Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D- Chatsworth, presented a check for $1 million to the Santa Clarita Valley Water Agency on Sunday morning with the goal of supporting the removal of Arundo, an invasive species of perennial grass, from the Santa Clara River watershed.
“We were really excited to be able to secure a million dollars to remove the Arundo in the Santa Clara River,” Schiavo said. “It’s a huge invasive species that is like bamboo. Huge bamboo groves. And it takes as much as 20,000 households’ worth of water a year out of the river. So it’s really a great opportunity for us to do something local around conservation that doesn’t require households to make sacrifices or do anything else, but it really makes sure that we have water in our water system that we need.”
Originally used as an ornamental plant, Arundo eventually spread into watersheds throughout California and began to reproduce at a rapid rate.
“It’s been an ongoing problem,” said Maria Gutzeit, vice president of the SCV Water board. “And there’s been multiple efforts to try to tackle it. But it’s a huge problem spreading from the upper watershed down to the Ventura County area. So, it really takes a lot of concerted and well-planned removal efforts. And this is gonna go a long way to helping us do that on hopefully a more permanent basis.”
“It’s a really intensive process to remove the Arundo,” said Schiavo. “It’s not like pulling weeds in the garden. They’re huge stalks of essentially bamboo that have to be cut down. You have to put herbicide on each individual stalk by hand to keep it from growing back. And then, of course, it makes little baby Arundos all around it, and you have to go back and remove those. And there’s a really extensive root network. So that’s why it’s unfortunately a lot more difficult to keep controlled and a lot more expensive to remove. But we know it’s taking precious water out of our water system that we really need in our communities.”
SCV Water has submitted a work plan with the state Department of Water Resources, which is where the funding will come from. The plan was put together in cooperation with other local watershed stakeholders including the Watershed-Wide Arundo Management program. The Santa Clara River Conservancy and UC Santa Barbara are also involved in the project.
“We appreciate every level of funding we can get, whether it’s from the federal government or from the state government,” said SCV Water Board President Gary Martin. “This is an ongoing problem that requires continuous attention.”
Currently, there are many laws and restrictions that prevent SCV Water’s plan from immediately going into effect, with the Arundo removal process not expected to begin for several months.
“There’s so many restrictions on when you can actually work and where you can actually work,” said Martin. “Environmental restrictions, permanent restrictions, and so forth. There’s so many factors that work against the removal process. It’s very tough.”
“As far as timing is concerned, probably six months to a year, we’ll start being able to actually put the money to work and have approval of the work plan and the permitting and all those things,” said SCV Water Assistant General Manager Steve Cole.
