Ventura River

On September 30, 2019, the City of San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara Channelkeeper entered into a settlement agreement in the lawsuit regarding the pumping and diversion of water from the Ventura River Watershed. As part of the settlement, the City agreed to begin a Pilot Program to reduce its pumping and diversion of water from the river when flows drop during dry times to help protect species that depend on the river. The City also agreed to install two monitoring gages (above and below its Foster Park facilities) to help better evaluate water levels in the river. VR1 is located upstream of the City’s wellfield and VR2 is located in Foster Park just below the subsurface dam. The gages were installed in early September 2019 and calibration was completed in December 2019.

The stream gages measure depth directly, and then based on flow and depth curves, provide flow data for each depth measured. Air is pumped from the equipment box through a conduit placed in the river bottom, and sensors measure the pressure required for an air bubble to come out of the pipe. The greater the water depth over the pipe, the more pressure is required. Following installation, a team took discharge measurements in the river, and correlated those flow measurements with water surface elevation. Multiple measurements over a range of flows were used to create a curve which depicts the relationship between flow and depth for the site.

• Data collected from the gages since installation can be viewed at: https://www.picovale.com/
• Go to the “Field Station Access”  button at the upper right side of the homepage and enter the following in the Users Login fields:
• Login: ventura
• Password: river