COLUMN ONE : Charting Future of a Wild River : The Santa Clara is Southern California’s longest and, for now, its best-preserved river. But a battle between nature and progress is on the horizon.

Trickling out of the rugged hills north of Los Angeles, Southern California’s longest and wildest river travels 100 miles toward the setting sun--draining an area nearly the size of Delaware--before rushing into the Pacific Ocean.

When Father Juan Crespi, the diarist for the first Spanish exploring party, named the Santa Clara River for the patron saint of sore eyes in 1769, he exulted in its rich stands of trees, wild grapes and herbs. Today, the river still boasts the region’s largest, best-preserved stands of natural riparian woodlands and nurtures at least five federally endangered species--three birds, a fish and a plant.

“It’s almost a miracle that a river of such size in Southern California has escaped relatively unscathed,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist Cathy R. (Cat) Brown.

But the Santa Clara, its history rich with tales of adventure and destruction, has become the stage for the quintessential drama of civilization--the struggle between nature and progress.

The river supports a $125-million annual citrus crop, is an important source of construction gravel and bisects one of the state’s fastest-growing suburbs--the Santa Clarita Valley.

Now, the waterway where President Herbert Hoover is said to have fished for long-gone native trout is being studied by powerful interests who want to bend it to their will:

* Developers want to line nearly 30 miles of riverbank between Santa Clarita and Fillmore with concrete, making its broad bottom and ever-changing banks safe for the construction of cities.

* Gravel miners hope to increase the amount of material they dig from the riverbed and banks nearly 50-fold.

* Farmers say they should be allowed to bulldoze increasingly rare habitat to protect their orchards from flooding.

The unpredictability of the river complicates those plans--but it is also the very characteristic that sustains its unique wildlife. Dry most of the year for much of its length, the river is transformed by winter rains into an angry welter capable of tossing mature trees like toothpicks. That capriciousness, which has killed people and destroyed property over the years, is antithetical to humankind’s instinct for taming the extremes of nature.

In response to growing pressures to shackle the river, state and federal regulators are insisting, with environmental laws on their side, that the Santa Clara’s natural attributes be factored into any plans for change. What they are trying to avoid is the fate of the Los Angeles River, which was similar to the Santa Clara until a devastating 1938 flood prompted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to straitjacket all but three miles of the 50-mile river in concrete.

Toward that end, government bureaucrats and property owners are collaborating on a $710,000 study with the goal of determining what the Santa Clara should look like far into the future. The study is being funded by an array of city, county and state agencies that have a stake in the river’s future.

It is the kind of approach that has drawn the interest and support of the Clinton Administration because its intent is to look at the river as a whole, not as a chain of uses, dreams, problems and habitats.

The time to take such an environmental inventory is now, before more damage is done, said Reed Holderman, a program manager with the California Coastal Conservancy, a state agency charged with restoring and enhancing natural resources.

“It’s time to draw the line in the sand and say: ‘We’ve lost everything else in this state; we’re not going to lose this.’ ”

Aliso Canyon

The story of the Santa Clara begins in Aliso Canyon, a narrow gash in the San Gabriel Mountains near Acton. Rivulets from springs and runoff trickle down the canyon past the 150-acre Blum Ranch, which has been producing honey and pears for nearly 100 years.

Ray Billet married a Blum granddaughter and runs the ranch from a 1916 wood and river-stone farmhouse, the pastoral setting for several movies and television programs. Billet fears that controlling the wild river will enable housing and commercial development to continue its march up the mountains from the city of Santa Clarita, eventually polluting the river and air and rendering farming obsolete.

“It’s enough to just make your head split open,” Billet said. “It all has to do with the damn developers and their greed. It’s all based on greed.”

To enlighten Los Angeles County planners on historic drainage patterns, which Billet and his neighbors believe should preclude such growth, they have traveled more than 50 miles to downtown hearings to try to get proposed housing developments shrunk or rejected.

“If we don’t stop it, there won’t be a mountain left around here. The developers will tear everything down,” Billet said.

One target of his anger is Riverpark, hundreds of condominiums that jut into the riverbed about 10 miles downstream, near Canyon Country. To protect the dwellings from flooding, the developer poured several miles of concrete walls along the river.

