El Nino Fading, but Not River-Digging Storm

When contractor Tom A. Staben ordered his crews to bulldoze tons of dirt from the Ventura River bottom this spring, he was battling a fierce opponent: El Nino.

Struggling under torrential rain, Staben had been hired by the county to repair a collapsed Ojai Valley road embankment. The valley, walloped by a series of highway mudslides, was all but cut off from the rest of Ventura County.

Hoping to unclog traffic quickly, Staben mined the riverbed for dirt and boulders to shore up the embankment. The 44-year-old contractor even drove a bulldozer himself to keep things moving.

The digging, however, unleashed an even tougher opponent: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

According to the corps, Staben’s crews might have damaged a waterway used by steelhead trout, an endangered fish that has been at the center of numerous local environmental battles. Accused of recklessly stripping the riverbed and possibly polluting county waterways, Staben and the county are now under investigation by several federal agencies.

“They seem to be thumbing their nose at their responsibilities under the law,” said Bruce Henderson, senior project manager in the corps’ Ventura office.

But county public works officials who oversaw the project defend the decision to let Staben dig. An order by the corps to stop digging slowed the Santa Ana Road project for weeks, they complain--and Ojai Valley motorists paid the price.

“They lost sight of who they’re here to serve--not the fish, but the people,” said Edward Lee, an Ojai resident who spent hours in traffic jams.

Santa Ana Road finally reopened May 27, four months after the embankment collapsed. But the growing probe into the river project is not likely to end soon.

The corps has threatened the county and Staben with heavy civil and criminal fines and has ordered the county to repair the damaged riverbed. The FBI is also examining Staben’s activities.

Meanwhile, county officials have come under fire by environmentalists for hiring Staben. The contractor, they point out, has been cited repeatedly during the past five years for illegal dumping in a stream bed that runs through his Somis farm.

Through it all, public works officials who monitored the site have stood by Staben, the son of a longtime Camarillo farming family. They are even considering hiring him to replace the dirt his firm removed.

“Frankly, I personally have yet to see a steelhead trout in that river,” says Kenneth B. Gordon, the county transportation manager who oversaw the Santa Ana Road project. “I keep hearing they’re there, but haven’t seen one.”

El Nino Storms Arrive

On this point, no one disagrees: The winter of 1998 was one of the wettest ever.

El Nino-driven storms hit the Ojai Valley especially hard. Throughout the storms, mounds of mud tumbled onto the region’s major roadways, including California 33 and California 150.

Then in early February, a windy stretch of Santa Ana Road--one of the few alternate routes into the valley--gave way. Along the Ventura River near Lake Casitas, furious currents and pounding rain washed away a giant slice of earth 70 feet high and 800 feet wide. A big chunk of Santa Ana Road plunged into the waters with it.

The collapse prompted authorities to quickly shut down one lane. Meanwhile, county officials opened bids on the repair project.

Staben was hired after submitting the lowest of seven bids. The Somis-based contractor had done several county storm repair jobs before. He promised to get this one done for $994,000. The county authorized him to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Gordon says Staben has never been easy to work with. But he insists that Staben was the right man for this difficult job.

“He has an idea of how he wants to do something, and he’s very hard-headed about that’s the way to do it,” Gordon said. “But in order to survive in this type of business, you’ve got to be strong-willed.

“He’s a contractor. And like any contractor, he can be very stubborn.”

Staben could not be reached for comment.

The bulldozers and trucks arrived in mid-March. All that heavy equipment rumbling in the riverbed threatened to make the embankment even shakier, so authorities shut down Santa Ana Road completely.

Staben Digs in Riverbed

According to county officials, Staben quickly ran into a major problem: Because the rain had soaked quarries and dirt pits across the county, he was unable to find any good soil to rebuild the embankment.

Gordon says that the Public Works Department and Staben contacted 10 to 15 quarries, contractors and other soil dealers. But at each site, they found only soggy, unusable muck, he said.

The drenched soil initially used by crews to fix the road simply crumbled, Gordon said, even as Staben himself worked feverishly with a bulldozer.

“He’s a hard worker,” Gordon said. “And he was getting wet like everyone else.”

Finally, Staben suggested using a dry stretch of the riverbed to get the dirt he needed. A mixture of rock, sand and gravel, riverbed dirt drains and packs easily, officials said. Besides, such digging was hardly unprecedented--the county had authorized another firm to do similar work during 1995 storms, Gordon said.

Facing clogged traffic and seemingly endless rain, the county authorized Staben to dig in the river. Days later, the move would bring a stop-work order from the corps and threats of massive fines.

