Looking For Clarity in the Santa Clara River

© Bridget Crocker 2006

California State Lifeguard Jeff Belzer didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary as he paddled out at the Santa Clara River mouth to catch some mid-morning, head-high surf. “I had a great time while I was out there. I was with two of my really close friends and we were the only ones out. We got a lot of good waves, watched each other on waves, shared waves, you know, we had a lot of fun,” says Belzer of the late April session.
Later that evening, Belzer began experiencing some sniffles and a sore throat that wouldn’t go away. “I just didn’t seem to get better. I stayed out of the water the next three days.” Still not feeling completely healthy, Belzer went surfing at River Mouth again four days later, afterwards becoming severely ill. “I got chills, shivers, sweats that continued for three more days. I was totally incapacitated. I lost about fifteen pounds. I couldn’t eat; I didn’t have much of an appetite.”
Belzer wondered if the Santa Clara River’s water, which joins the ocean near McGrath State Beach, could have possibly been the cause for his sudden illness after surfing at the river mouth.
Invisible to human eyes for much of the year, the Santa Clara River disappears into the earth during the dry season, finding respite as she pools into ground water. Although she is our backyard, she lies distant from our view and our awareness, a blip on the radar as we cross over bridges built from her rocks, sleep in homes crafted from her sands, drink water from her aquifers. In exchange for such gifts, we saddle her with pesticides and other agritoxins, runaway housing developments, industrial waste, oil spills, gravel mines and sewage effluence. In the 224 years since Spanish missionaries cut into her banks, she has come to the threshold of complete collapse, choked by the trappings of modern civilization. She was named “Clara” by Father Juan Crespi for her clear waters and clarity, a thriving 100-mile stretch of river and mainstay of abundance and survival for the Chumash and Tataviam people for thousands of years. Today, her waters are so polluted that children grow sick from touching her; her fish and frogs are near extinction. She remains invisible for a reason.  
As Southern California’s longest free-flowing river, the Santa Clara begins its journey high in the 1700 million year-old San Gabriel Mountains near the rural town of Acton just outside Palmdale. Snow-melt droplets join together, forming a creek that descends below the pine forests east of Soledad Canyon in the Angeles National Forest. Unaware of what awaits her downstream, the river builds steadily, trickling through high desert scrub as she slides playfully over glittering granite and metamorphic rock. All told, she traverses through six rare natural communities: Riverine, Alluvial Fan Sage Scrub, Cottonwood-Willow Riparian Woodland, Southern Riparian Scrub, Subtidal Estuarine, and Southern Coastal Salt Marsh. However, it is the human communities she encounters from Santa Clarita to Oxnard that will have the greatest impact on her.   
     More than 12 million people in 100 cities live within an hour’s drive from the Santa Clara River, with an expected increase of 7 million people by the year 2020. As one of the last undeveloped pockets of Los Angeles County, the city of Santa Clarita has sprouted subdivisions like acne on a teenager in a growth crisis. The most egregious threat to the Santa Clara River is the proposed Newhall Ranch development, which aims to develop 141 acres along the Santa Clara near Magic Mountain. If implemented, the Newhall development will bring 21,000 new tract homes into the river’s flood plain, altering the river with concrete channelizations, increasing the likelihood of flash flooding. Additionally, the building site is critical habitat for the Arroyo Toad, Least Bell’s Viro, Unarmored Three Spine Stickleback and San Fernando Spine Flower, all listed endangered species.
Speaking on Santa Clarita’s development outbreak, Ron Bottorff, Chair of Friends of the Santa Clara River says, “It’s more than any one group can keep up with. We’ve got three active lawsuits now and we should file at least three more, but it’s nearly impossible for a non-profit to do it all.” 
      One such lawsuit was recently filed against the Army Corps of Engineers for failing to address the cumulative impacts that development permits are having on the Santa Clara. The suit was filed by Friends of the Santa Clara River, Ventura Coastkeeper and the Center for Biological Diversity. “In the last few years the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has rubber-stamped hundreds of permits on the Santa Clara River and its tributaries without looking at the cumulative effects,” says Ileene Anderson of the Center for Biological Diversity.
     With the housing developments comes the problem of water shortages and sewage treatment. The Newhall development will add 21,000 new homes, literally an instant city, all tapping into the alluvial aquifer under the Santa Clara River which is currently in an over-pumped condition. The river is already receives treated sewage from Santa Clarita, Fillmore, Santa Paula and Ventura. The Fillmore Wastewater Treatment Plant exceeded the permitted effluent limit for coliform in the Santa Clara River over 30 times during a one month period in 2000 and was given only the minimum penalty issued by the Ventura Regional Sanitation District. That is simply one plant during one month of one year. How do these violations add up and affect the river over decades?