Liz Varnhagen, a project manager for the Army Corps of Engineers, recalls authorizing those walls in 1990, but she said approval came only after the builder lobbied local and federal politicians, who in turn leaned on Varnhagen’s superiors in Washington.

It was not that the walls were not needed to protect the condos. Rather, Varnhagen said, county officials should have never allowed the project to be built so close to the river.

“That pressure will just continue if unchecked,” said Varnhagen, who has since transferred to the corps’ Portland, Ore., office. “Powerful developers will continue to say: ‘It’s not safe to have all those people there and not have fortification of the sides.’ ”

Soledad Canyon

Just below Billet’s ranch, the wash swings around a horse corral and runs into a sycamore-shaded recreational vehicle park, complete with a miniature golf course and a swimming pool shaped like an hourglass. It is one of at least six RV parks in the riverbed through Soledad Canyon, many of them occupied year-round by urban refugees.

The parks are evidence that, unlike continuously flowing rivers, intermittent ones can be privately owned. And someone who pays taxes on property usually wants to put it to use, even if what results is dangerous or destructive.

Because Soledad Canyon is one of the few places where the tiny, endangered unarmored threespine stickleback fish struggles to survive, a comprehensive study of the river’s resources and competing uses could determine that RV parks have no place here. Or it could suggest that because of annual flooding, this is not a safe place for people to live.

One rainy, cold morning in January found Bob Lopez, an owner of one of the parks, knee-deep in the stream as he tried to help free two pickups mired up to their bumpers. Lopez, weary from sandbagging the Oasis Park’s entrance the night before, helped some trailer dwellers rock the trucks while others stood nearby offering advice as they nursed their beers.

Such is the kinship and hardship of living along the river, Lopez said, a lifestyle he and others would be loathe to give up. RV park residents trade such city problems as traffic jams, gangs and graffiti for the risk of living where the river can wash away everything they own.

As floods go, January’s was run of the mill, not even in the ballpark with the $13-million gully-washer of 1969 that ripped out sewer pipes, bridges and the Ventura Harbor. In 1979, a flash flood swept Lopez’s mobile home and several others down the narrow canyon.

“I went all the way to Oxnard looking for my furniture,” he said. “People said they saw my pool table floating a long way down.”

Lopez’s January rescue attempt was only semi-successful--amid a cloud of exhaust fumes and clutch smoke, one truck lurched out of the water. The other, lower-slung, just dug deeper.

“That’s the thing about water, you can’t stop it,” Lopez said, shaking his head. “This river, it goes wherever it wants to.”

His words proved prophetic. Later that week, the river wiped out the park’s entrance, cutting the park off for several days. Just upstream, a man trying to free his car from the river was swept to his death.

The Urban Section

Out of Soledad Canyon, the river widens into a loose braid of small streams. The pits and piles of a gravel mine mar the wash near Lang, where John Lang established a ranch and railway station in the 1870s. In 1873, Lang said he had shot “the Monarch of the Mountains” on the riverbanks--a 2,350-pound grizzly bear said to have killed seven men and 100 head of cattle.

Downriver from the mine begins what is now the most urbanized section of the river valley, with houses and roads spreading up the hills on either side. The freeway-wide wash meanders past wrecking yards, factories and a new shopping mall.

A project representing one possible use of the Santa Clara can be seen along the river’s South Fork, which joins the main channel in Santa Clarita. There the city is putting the final touches on a 4 1/2-mile asphalt bike path that is a compromise between commerce, the environment and recreation.

Jeff Kolin, Santa Clarita’s deputy city manager for public works, said he decided building public support for the trail was essential because the city also has plans for a more ambitious 14-mile route along the banks of the main river. But at first, a common reaction when Kolin raised the subject at meetings was: “What river?”

As with most compromises, the South Fork trail satisfies no one. Environmentalists say the landscaped pathway is too urban to attract wildlife and they criticize the planting of non-native vegetation. Landowners worry about liability and being forced to grant easements across their property.

Kolin said he had naively assumed that financing the bike trail would be the most difficult task. Instead, the money flowed in steadily, while negotiations with the three landowners--primarily over access and acreage needed from local mega-developer Newhall Land & Farming--dragged on for more than two years.

