Mission Statement of the Watershed Protection District (WPD) Design and Construction (D&C) Section: ‘Build facilities to protect life, property and watersheds from the dangers of floods’.
The D&C design teams for each of the District’s four Flood Zones strive to engineer the highest quality designs to construct facilities that protect the communities and watershed environments of Ventura County through a combination of in-house design engineering, project oversight and management, and employment of highly qualified consultants as needed.
A recent example of the services we provide to the community is the Santa Paula Creek Emergency Streambank Protection project. Heavy rains experienced in January 2005 resulted in high runoff within the Santa Paula Creek Watershed which caused severe bank erosion along the main drainage channel of Santa Paula Creek. This erosion resulted in the loss of farmland and endangered 11 homes and a school adjacent to the creek. The 10-20 foot high vertical creek banks were unstable and highly erodible, and thus needed to be stabilized immediately if the homes and farmland were to be protected from future floods. Work improvements included construction of a pilot channel to redirect streamflow away from the eroded banks via a series of 12 pairs of rock riprap groins within Santa Paula Creek (all constructed with existing materials excavated from the pilot channel).
The U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) provided emergency funding for this project and one other emergency project in the City of Santa Paula under their Emergency Watershed Protection Program in order to relieve the imminent flooding hazards that exist within the Santa Paula area.
Another example of provided service improvements is the Lang Creek Dam Debris and Detention Basins project. Work here included the construction of a stormwater debris and detention facility as an enhancement to the existing flow channel of Lang Creek adjacent to Westlake Blvd. The primary objective of this project was to limit runoff capacity up to a 100-year storm flow to no more than approximately 2,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) before the creek flow could reach Erbes Road in order to avoid flooding of the immediate downstream residential and neighborhood park areas. The facility was also intended to trap sediment at the debris basin thus reducing maintenance downstream. This project has performed exactly as expected within the original D&C planned design parameters.
