Dam Removal Gets Boost From Report of Ventura River Threat

OJAI —  With the decaying, 53-year-old Matilija Dam as a backdrop, a coalition of conservation groups on Monday called on Gov. Gray Davis and President Clinton to “tear down this public nuisance.”

The dam has been blamed for everything from the decline of the endangered southern steelhead trout to the depletion of sand at Ventura County beaches. The damage caused by the dam is so great that the environmental group American Rivers listed the Ventura River as the third most endangered in the nation.

“It’s a silt tub that has outlived its usefulness,” Jim Edmondson, conservation director for California Trout Inc., said of the dam.

The decision to declare the Ventura River one of America’s most imperiled streams was rooted in politics as well as science, observers said. Even though Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has declared removal of the dam a top priority, finding the money to do the work, up to $80 million, has been a problem.

Those who want to remove the dam hope that by elevating the issue to a national level they can pressure Congress and the state Legislature to allocate the money. Edmondson said opponents of the dam will send a letter this week to state Sen. Byron Sher (D-Stanford), chairman of the Committee on Environmental Quality, seeking $45 million. Another letter will be sent, he said, to the governor’s natural resources chief, Mary Nichols, seeking 24 specialists from the state Department of Fish and Game to work on a plan to recover the southern steelhead.

The dam was built in 1947 for flood-control purposes. Built to store 5,000 acre-feet of water, it now holds only 500--or 163 million gallons.

It is full of mud, cracking apart, doesn’t produce electricity and stores an inconsequential amount of water. It also blocks the migration of southern steelhead trout to the ocean.

Virtually nobody supports the dam. Even the agencies that own and operate it, including officials at the Ventura County Flood Control Department and the Casitas Municipal Water District, disparage it.

“I’d love to see the dam taken down. It’s absolutely worthless,” said Jim Coultas, a director at the Casitas water district.

Without it, beaches could gain sand, fish could return, and day-trippers would have better access to the Ventura County back country.

That’s good for the county’s $808-million tourist industry, said Kathy Janega-Dykes, executive director for the county Visitors and Conventions Bureau.

“Outdoor recreation is a vital part of our visitor industry,” she said.

On the other hand, no one has devised a way to remove the 6 million cubic yards of silt behind it. It has to be done carefully, lest sediment accumulate in the riverbed and increase flood dangers for people living downstream.

But while the Ventura River has its problems, it’s a far better stretch of stream than others in Southern California. The New River, for instance, is a fetid sump carrying Mexico’s industrial waste and sewage to the Salton Sea in Imperial County. Dams, cow manure and treated effluent mar the Santa Ana River between San Bernardino and Orange counties. And the Los Angeles River has been converted to a concrete gutter.

But there is a solution to the Ventura River’s problems, even if an expensive one. And the more attention the river and Matilija Dam get, the better the odds someone will help ante up to take it down.

The timing of the announcement was right for other reasons. A $500,000 pilot project to remove an 800-square-foot chunk of the dam is scheduled in October. The California Coastal Conservancy is paying about half that, and the rest comes from local and federal sources.

The Lower Snake River in Idaho topped the list of most endangered rivers, while the north fork of the Feather River near Oroville, the only other California stream, ranked ninth.