Trees won’t be cut down in Oak Park




HUSTLE AND FLOW–Storm water runs off Kanan Road in Oak Park and into a drain.  Acorn file photo

Oak Park residents expressed relief last week after a plan to remove more than two dozen trees as part of a clean-water public works project was revised in favor of an approach that is less harmful to the local landscaping.

Nearly three years ago the Ventura County Watershed Protection District announced a $1.8-million plan to install two biofilters in front of homes between Mae Boyar Park and Smoke Tree Avenue to treat polluted stormwater runoff.

At a meeting last week of the Oak Park Municipal Advisory Council, it was announced that instead of the biofilters the district would use a device known as modular wetlands, which will allow the trees to remain.

Janna Orkney, an Oak Park resident who serves on the board of the Triunfo Sanitation District, said the previous plan to install biofilters would have required workers to remove 26 trees and dig a ditch to process stormwater runoff. The ditch along Kanan Road would have stretched from Smoketree Avenue to Mae Boyar Park, a distance of about 7,000 feet.

“Water would enter at the end of Mae Boyar Park, go into this ditch that’s about 18 inches wide,” Orkney said. “There would be a pipe at the bottom of the biofilter (ditch), but the pipe has holes in it. They couldn’t plant trees nearby because the roots would seek water and get into the pipe.

“(The plan) had a lot of challenges to having trees there, but they’re so important to us who live on Kanan. They’re like a buffer to the traffic and the noise and the exhaust,” Orkney said.

Different approach

Installed underground, the modular wetlands device will have less impact on the Kanan Road landscaping. Stormwater will drain off the streets into the modular system, where it will be treated for pollutants before it flows to the Malibu Creek Watershed, of which the Oak Park community is a part.

“People opposed the biofilters because there was the concern about standing water— the odor, mosquitoes. It would take up to 24 hours for the water to get into the biofilter,” Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks said.

“They thought a biofilter was necessary in Oak Park because the soil is clay and water doesn’t percolate into the soil. I think overall people really love their landscaping in Oak Park. It’s beautiful and they didn’t want to see 26 trees removed,” Park said.

Meeting clean water goals

Water quality standards for the Malibu Creek Watershed were determined by Los Angeles County, which imposed a 2012 deadline for meeting dry weather standards and 2021 for wet weather standards.

The purpose of the biofilter plan was to put Oak Park in compliance with the future wet weather deadline. But opposition to the tree removal forced officials to turn their focus back to meeting the overdue 2012 deadline.

Parks said the modular wetlands approach will allow Oak Park to meet the dry weather standard—albeit late—using a less invasive system.

Glenn Shephard, director of the Ventura County Watershed Protection District, said the district is working on the plans to install the modular wetlands and expects the work will start next spring and be completed by fall of 2019.