“Newhall’s concern was that because they own so much land adjacent to the river, ‘If we say yes here, how can we say no somewhere else?’ ” Kolin said.

Imminent Danger

Just before it reaches the Golden State Freeway and Six Flags Magic Mountain, the river once again flows year-round--with waste water from a Los Angeles County sewage treatment plant.

This bucolic and natural-looking reach of the river may be in the most imminent danger. It is here that Newhall Land, the largest of the river’s owners, envisions building the cities of the future as soon as economics and politics allow.

Even though the source of river water is artificial, it nourishes native flora and nurtures nesting birds--including the least Bell’s vireo, an endangered songbird. The area looks much as it did 200 years ago when Father Crespi described “a good extent of very good, very grassy soil alongside the stream . . . with a great many cottonwoods, willows, many live oaks, grapevines and rosebushes.”

Founded in 1878 when Henry Mayo Newhall began cultivating corn, flax and alfalfa on 500 acres, Newhall’s empire encompasses 22,000 acres in Los Angeles County and 15,000 in Ventura County--a vast saddle-shaped piece of land stretching from Santa Clarita to east of Fillmore.

Although Newhall still operates citrus orchards and raises cattle on much of that land, the company believes that its future profits lie in building suburbs, which company officials say will require sheathing most of a 12-mile segment west of Santa Clarita in concrete.

For Mark Subbotin, one of Newhall’s senior planners, the river valley is a blank canvas primed for the developer’s brush.

Already the company’s development wing--Valencia Co.--has built hillsides full of houses, a regional mall and a 14,000-employee industrial park upriver.

The developer’s Valencia master plan calls for such comforts of suburbia to flow down the valley to the county line and beyond. Plans include five small commercial centers and a large retail shopping district. The north bank of the river would become an industrial area, the south would accommodate thousands of houses.

“That’s where we hope we’re headed, and we hope we can prove to others by what we’ve done that that’s what should happen,” Subbotin said.

Another plan for 17 miles of the river in Ventura County, being assembled by Westlake Village developer Don Mallas, would fill the riverbed with more than 10,000 houses, as well as shops and offices, but preserve the surrounding orchards.

Wildlife habitat could be wiped out by riverbank building, a fact understood by the developers. They, however, see the potential damage largely in terms of how they could compensate for it.

“We’re going to be looking at all the vegetation, the plant and animal species and coming up with a proposal that would allow people to build while minimizing the impacts to insignificant levels,” Subbotin said.

He cited 50 acres of willows and cottonwoods planted by Newhall west of the Valencia Boulevard bridge, partly to make up for building a regional mall on the opposite bank, as an example of a successful compensation.

The Newhall and Mallas proposals would have to comply with many municipal, county, state and federal guidelines before the first spade of earth is turned.

Even if local governments endorsed the proposals, the Army Corps of Engineers and representatives of other federal and state agencies say flatly that the proposed concrete siding would be prohibited by environmental laws. Now, only about 6% of the meandering river is hard-sided.

River experts say funneling the river into a channel would increase the water’s velocity to speeds that would flush out the endangered fish, the unarmored threespine stickleback. Trees and shrubs, cottonwoods, coyote bush and mule fat--the building blocks of riparian wildlife habitat--would die if deprived of water percolating into the ground.

Subbotin said such judgments have been made hastily and without adequate knowledge of the developers’ intentions. Set wide enough, he said, the hard sides would protect homes but hardly have an impact on vegetation.

So far, Newhall’s record of preserving the river is uneven. In the last two years, the company has paid the California Department of Fish and Game nearly $200,000 in penalties. One settlement arose from a lawsuit against the company for building part of a discount outlet in the riverbed. The other was for allegedly bulldozing the riverbanks near Fillmore without state approval.

Citrus Sanctuary

Given a choice between development and agriculture along the Santa Clara, U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist Brown would choose farming every time.

In fact, she believes that the wide band of citrus groves that starts at the Ventura County line and rolls west to Saticoy has protected the river from development for almost 100 years, and she wants to ensure that they remain.

