GROUP MULLS CREEK'S FUTURE; AGENCIES JOIN FORCES TO SAVE WATERSHED.

Byline: Michael Coit Daily News Staff Writer

More than a century ago, Calleguas Creek emptied onto the Oxnard Plain near Somis and Mugu Lagoon covered 3,000 acres.

As landowners settled the region, they began channelizing the creek in the late 1880s to drain the plain to the lagoon. That was the first of several changes that altered the vast network of washes, sloughs and creeks that meander across the plain.

The extensive urban development in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Moorpark and Camarillo, farmland conversion, and development of orchards on steeper slopes followed. Channels were straightened and erosion accelerated, contributing to flooding on the plain and sedimentation of the lagoon. Even before, development of the Point Mugu naval facility in the 1940s had filled some of the wetlands.

The lagoon's expanse has been reduced to about 1,130 acres. Yet it remains the largest relatively undisturbed salt marsh in Southern California.

Harbor seals still have their young there. The lagoon is a prime stopover for migrating birds on the Pacific flyway. It also provides vital habitat for nine threatened or endangered species, including the American peregrine falcon, California least tern, lightfooted clapper rail, California brown pelican and Belding savanna sparrow.

Silting of waterways and the lagoon, however, is only one water quality concern.

Elevated levels of pesticides no longer used are found in fish and shellfish in the lagoon's waters. Sewage plants discharge treated wastewater into the lagoon's tributaries, contributing to concentrations of salts, chlorides and nitrates.

Those concerns have drawn together a rare group to draft a plan for the future of both the lagoon and the 343-square mile Calleguas Creek Watershed.

Farmers, wildlife preservationists, water agency and flood control officials, business and industry representatives, have been meeting for 2-1/2 years. The committee is completing work on an early-action plan and preparing to publish its first public newsletter.

Local solutions endorsed

The committee also is entering the truly tricky phase of its mission - keeping the varying interest groups together to complete a management plan that generates local solutions that keep state and federal regulators from mandating fixes.

``This is still in its infancy. We're taking small steps forward. There is no road map. We're developing the road map,'' said Don Kendall, general manager for the Calleguas Municipal Water District and part of the glue keeping the committee together.

The concept of watershed management has been endorsed by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board as a means to collectively deal with problems rather than dictate erosion controls and sewage treatment plant upgrades.

``The process that's facing us with the Calleguas Creek Watershed is a real opportunity to help make the decisions rather than wait for the decisions to be made for you,'' said Catherine Tyrrell, the regional board official involved in the management plan. ``If you don't get involved assertively up front, then the big bad regulatory agencies will do something to you.''

Tyrrell said that the federal Environmental Protection Agency wants the state agency to do a better job of water quality protection. The EPA requires that water quality agencies create listings of waterways where water quality is impaired or threatened to be impaired, though Tyrrell said that doesn't mean costly sewage treatment plant upgrades or restrictions on agriculture and other land uses would necessarily follow.

A more recent EPA mandate calls for establishing total maximum daily loads of pollutants a watershed can handle to determine who is responsible for reducing various wastes.

``We have to figure out where all the various pollution is originating and allocate to responsible agencies their share of taking care of the problem,'' Tyrrell said. ``And so we're under a lot of pressure now to sort these things out.''

Study reveals concerns

The Calleguas Creek Watershed effort actually is ahead of the regulatory curve.

Five years ago, the California Coastal Conservancy, the regional board, the county Flood Control District, the county Resource Conservation District and growers began work on an erosion and sediment control plan for Mugu Lagoon.

The final report, released two years later, found annual erosion totaled 1.19 million tons, with stream banks, orchards and construction sites the leading contributors. With the potential for a near doubling of urban land use by 2010 given existing general plans in the watershed, even greater runoff and erosion could occur.

The plan, however, barely mentioned urban influences.

``It was wrong to just blame the farmers,'' said Peter Brand, the coastal conservancy representative on both the erosion control plan and the current water quality plan. ``One of the things that was obvious was that the cities needed to be more involved.''

So the four cities, county and the regional board joined to pay for the current management effort.

Brand said the coastal conservancy has been involved in some 30 watershed plans and the Calleguas effort is one of the more notable beyond the significance of Mugu Lagoon.

``Calleguas is important in and of itself, but it's also important because it's a watershed that has a complex mixture of land uses,'' he said.