But before the corps issued its warning April 7, Staben was able to remove 35,000 cubic yards of riverbed soil to repair the embankment. That was a little more than half the soil needed for the job, officials say.

Forced by the corps to buy the rest of the dirt from quarries or gather it from other permissible sites, it has taken Staben the past two months to find enough usable soil, public works officials say.

Butch Britt, deputy public works director who authorized the digging, said he believes the emergency situation exempted him from numerous federal restrictions.

“I am perfectly willing to work with your office in complying with the applicable conditions of the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other regulations,” Britt wrote in an April 7 letter to the corps. “I am not willing to endanger the health, welfare, or economic well-being of the citizens of this county on this basis of vague and unrealistic guidance.”

“I hate to call it an even trade, but if the river is taking dirt out, what are you going to do, go back into the ocean to get it?” Britt said this week. “At some point, you’ve gotta ask: Are we going to fix the road or not?

“That river gets torn up every year by a natural process,” Britt added. “I’ve seen rocks go through there as big as Volkswagen minibuses, and they roll around like marbles in a bathtub. I think we would have lost more of the road if we hadn’t gotten in and done what we had to do.”

Pressure to open the road mounted.

In an April 22 letter to Staben, Gordon reprimanded the contractor for falling behind.

“This lack of progress reflects badly on the public works agency and the construction industry in general,” Gordon wrote.

Environmentalists Protest

Environmentalists say the Public Works Department’s viewpoint is inexcusable. Its attitude toward the steelhead trout illustrates a callous disregard for the environment, said Russ Baggerly, secretary for the Ventura County Environmental Coalition.

“They’ve got a warped sense of duty and responsibility,” Baggerly said. “They see the need to do their job, no matter what the costs are.”

This is not the first time the salmon-like fish has been the center of controversy in Ventura County. Now numbered at about 500 in Southern California, steelheads were last spotted in the Ventura River in the early 1990s, experts say. Officials placed the steelhead on the federal endangered species list last year.

In recent years, environmentalists have cited the dwindling fish population in numerous battles over development. They have invoked the steelhead in opposing a proposed Ventura baseball stadium, the Ahmanson Ranch development and the Todd Road Jail.

“If you go in there with a bulldozer and push all the sediment around and remove bank vegetation, that’s quite disruptive,” said Eric Shott, a National Marine Fisheries Service biologist. “If it’s not done very carefully, it’s destruction of steelhead habitat.”

But to environmentalists, this battle is not only about steelhead trout.

Even more alarming, they say, are Staben’s numerous run-ins with county officials over environmental issues--and the Public Works Department’s continued dealings with the contractor despite the citations.

Officials Promise Action

Staben’s battles with the county date back to at least 1991, when he pleaded no contest to illegally operating a storage yard in Camarillo. A judge ordered him to pay $3,570 in fines and halt the illegal discharge of sewage on properties in Camarillo and Somis.

Since then, county officials have cited Staben at least three times on suspicion of dumping everything from dirt to broken-down cars into a stream bed on his Somis property.

Despite the ongoing battle over the dumping, the county Public Works Department has awarded Staben $2.3 million in storm repair contracts since 1993.

Last week, county Supervisors John K. Flynn and Frank Schillo responded to the growing outcry by calling for a new law banning environmental lawbreakers from doing business with county government.

In addition, fellow contractors have expressed outrage that the county let Staben dig in the riverbed. That kind of corner-cutting is not something typically allowed, said Larry Mosler, a Newbury Park contractor.

“We had plenty of rock available,” Mosler said. “Everything was wet? We would have sold rock to him. Obviously, it’s a whole lot less expensive to go into the river.”

Under orders from the corps, the county is preparing a restoration plan for the riverbed.

Public works officials say they plan to charge Staben for taking the riverbed soil. Ultimately, that charge and other deductions will reduce the total cost of the project to $600,000 to $700,000, they said.

Still, the department drew increased criticism last week when Public Works Director Art Goulet defended Staben. Goulet said that the illegal dumping accusations against Staben had not been proved in court--and are not the kinds of citations the district attorney places importance on anyway.

After being chastised by prosecutors and county supervisors, Goulet announced Friday that he is launching an investigation into his agency’s dealings with Staben.

Goulet, who was off work during the Santa Ana Road project because of health problems, also said he is reviewing the decision to dig in the riverbed.

“I would have had Staben get a permit from the corps,” Goulet said. “But that’s easy for me to say in hindsight.”

But Britt said he is simply relieved that Santa Ana Road has reopened.

“We do try to follow the law, but sometimes it’s difficult,” Britt said last week. “I’ve been told I didn’t follow the law, but I think I made a reasonable interpretation.

“But that’s what we pay lawyers for. We got the road fixed.”