Looking over a swath of willows and sycamores and hundreds of acres of orchards, Brown said: “This is a huge amount of habitat and it’s . . . very little disturbed. You can hear cars, but there’s a wide buffer from agriculture that has protected the river from most of the urbanizing and destructive influences.”

She knows that for orchards to endure, growers have to make a profit, which requires protecting the trees from washing away in a flood. Brown believes that farmers and bureaucrats can reach compromises, such as allowing areas most at risk to be protected with berms planted in native vegetation and declaring other areas off limits to new groves.

Brown’s ammunition in encouraging such agreements is the federal Endangered Species Act.

Reaches of the river near Newhall and Santa Clarita are believed to be the only remaining homes of the prehistoric stickleback, which favors shallow pools of clear water.

A 10-mile stretch of the river’s middle is considered critical for the survival of the endangered least Bell’s vireo, a small songbird that nests in dense thickets of willows and cottonwoods. It is estimated that about 20 pairs of the 500 remaining vireos nest on the Santa Clara. Early research indicates that if conditions were right, the river could support 625 of the highly territorial male vireos, more than any other Southern California river.

Brown also sees the river as an essential wildlife corridor, which allows the movement of various mammals, fish and birds and sustains their genetic diversity. A 1989 federal study concluded that two-thirds of the land along the Santa Clara remained in a natural, if fragile, state.

But protecting such natural resources cannot be done effectively on a piecemeal basis, she emphasized. By reaching agreements now on issues such as flood control, habitat protection, water quality and the appropriate sites for gravel mining and recreation, future conflict may be avoided.

Not everyone trusts the approach, the topic of the multi-agency study known as the Santa Clara River Management and Enhancement Plan.

When the study was unveiled to landowners last fall, their fear of the outcome was palpable. Mary Anne Berrington, whose family has had citrus groves in the Fillmore area for decades, said farmers were those most endangered by government intervention: “Let’s see if you can protect a truly endangered species,” she said.

Brown knows that not everyone sees her as a savior, but she believes that the cause is worth the criticism.

“Our main goal is to see what is there before it is lost, and I think the window of opportunity is quite small,” she said.

Flooding Risk

The orchards begin near the county line--the oranges, grapefruit, lemons and avocados terraced high into the hills and down into the riverbed. Cattle wade lazily through the shallow water, which disappears into the ground at a point locals call Blue Cut.

Over the years, walnuts, honey and even oil--discovered in 1865 under the creeks that drain into the lower reaches of the Santa Clara--have been the engines driving this part of the valley’s economy. But orchards edged out other enterprises as people began to recognize the perfect growing conditions for citrus: A climate tempered by the steep mountains, adequate water and rich, river bottom soil.

Still, that perfection has always had one major flaw: the risk of flooding. To Dick Richardson and other growers, the Santa Clara is like a loaded gun in unsteady hands.

Richardson’s and his wife’s families have been growing fruit in this area for more than 100 years and operate 650 acres of orchards, including 60 acres of Valencia oranges and lemons east of Fillmore.

In the past, they had joined other growers in a loose coffee-shop alliance to take whatever measures were required to disarm the river, including bulldozing the river bottom into earth berms. Some owners pounded railroad tracks into banks for reinforcement; others anchored flattened junked cars to guide the river past their properties. Rock groins, or breakwaters, were built perpendicular to the river’s flow to take the brunt of its force.

Now, however, Richardson and many others say they feel like sitting ducks as the river’s meandering course targets their land, and protections accorded wildlife habitat take precedence over their needs.

As landowners and taxpayers, they say, they should be able to block the river’s flow without the governmental threat of lawsuits or criminal penalties.

When the river rose in January, it chewed up 60 feet of bank on Richardson’s land, swallowed hundreds of huge concrete culverts he had placed there to deflect the water and was on the verge of rampaging through orchards worth $25,000 an acre.

“I either need to be able to protect my property or, if my property is going to be used for wildlife habitat . . . then the state can come and buy it,” Richardson said.

Some of Richardson’s neighbors believe that government restrictions soon will make growing fruit economically infeasible. He and others said all they want is equal consideration.

As signs of his confidence that compromise between environmentalists and growers is possible, he will soon plant a 25-acre lemon orchard that will not bear fruit for at least six years. And, his college-age son is majoring in agricultural business in preparation for taking over the family’s holdings.

