Repairs to the Santa Paula Airport, damaged in this past winter's heavy storms, are on track for completion following a tentative agreement reached this month between the city and the Nature Conservancy.
To divert the Santa Clara River and repair the airport's main runway, a large section of which was washed out in February, the Ventura County Watershed Protection District needed permission from the conservancy, the nonprofit organization that owns property at the edge of the airport and beneath the river in that part of Santa Paula.
In a land swap, the conservancy agreed to allow construction on about 40 acres of river bottom and to give a permanent easement on about 25 acres in exchange for the city donating 70 acres of river bottom along an adjacent parcel downstream.
"When you're working in conservation, you need to realize the needs of the community must be met while you're trying to achieve your goals," said E.J. Remson, the conservancy's point man in Ventura County. "It never occurred to us to say 'no' to the airport and put one of the city's largest private employers out of business. It's too important to the community."
More than two dozen companies, with nearly 150 employees, depend on the 75-year-old private airfield. After several days of storms, the Santa Clara River eroded the bank beneath the airport's lone airstrip and carved more than 400 feet from the 2,650-foot-long runway, forcing the airport to close for about three weeks.
The preservation organization reached the halfway point this summer in its quest to buy and protect about 20 miles of the Santa Clara, one of the last free-flowing rivers in Southern California. The river flows west 84 miles from the San Gabriel Mountains near Acton to the ocean near Oxnard and Ventura.
Remson said the river, which is dry most of the year, contains willows, cottonwoods and mule fat, a small shrub. It also provides a habitat for several endangered or threatened species, including the southern steelhead trout, arroyo toad, the southwestern willow flycatcher and the least Bells vireo songbird.
"This is extremely valuable land from a conservation point of view. To lose this is very painful for us," Remson said. "We work very, very hard to get every acre we can along the river, and we hate to give any of it up.... but we were able to do this while still being true to our mission.