     Nineteen-year-old Santa Paula resident and fisherman, Brian Ellis, grew violently ill after looking for bait in the river bottom near Faulkner Road. Two days after wading in the Santa Clara, he developed a high fever, elevated heart rate and uncontrollable shaking. His mother, Diana Ellis, immediately took him to the emergency room at Community Memorial Hospital. After two nights of hospitalization, extensive testing and x-rays, it was determined that Brian had contracted an infection from pseudomonas bacteria, presumably from contact with the water. “He was sick for three or four days, even with the antibiotics,” recalls Diana Ellis.
Damon Wing, a local biologist, researcher and long-time advocate for the Santa Clara River, when asked if he would swim in the Santa Clara replied without hesitation, “No.” Would he let his dog swim in it? “I wouldn’t. Maybe in some of the higher tributaries.”
     Last year, American Rivers designated the Santa Clara one of the ten “most endangered rivers in the nation.” One of the major threats to the health of the Santa Clara’s water is run-off from agricultural fields and golf courses along her shores. Pesticides, insecticides and herbicides, also known as agritoxins, are carried into the river with the rains. Until the November 3 passing of the Agricultural Waiver, the Regional Water Quality Control Board did not require testing or monitoring of pesticides, fertilizers and other pollutants for impact on water quality. The new regulations will require growers to submit a monitoring and reporting program plan as of August 3. The monitoring will help the board determine how agricultural run-off is affecting water quality.
According to a comprehensive study published by the Wishtoyo Foundation, exposure to agritoxins “can cause both short and long term adverse health effects in humans.” Examples of effects include severe headaches, persistent sore throat, blindness, diarrhea, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, rashes, stinging eyes, birth defects, cancer and immunotoxicity. The study cites Ventura County as having the highest incidence of breast cancer among women in the state of California. The study claims that, “there is a correlation between the rise of pesticide use in Ventura County and the steadily increasing incidence of cancer,” and says that, “pesticide poisoning is a commonly under-diagnosed illness in America today.” 
Jeff Belzer didn’t report getting sick after surfing at the river mouth to either the Department of Public Health or the Department of Environmental Health.  “It’s hard to say that I got sick because of the water,” he theorizes. “My experience with surfing the river mouth is that if there’s a big red tide or the river mouth is breached, I tend to get similar symptoms almost whenever I surf it, but particularly after the rain or with the red tide. I almost don’t want to think about it. I really don’t know what to do about it, I don’t know what to do about pollution, I don’t know what to do about run-off.”
Last year, the State of California cut funding for Ventura County beach water testing. According to Michael McFadden of Ventura County Department of Environmental Health, this loss of funds forced year-round monitoring efforts of 53 beaches down to 10. The beaches that weren’t considered high risk, or that had minimal reported health risks, were the ones to get dropped from the roster of beaches regularly monitored.  
Kim Kandarian, Program Coordinator for Communicable Diseases at Public Health says that she’s received only a handful of reports of illness following water contact in three years. “To be honest with you, we receive so few of them we don’t consider it to be a problem.” When asked what might happen if she started receiving more reports from surfers, she responded, “Would we look into it? Absolutely. Would we look at it as some kind of outbreak? Quite possibly.”
     There is hope for the Santa Clara River, although the hardships that have befallen her seem overwhelming, hope builds quietly, drop by drop like the melted snowflakes sliding off the San Gabriel Mountains. It is not too late to save the river who has given us her body and her blood. On the contrary, it is the perfect time for us to use our voices and experiences to inform the policies that affect her now.
     This is just what the Nature Conservancy and the Coastal Conservancy are doing. Since 2000, they have spearheaded an effort to acquire a 20 mile-long corridor for habitat restoration and to protect, restore and enhance of the natural processes and vegetation of the river. Currently, over 1,000 acres have been brought into the care of this worthwhile project.
     At the place where the Santa Clara River meets the Pacific, the two currents come to a place of intersection, meeting in an X-formation. It is at this point where transformation happens; the possibilities are infinite. The currents do not resist each other but rather, simply let go of their old ways of being to form a new version of themselves, one that is no longer hidden but out in the wide open.
    
What You Can Do

1. Report illness after water contact to the Department of Environmental Health, www.ventura.org/envhealth. They have an ocean illness form you can download and send in, as does the Surfrider Foundation, www.surfrider.org/oceanillness
Also, call the Ventura County Public Health office 981-5201.

2. Reduce pollution from urban run-off by not using household pesticides, keeping your vehicle properly maintained and free of oil leaks, and not dumping soap from washed cars down the drain. It all ends up in the Santa Clara and the ocean.

3. Get involved or contribute to the Nature Conservancy, Friends of the Santa Clara River, The Center for Biological Diversity or Ventura Coastkeepers. (Contact Info TK)

4. Learn about developments like Newhall Ranch and Fagan Canyon, write letters to or call your local government policy makers and let them know your views.

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