“We’re in it for the long haul,” Richardson said.

Gravel Mining

Gravel miners have been digging in the Santa Clara River for more than 100 years, but only recently have they been angering environmentalists as they scrape away vegetation and stir up silt. The river’s rich layer of gravel--brought down by tributaries such as Piru, Sespe and Boulder creeks as well as by the Santa Clara--is hundreds of feet thick in places.

That abundant resource has led to requests by mining companies up and down the river to increase their total take from about 7 million tons of aggregate to 321 million tons.

West of Santa Paula, S.P. Milling has scooped up rock, sand and gravel since the 1880s, providing the base for the concrete that paves U.S. 101, fortifies the foundations of thousands of houses and creates the curbs, gutters and streets of the suburbs across the county.

Every 3 1/2 minutes, an S.P. Milling skip-loader hauls a 100-ton load from the stream-side terrace lands, which are rapidly being depleted, company general manager Bill Berger said.

“We have just a few years left” at the site, he said.

S.P. Milling has not had governmental permission to work in the riverbed since 1986 and new work on the 20 parcels it owns in the river between El Rio and Santa Paula will have to pass extensive environmental scrutiny.

Berger will get a sense of his chances of expanding from a pending major environmental review prompted by two other companies’ proposals to mine about 10 miles of the river between Fillmore and Santa Paula--an area that includes some of the richest least Bell’s vireo habitat on the Santa Clara.

One of the key issues the review will investigate is whether there is a way to compensate for the damage caused by scraping that stretch of the river clean of the willows and mule fat that thrive there.

In fact, the review will give all six gravel companies hoping to mine the riverbed in Ventura County a clear signal about their prospects. Five additional companies have proposed mining upriver in the Soledad Canyon area of Los Angeles County.

Like Richardson, Berger said he hopes that the river management study being spearheaded by Brown will point to ways disparate river interests--such as gravel mining and wildlife habitat preservation--can coexist.

“I don’t want to destroy bird habitat. I don’t want to destroy species,” he said. But he does want to keep the company that employs more than 300 workers operating well into its third century.

At the Ocean

This is where it ends--a churning arc of water the color of hot chocolate spilling into the ocean.

This is where the Santa Clara is most like the scenic rivers painted by artists through the centuries--flocks of water birds feeding in the foreground and the purple mountains defining its valley to the east.

But even this apparently natural scene is artificial because much of the water flowing here year-round is waste water from the Ventura County water treatment plant upstream.

It is but one more example of how this sometimes mighty river is manipulated by its many masters, said Steven B. Treanor, who as district superintendent of the California Department of Parks and Recreation oversees the fragile wetlands at the river’s mouth.

Treanor has to cope with what the river upstream dishes out, including oil spills, chemical runoff from roads, and muddy water from construction and gravel sites. He scoffs at those who want to control the river with levees or concrete sides.

“We have an effective system that’s worked for centuries and, for some reason, we believe we are a higher power,” he said.

The 50 acres of wetlands in the state park, home to at least two endangered species--the California least tern and the brown pelican--are a fraction of a once vast sweep of shallow, brackish waters. Before it was domesticated, the river’s mouth wandered at will up and down 2 1/2 miles of coastline, from Oxnard north to the boat harbor in Ventura.

Because the wetlands are managed as a preserve, recreational activities are limited to school field trips, during which children learn about the complicated natural equation represented by a river-fed coastal wetland.

“This is a very significant waterway . . . and we as a people don’t know all the values that are locked up in here,” Treanor said. “What we can do as an agency is to create in children a sensitivity to what we have here, so that they try to preserve that heritage.”

Treanor said the best hope for preservation is the approach championed by Brown, whom he credited with striving to abandon the bureaucratic perspective to which most regulators have clung.

The old approach has generated anger and distrust.

“People like Cat, who have a fresh perspective, are the solution to the trust problem,” Treanor said.

Brown and others say it will take months, if not years, to reach consensus about the river’s future. The self-interests of regulators and landowners could clash so sharply that a middle ground might never be found.

The outcome will determine if a wild river can exist in an increasingly urban area.

