The Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) completed a flood control project in the Santa Paula Creek area of Ventura County, California, about eight years ago. The project cost $ 14.8 million dollars, and included a $ 1 million dollar fish ladder.
The purpose of the fish ladder was to enable steelhead trout to swim upstream, and spawn, in, I suppose, an ecological drive to ‘restore’ the creek to some former status.
I’ve hiked in the Santa Paula Creek area, and I can attest to its beauty; it is a popular area for outdoor enjoyment. Personally, I have never even seen a fish there, let alone a steelhead trout; but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
According to estimates, there are a total of about 500 steelhead trout in the coastal area from Point Conception in Santa Barbara County to the Mexico border, a distance of about 300 miles. Santa Paula Creek is just a tinyl slice of that area.
My understanding is that Santa Paula Creek used to be stocked with trout, however, in the drive to ‘restore’ the creek, the stocking has ceased
I don’t quite understand this need to ‘restore’ habitats to some former time, and I’m not sure who decides which “former time” would be best, but… If the purpose is to have more fish, why not simply start stocking the creek again, and we’d have 1,000’s of fish instead of an occasional sighting of a natural/wild fish. Is a ‘wild’ fish somehow more ecologically vital than a fish bred in a fishery, and let loose ? I’ve never gotten a satisfactory answer to that question. (Oh well, that is another issue.)
I don’t want to argue the ecological implications of not fixing the fish ladder; I already know that would be a useless endeavor; it would be the same argument I hear in defense of the famed Delta-Smelt controversy. All the proponents need to do is change the name of the fish, and the argument is the same. It doesn’t matter who is hurt; in the case of the smelt, thousands of people are out of work, and farms are suffering; in the case of the steelhead trout in Santa Paula Creek, American taxpayers, in general are being hurt by the waste.
American taxpayers, such as myself, are already out $ 1 million for a failed fish ladder, and that will soon be upped by an additional $ 7.5 million.
Anyway, back to the fish ladder…. Apparently, due to poor engineering design, the fish ladder only seems to work if there is a low flow of water in the creek; during high flows, the ladders are useless because they are filled with sediment. And, wouldn’t you know it, the high-flow times are when the fish need the ladder the most.
Since the fish ladders do not work, the ACOE is planning on fixing the ladder. It is not clear what their plan is, but it is clear that it will be $ 7.5 million.
So, the self-same folks who designed and built the first fish ladder, the ACOE, is proposing to spend another $ 7.5 million dollars to fix their shoddy first ladder.
Not a bad deal at all. This is a typical government enterprise: they do shoddy work, at taxpayer expense, and then they re-do it at even greater taxpayer expense.
If ACOE were a private company, they’d either be out of business, or they’d be in civil court trying to defend themselves and their shoddy work.
And to add insult injury, the money is coming from STIMULUS FUNDS ! It is money we, as a country, do not have; it is imaginary money, that will have to be printed in order to ‘pay’ for the project.
Stimulus Money - Imaginary Money
It is hard to find any local Ventura County folks who are in favor of spending $ 7.5 million dollars to fix the ladder. Many believe that the first $ 1 million ladder was a waste. The only folks who seem to want to spend the money is, of course, the ACOE; they want the money so they can keep their taxpayer supported jobs.
The only folks that aren’t hurt by the ongoing recession are government employees, and the ACOE is no exception.
They have 34,600 employees that they need to keep busy.
(By the way, we need a law that would require that the unemployment rate for government employees must match the unemployment in the non-government world.)
The ACOE are the only one’s who will be stimulated by the funds.
I dusted-off my trusty hand-cranked calculator, and did some interesting math. One article I read stated that if the fish ladder is fixed, Santa Paula Creek could eventually have 100’s of fish living in the creek. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the number of fish in Santa Paula Creek increases my 250 fish; i.e., half again the estimated current Southern California population of 500 steelhead trout, as stated above.
At $ 7.5 million dollars, the cost of EACH fish is $ 30,000. Let that sink in; $ 30,000 PER FISH. Pound for pound, that is pretty expensive trout.
And that is a pie-in-the-sky estimate; the real number could be closer to zero.
And let’s not forget how, at the same time, we’ll also be feeding those same $ 30,000 fish to an increased population of bears, and raccoons, and birds, and all sorts of other hungry critters.
American Taxpayers
In the meantime, there are folks all over Santa Paula, and Ventura County, and California, that are struggling to keep their heads above water while our government, represented here by the Army Corps of Engineers, wastes non-existent money, on a nonsense project.
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Below, are some comments that I gleaned from folks who are also upset about this fish ladder business, and the waste that it clearly represents:
In comments posted to the local newspaper website (read the article and reader comments at: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/feb/21/75-million-to-replace-useless-fish-ladder-in/), reader comments include things like:
Quotes from locals:
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Environmental foolishness at its finest!
shovel ready, we can always print more money
This is just a blow more money project on a non-existent problem. Take the $7.5 million and do something about PEOPLE having to live in the river bottom.
If you paid me a $3.75 million I will transport the steel head back up myself, resulting in savings of $3.75 million to taxpayers…
This fish ladder was destroyed right after it was built, what a waste of money, and now they are going to throw more good money after bad….
THE TAX PAYER IS JUST GETTING MUGGED NOW A DAYS.. 7.5 MILL FOR A SECOND ONE, WHAT A RIP OFF.
Would the biologists, and native-only cult, and ACO please stay away from all the California creeks…..
Stunning! You have got to be kidding…nuff said
So much for the government “experts”.
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And that is just my opinion.
Spencer Holly
0099
www.angrycalifornian.com
P.S.
And this is not the most egregious fish ladder story from Ventura County; more to come.
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OTHER RESOURCES:
Ventura County Star: $7.5 million to replace useless fish ladder in Santa Paula Creek
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/feb/21/75-million-to-replace-useless-fish-ladder-in
Feds may build new fish ladder in Ventura County
United States Army Corps of Engineers
