Conservancy Buys Riverbank Land

The state Coastal Conservancy has acquired its first piece of land along the Santa Clara River, 220 acres that constitute the first step in the environmental agency’s plan to purchase and restore a 15-mile swath of private land along the free-flowing river.

The organization is also close to deals for two parcels in Santa Paula, one for 225 acres of the so-called Valley View Ranch property and another for 150 acres next to the Santa Paula Airport, said Peter Brand, project director for the conservancy. The group is eyeing three other properties as well.

The just-purchased land, in the Montalvo area of Ventura, was bought from attorney Allen Camp.

The Coastal Conservancy is granting $4.7 million to the Nature Conservancy to purchase the property, which the latter group will manage. The partnership is one of several the Coastal Conservancy hopes to form with nonprofit groups to preserve river land.

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

The land 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, local area director of the Nature Conservancy, a private organization that buys land for open space. “It’s just wonderful, and people say, ‘I had no idea.’ ”

The grant to purchase Camp’s property is part of 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 man-made changes that have left the river prone to flooding and have harmed some plants and animals that live on the banks.

For years, landowners have been unable to use their property along the river, which often overflows its banks and makes development nearly impossible. Under the proposal, the river would have more room to flow and eventually would revert back to its natural state.

Camp is leasing back some of the land to continue growing lemons, Millett said.

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

The Valley View land, three miles upstream from Santa Paula on the south bank, is expected to be managed by the local group Friends of the Santa Clara River.

Ron Bottorff, that group’s chairman, said he hopes to acquire the property this summer for about $436,500. The price is low because much of the land is in the flood plain, with agricultural use limited to grazing.

His group hopes to bring back willows and cottonwoods, remove the invasive bamboo-like species arundo donax and revive the grazed land.