The city of Santa Maria is cleaning up the riverbed east of Highway 101 prior to beginning a new program aimed at educating residents about the types of plants and animals found in the area.
City Recreation Services Manager Dennis Smitherman said that California State Parks awarded the city a roughly $40,000 grant late last year for the city to create a Ranch to River Nature Program. Through this program, the city hopes to highlight the stark difference in the plants, animals, and geology of Los Flores Ranch Park compared to the Santa Maria Riverbed.
“We’re looking to offer field trips for schools, guided nature walks, and outdoor activities so people can learn and be excited about the nature in our area,” Smitherman said.
To complete this project, the city is removing overgrown shrubs, invasive plants, and garbage from a roughly 150-acre area of the riverbed east of Highway 101. The city purchased this land in 2009 to be able to offer this sort of programming, Smitherman said. A few years later, the city placed more than 30 nature markers along walking trails in the riverbed with information about native plants and animals.
Removing the overgrown shrubs and invasive plants will allow the native plants in the riverbed to flourish and stand out in the spring, which is when the city hopes to begin this new program. Smitherman said that after the cleanup work is finished in a few weeks, the city plans to determine whether or not it needs to complete any new planting.
“With the overgrowth, some of the invasive species have choked native plants out,” Smitherman said. “After removing invasive species and doing trimming out there, we anticipate with a good spring we’ll have a good venue for activity and events.”
In addition to removing invasive plants and garbage, the city requested all people living in the riverbed to leave the area while the restoration work is being completed. As officials notified homeless individuals to vacate the riverbed, the city tried to connect them with social service agencies in the area.
While asking people to leave, Smitherman said the city didn’t count the number of people it encountered in the riverbed. However, Santa Maria Police Lt. Russell Mengel told the Sun earlier this month that when a Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office helicopter recently flew over the riverbed, officials identified more than 20 homeless camps—not all of which are within the city’s jurisdiction.
“We knew it was there,” Mengel said. “We just didn’t know the extent of it.”
This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 6, 2020.