outlined ambitious plans to create a permanent protected area along the river, part of an overall strategy to undo changes that have left the river prone to flooding and have harmed some plants and animals that live on its banks.

The state agency has begun to focus more on teaming up with other groups to manage riverbank land, because the interests of several coincide, Millett said.