New Drainage Network Map
See Watershed Protection District’s Website for More

Here is the latest addition to our Map Atlas. The Drainage Network map provides a look at many more of the streams and drainages in the watershed than our base map. Many of the drainages, but certainly not all, are labeled.

Also, if you don’t know about Ventura County Watershed Protection District’s realtime rainfall website, you might want to check it out and bookmark it. All the drainages can be identified by zooming in and clicking on the red line. This site offers more labels than we could fit on our Drainages Network map. Plus it has many other features.

Sept. 5 Meeting Materials
The September 5, 2013 meeting of the Watershed Council is an important one for a couple reasons, one being that we’ll be making some decisions about the “Action Plan” part of Watershed Management Plan (WMP). I’m seeking the Council’s guidance on a number of specific questions about this, which I’ve summarized in this memo to the Council.

Please read the memo and give yourself time to think about the questions in light of any specific projects or programs you’d like to see advanced in the WMP. This process of developing the Action Plan will take several meetings, but the more we’ve all thought it through in advance, the more productive our group process can be at the meeting.

The current Tier 1 Project/Program List is available as either a printable pdf, or as a (big) Excel spreadsheet. The Excel file can be sorted and filtered and is the tool I recommend. If you use the Excel file, befriend row 5 – this is where your filtering tools are. I am happy to answer any questions about the spreadsheet or how to use it. If you are new our process, the pdf document offers some definitions on the first page.

At the September 5 meeting we will also have the special opportunity to hear from Tully Clifford, director of the Ventura County Watershed Protection District, about the District’s priorities and how these can best integrate with and be supported by our watershed management plan. Following Tully’s presentation, there will be time to ask questions and discuss concerns.

The meeting will run from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm, and will be in the Topping Room of the Foster Library, 651 E. Main Street.

Here is the meeting agenda. 

Thanks for Your Help!!
I and my little team are busy at it pulling together current information for the Watershed Management Plan. Many of you are well aware of this because you are helping.

And I just want to say Thank You!!

I feel privileged to have this task and to get to interact with so many knowledgeable, concerned and helpful people. Thank you for patiently answering my many questions. Thanks for the data, the photos, and the documents. I’m getting some great help, and I am continually impressed with the level of expertise we have as a Council.

We still have quite a ways to go though, so please bear with us. Also, I’ll be sending around first-pass rough drafts of different sections for input by key players/experts. If that is you, please plan to allocate some time for this. And any technical experts out there who want to lend their wisdom to draft review, do let me know if you have not already.

Thanks again!!

Needed: Highlights of our Accomplishments for the IRWMP Update
As part of the update to the countywide Integrated Regional Water Management Plan (IRWMP), Lynn Rodriguez, Watersheds Coalition of Ventura County project manager, will be including a table highlighting some of the accomplishments in each of the county’s three watersheds. So she is asking for help filling in this draft table. You’ll see that she started adding some of the bigger projects, but others should be added. She also needs brief project descriptions and a few other pieces of information for each project.

Please forward information you want to add to the table to me by September 4, and I will compile it for Lynn.

Our Patience is Running Out Fast
The following letter to the editor, from County Supervisor Steve Bennett, appeared in the Ojai Valley News on August 14, 2013.

The former Petrochem Refinery, which is highly visible from Highway 33 north of Ventura, has been a deteriorating eye sore for thirty years. Worse, hazardous materials from the refinery have leaked onto the ground and underground, and potentially threaten the adjacent Ventura River. Shuttered since 1984, the site is long overdue for clean-up and removal of rusting facilities.

When the County of Ventura exhausted its legal authority to have the Petrochem owner clean-up the property in 2012, the County called in the US EPA with their greater enforcement authority. The US EPA promptly entered the fray, and soon succeeded in getting the Petrochem owner to enter into a consent order requiring clean-up of the site, prevention of polluted runoff, and removal of equipment.

Clean-up of hazardous materials and spills has been proceeding steadily since the EPA order. However, the section of the consent order that requires removal of equipment from the site has not yet been enforced by the EPA. This section of the order required the removal of much of the on-site equipment by February, 2013.

The EPA’s efforts to force the clean-up of this environmental hazard are much appreciated. However, part of that clean-up must be the removal of remaining equipment as specified in the signed consent order. After all these years of non-use, the environment and the community deserve the prompt removal of the dilapidated and hazardous equipment from the Petrochem site.

The property owner owes it to the community to clean up the mess that he has left behind, and the US EPA must continue to require him to comply with the terms of the consent order that both parties signed.

With the EPA office located in San Francisco, it’s undoubtedly difficult for EPA to work on this project. We are now six months past the date when equipment should have been removed and the community’s patience is running out with Petrochem. It is time for the EPA to take aggressive steps to enforce the terms of its order requiring removal of equipment and the schedule for clean-up.

The County of Ventura Environmental Health Division has been voluntarily conducting monitoring of Petrochem compliance on behalf of the US EPA, and will continue to do so. At this point, the best hope for clean-up of the Petrochem site lies in aggressive enforcement by the US EPA. This site lies adjacent or nearby to homes, businesses, the Ventura River, the Ojai Valley Bicycle Trail, the Ventura River Parkway, and in full view of the entrance to the Ojai Valley. Now is the time to insist that the EPA make completion of the clean-up of the Petrochem site a high priority. The citizens of western Ventura County deserve nothing less.