Ventura County is a slice of California's past and present. There is productive agriculture next to the four major cities, the coastal sage scrub remains, and open spaces between cities are more valuable as habitat compared with the state's more common urbanized watersheds.

``We have to combine all of those interests into a management plan. It's going along pretty well right now,'' Brand said.

Finding individual fixes

One reason they all can get along is that some of the county's agricultural and industrial leaders have never been afraid of technology to solve environmental problems. So they are confident in being able to solve water quality issues, committee members said.

Two examples were presented at a recent forum hosted by the Association of Water Agencies of Ventura County, the Ventura County Economic Development Association, and the Camarillo Chamber of Commerce.

Bob Michels, production manager for Imation Corp., one of the county's top employers, said the firm's environmental management program captures, contains and tests the pollutants it produces. The Camarillo-based data storage and imaging company uses a lot of water and produces chlorides and salts, and it has significantly reduced both.

``Our approach is to solve these problems through technology,'' Michels said. ``We used technology to get these types of return.''

Michels noted that replacing a steam recovery operation with nitrogen systems cut water use nearly in half. Going further, the firm invested $200,000 last year on a reverse osmosis system to recycle most of the water, reducing water use from 3 million gallons to 500,000 gallons this year.

Michels emphasized that the current water quality effort needs to give potential polluters an opportunity to craft individual solutions. ``One size does not fit all.''

At the same forum, Dan Pinkerton, a Santa Paula avocado and lemon grower, also called on regulators to rely on sound science and recognize that growers already do much to contain erosion and use of pesticides and herbicides.

``The application of strict rules to agricultural best management practices is not only unworkable but unwise,'' he contended. ``Each operator must be given the opportunity to exercise his experience, business judgment and common sense.''

As an example, Pinkerton noted that growers long ago responded to concerns about conserving the groundwater most rely on to irrigate crops. Technological advances have moved irrigation beyond drip systems to mini sprinklers, sub-surface tape irrigation, and the use of evaporation data to determine watering needs.

Projects show promise

Growers likewise are responding to advances in erosion control spawned by the erosion control plan completed three years ago, committee members said.

``One of the major contentions (before) was just build large debris basins to catch all that sediment,'' said Peggy Rose, project manager for the county Resource Conservation District. ``(We) would really like to see a much more landowner-based approach, where if you stop the erosion up in the watershed, you wouldn't have to have debris basins down at the bottom.''

Three such watershed restoration projects have been completed in the Grimes and Long canyon areas north of Moorpark. The combination of cover crops and mulch to hold soil, stream bank stabilization and revegetation, and stream leveling techniques have been done on private property under agreements with growers.

``All of those ultimately are models for the private landowners in the watershed,'' said Brand of the coastal conservancy.

Further, by agreeing to maintain the improvements, the landowners already are helping pay the costs.

``The obvious self interest is they've been losing soil and trees into streams for years. This really preserves farmland,'' Brand said. ``There's no coercion. It's not regulation, it's totally cooperative.''

Such cooperation could be strained when the regional board begins assigning total maximum daily loads to cities operating sewage treatment plants, industries that discharge wastewater, growers and other sources.

``I think it's a wake-up call for all of us because I believe we're all going to lose in that process if we allow ourselves to get into a contentious debate,'' said Kendall, the Calleguas water agency official.

Development impacts

Landowners seeking to develop on the margins of washes, sloughs and creeks in the watershed also could drive a wedge in the cooperative spirit.

Brand said watershed plans could call for restricting development enough to maintain natural waterways rather than channelizing and using boulders and concrete to keep storm water moving swift and straight.

``Flood plain restoration is the new way of doing flood control,'' Brand said, noting that such a plan recently was approved for the Napa River.

``Most of the flooding and water quality problems in a watershed can be solved by more judicious setbacks,'' he explained. ``You allow development, but not so close to streams, to the bluff edge with the flood control district building channels.''

With development resurgent to keep pace with home sales and demand for business and industrial space, environmentalists are concerned the watershed plan will do too little too late. There also are plans for a golf course in Hill Canyon along the margins of the Arroyo Conejo, and the Camarillo Regional Park and a 16,000-seat amphitheater are proposed near Calleguas Creek.

The committee's time line for producing a draft management plan is June of the year 2000.

``Twenty years ago they gave Mugu (Lagoon) a life's hope of maybe 50 years. And nothing has changed, except to get worse,'' said Cynthia Leake, vice president of The Environmental Coalition.

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Map

MAP: CALLEGUAS CREEK WATERSHED

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