“If any of us is greedy, then we’ll lock horns,” Brown said. “And the river will be stabbed here and there and eventually it will die.”

The Last Wild River

Relatively undisturbed by development and flood-control projects, the Santa Clara is the last “wild river” in the Southland. Though it is often dry, a storm can turn it into a mile-wide torrent capable of ripping out orchards and houses. That danger has set up a conflict. Developers, gravel miners, citrus growers and water agencies see the Santa Clara as a site for houses, excavation, fruit and an efficient water channel. Accommodating their needs while sustaining the river’s wildlife will require cooperation.

RIVER FACTS

* The river was named in 1769 by Father Juan Crespi, diarist for the first Spanish exploration party, after St. Clare, the saint of sore eyes.

* It is 100 miles long--from Aliso Canyon above Acton to Oxnard--and is 50 feet to a mile wide. Its tributaries include numerous streams and creeks, the largest of which are the year-round Sespe and Piru creeks. Most of it is dry wash except in heavy rains. Its flow can change from five cubic feet per second to 75,000; in the 1990 floods, the rate was 165,000 feet per second.

* Because the river is seasonal, its bed can be privately owned. The only public access is at the mouth and a soon-to-open 4 1/2-mile bicycle path built by the city of Santa Clarita.

CITRUS PRODUCTION

* Oranges, lemons and grapefruit have been grown commercially in the valley for more than 100 years.

* There are 22,160 acres with a 1990 crop value of $125 million.

GRAVEL OPERATIONS

* Six Ventura County companies and five in Los Angeles County operate along the river.

* Seven million tons of sand, gravel and rock--bringing revenues of about $10 million a year--are removed per year. Permits are being sought to remove 321 tons of material over the next 50 years.

* Critics assail the destruction of habitat for rare species, impact on ground-water quality, increased erosion and air pollution.

FREEMAN DIVERSION DAM

The $315-million concrete structure, built in 1991, is designed to stabilize the riverbed and divert 55,000 acre-feet of water a year into settling ponds to recharge the underground aquifer.

HARD-SIDED RIVERBANKS

* Only 6% of the Santa Clara, roughly six miles, has concrete sides. The longest stretch edges two condominium developments east of Santa Clarita. Nearly thirty more miles of concrete between Valencia and Fillmore have been proposed.

* Preservationists fear hard siding, saying it will wipe out endangered species and native plants. Developers say it is less intrusive than the liner on the Los Angeles River, all but three miles of which is entombed in concrete.

USING THE RIVERBED

* Near the top of the river in Soledad Canyon, at least half a dozen recreational-vehicle parks provide vacation and year-round housing in the riverbed. In eastern Canyon Country, one side of a condominium development juts into the bed. Ventura County farmers take advantage of the wash’s rich soil.

THE SOURCE

The Santa Clara River starts in Aliso Canyon, high in the San Gabriel Mountains above Acton. Runoff and springs trickle off hillsides amid orchards and farms to form a tiny creek.

ENDANGERED SPECIES

Least Bell’s Vireo

* The 1992 bird census found 15 to 20 pairs in the valley. There are about 500 pairs in the state.

* As development and farming along riverbanks increases, the riparian environment in which the four-to-five-inch bird breeds declines.

Unarmored Threespine Stickleback

* This is the only river in which biologists are certain this 3/4-inch prehistoric fish, formally identified in 1854, still exists.

* Thousands of fish may live in any pool. They do not tolerate murky water and can die quickly if water dries up or washes out, or if too mush water flows through.

California Least Tern

* The nine-inch, gull-like bird flies high above marshes looking for fish, then plunges into the water to snare its prey.

* Hundreds used to nest on Southern California beaches, but in 1991, only 26 pairs nested on McGrath State Beach at the mouth of the Santa Clara. Twenty-four young fledged there that year.

Brown Pelican

* The four-foot bird, which has a wingspan of seven feet, has powerful wings and a pouch for collecting fish; it occasionally roosts on sandbars.

* Up to 300 pelicans have been counted in the area, although that would include groups traveling north from Mexico and those that breed in the Channel Islands.

* In the late 1960s, DDT in the area caused eggs to break before chicks hatched.