DAM NUISANCE? STUDY URGED FOR TAKING DOWN MATILIJA.

Byline: Jennifer Klein Staff Writer

OJAI - Once nearly 200 feet tall, Matilija Dam is now shorter and holding less than one-tenth the 7,000 acre-feet of water it was able to collect to prevent flooding and store water for residents of the Ojai valley.

These days birds take quick swims in the small, silvery lake, and Casitas Dam, with its 250,000 acre-feet of water, supersedes the structure in usefulness, officials said.

``The dam in a year or two will serve no purpose for man,'' said Jim Edmonson, conservation director for California Trout, a statewide advocacy group for the endangered steelhead trout. ``It will be a huge retaining wall. It is a public nuisance. The best way to deal with the dam is to remove it. The question is how.''

A report issued last week by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers calls for a $3.6 million study to figure out how to tear the 52-year-old structure down.

A similar conclusion - that a feasibility study was needed to determine the best dismantling process - was reached in April by the Bureau of Land Reclamation.

Ventura County has estimated that removing the dam could take as little as two years and as long as 30 - and cost between $25 million and $180 million. The county Board of Supervisors has a subcommittee to coordinate efforts to remove the dam; Supervisors Kathy Long and Susan Lacey, who are on the committee, did not return phone calls.

``We should have the study completed,'' said Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Oxnard.

Gallegly secured $100,000 in federal money last year to conduct the Army Corps of Engineers' preliminary study and is close to securing $150,000 more to go toward the feasibility study.

Environmentalists though, are tired of the wait and want to see something done now.

Edmonson notes that while it took three to five years to plan and build Matilija Dam, it is taking 10 years to study it and possibly another 30 years to tear it down.

``While we're glad they're there, it looks like another way to study it to death,'' Edmonson said about the feasibility studies.

The dam has been under attack because of structural problems that make it obsolete and because environmentalists say it prevents the endangered steelhead trout from spawning.

In recent years, the now 168-foot dam - it was scaled back twice from its original height of 198 feet - has accumulated increasing amounts of sediment that reduces the amount of water it can hold and causes environmental changes.

``Its capacity has been diminished by a large amount because of sediment,'' said Jeff Pratt, deputy director of the Ventura County Flood Control Department. ``Originally it could store more than 7,000 acre-feet of water. Today, it stores less than 500.''

Casitas Dam, which has superseded Matilija in usefulness, stores 250,000 acre-feet of water, he said.

The dam also is slowly deteriorating as the silica in the aggregate used in the dam's concrete dissolves - though Pratt said officials believe there is no danger of the structure collapsing, because the deteriorated areas were cut away when the dam was scaled down.

When sediment backs up at the dam, it costs the beaches a significant percentage of sand that normally would have been carried to the sea by the Ventura River, he said.

Environmental groups favor removing Matilija Dam because they say it would give endangered steelhead access to miles of pristine watershed above it.

The trout also has been unable to spawn because the fish are unable to get above the dam. A fish ladder that was installed in the past couple of years has not worked as expected, they said.

Gaining access to this habitat would greatly help the steelhead and its population numbers, said Cindy Watanabe, engineer with the Department of Fish and Game.

If the Army Corps of Engineers were to go ahead with the feasibility study, the county would need to contribute some money to the estimated $3.6 million bill, said Tom Pfeifer, Gallegly's press secretary.

The county already helped the Bureau of Land Reclamation conduct its preliminary study, officials said.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which is under the auspices of the Department of Defense, is set to ask Congress to have it go forward with the feasibility study, rather than having it conducted by the Department of the Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Land Reclamation, officials said.

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2 photos

Photo: (1 -- 2 -- color -- 2 ran in Conejo edition only) Environmental groups favor removing Matilija Dam because they say it would give endangered steelhead access pristine watershed above it. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report calls for a $3.6 million study to find ways to tear it down.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer