Earlier this month, I spent some time looking over county maintenance of the San Juan and Trabuco creeks, which have become a focal point in the Fifth District OC Board of Supervisors campaign.
Near Descanso Park around San Juan Capistrano City Hall, OC Public Work crews were clearing non-native vegetation out of the local waterways – all without herbicides, which is what a group of local activists fought for earlier this year.
“This is a very different OC Public Works,” said Brent Linas, founder of the Creek Team band of activists that this past year effectively took on county officials – sometimes face-to-face in the creekbeds – for their over-reliance on controversial herbicides.
Yet instead of confrontation, Linas and his group these days are bringing donuts for OC Public Works crews as they carefully clear out vegetation by hand ahead of the winter storms.
“This is an agency that wants to work with the community,” Linas told me.
The turnaround by OC Public Works on caring for local waterways has become a central issue dominating much of the media being sent out by the campaigns supporting incumbent Supervisor Katrina Foley, a Democrat, and her challenger, Republican State Assemblywoman Diane Dixon.
So who got the agency to change?
Foley says it’s because of her leadership on the board of supervisors.
“I oppose the use of pesticides and herbicides in our public parks, our public spaces and our waterways. I’m leading the effort at the county of Orange to eliminate pesticides and herbicides in our waterways, in our public spaces and parks,” Foley said in a recent Facebook ad for her campaign, adding “Don’t believe the lies. I’m leading the effort for a cleaner, healthier, safer Orange County.”
Foley echoed a similar argument in the Voice of OC county supervisors’ election questionnaire, saying “Time to set the record straight. I fought to stop creek spraying and cancel contracts. My complaint led to contractor penalties. I began this fight as Costa Mesa mayor in 2017.”
Dixon in turn accuses Foley of lying about her record, noting – correctly – that Foley voted twice for county herbicide spaying contracts in 2021 and 2022 – years before the Creek Team started raising awareness on the issue.
You can see both Foley’s and Dixon’s take on the issue by reading their responses to the Voice of OC supervisors election questionnaire, here.
Yet public records reviewed by Voice of OC clearly show that local activists with the Creek Team, not Foley or Dixon, ultimately triggered a different approach by the county.
The big difference is that email records clearly show Creek Team activists challenging OC Public Works staff to prove their arguments that there’s no way to balance habitat restoration on the creeks alongside flood control.
Activists also obtained incomplete invoices through the Public Records Act that raised doubts about OC Public Works’ measurements on herbicide spraying in the creek, challenged their interpretation of a key Army Corps of Engineers study and uncovered a total lack of public notice on spraying.
Foley did raise questions publicly about herbicide spraying early in her supervisors’ term.
But she didn’t push or challenge the bureaucracy’s non-answers. At least not in public.
Instead, she voted twice in favor of the contracts.
She voted in 2021 for spraying contacts and again in 2022.
Video from the 2021 meeting shows Foley easily accepted arguments by OC Public Works staff that spraying was being avoided. By 2022, she didn’t ask any questions publicly.
Email records between Foley’s staff and OC Public Works reviewed by Voice of OC also seem to show a lot of deference to OC Public Works staff – even using the department to check her public statements on the creeks.
In one instance, an OC Public Works manager instructed in an email that Foley should avoid restoration language when it comes to creeks.
“I struck the third paragraph because this does not reflect what we are doing in this section of flood control channel,” wrote OC Public Works Deputy Director Amanda Carr this February to Foley’s press spokesperson, who was seeking edits for a response to residents about the rising controversy over herbicide spraying in the creeks.
“This section cannot be returned to a ‘nature-based waterway’ with ‘natural habitats’ without putting the surrounding community at risk of flooding,” Carr wrote. “This is a managed flood control channel – it is no longer a natural waterbody. We are working to increase flood capacity to protect for the 100-year storm while allowing for Southern steelhead trout passage to spawning areas.”
In addition, public records show that Foley avoided meeting with Creek Team activists for months last Fall, which eventually triggered the activist group to call her out publicly.
“Since November, we have attempted to schedule a meeting with Supervisor Foley,” Linas wrote in a February email to Foley, county and city leaders reviewed by Voice of OC under the state’s Public Records Act. “Her staff has done a remarkable job at avoiding our requests. We have emailed, called, called again, emailed again, and still not gotten a meeting with the Supervisor. I find this very disappointing considering Climate Resiliency is a key plank of the Supervisor’s reelection campaign this fall.”
By the next month in March, activists would force a public town hall that turned out to be a PR disaster for Foley in that the gathering again showed her inability to challenge OC Public Works officials or back residents publicly against the bureaucracy.
Foley became visibly irritated with Creek Team activists during the March town hall over the activists’ resistance to following her lead.
They did the unthinkable: Challenge the brand.
Now, in the wake of the townhall, Foley did set up a subcommittee to study the issue — yet avoided putting the Creek Team on the panel until just recently, just about the same time she put out an Instagram video showing her alongside Creek Team activists.
Foley also tried to get a countywide ban on herbicide spraying – something her colleagues turned down, largely on two Republican votes – Supervisors Don Wagner and Janet Nguyen.
Her fellow Democrat, who endorsed Dixon, Chairman Doug Chaffee also voted against Foley’s proposed ban.
Following that loss, Wagner successfully motioned to conduct a pilot project halting spraying on the San Juan and Trabuco Creeks for a year.
Dixon did get credit from activists for meeting with them without delay and activists also told me she was supportive of the Creek Team goals, a commitment Dixon underscored in her answers to the Voice of OC questionnaire about creeks and toxics.
She also issued a public letter on the controversy last Spring.
“I have been working with the OC Creek Team for the past several months to raise awareness to this important matter, and to ensure that the allegations of misuse throughout our county are investigated thoroughly,” said Dixon in a May, joint public letter sponsored by several members of the legislature.
“I have met directly with a number of the stakeholders involved in the regulation, enforcement and oversight of pesticide use in Orange County, including the County of Orange, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the OC Agricultural Commissioner.”
Yet it remains unclear whether Dixon was ever successful in any follow up with these regulatory agencies.
What is clear from reviewing numerous emails, public meetings and campaign ads is that the activist pressure is what triggered change – perhaps a reminder that ultimately, elections don’t really decide anything, people do.
“Creek Team is nothing without the support of a well informed community,” said Linas, who co-founded Creek Team with the activists Bethany Nelms and Robert Beard, who were critical in reviewing OC Public Works resource permits, invoices and internal records.
“When the residents of Orange County are aware of the misdeeds of their government, they will always demand accountability. That is why OCPW’s herbicide program was performed in secret, without consent,” Linas said. “Looking back, it is not surprising that the program unraveled as quickly as it did, as the people of Orange County were unified in their disgust and condemnation of such a horrible program once it was exposed.”
When I visited with OC Public Works biologists and environmental specialists on site at the creek earlier this month, they confirmed this was the start of a year-long pilot program to only use mechanical means to remove non-native weeds and grasses from the creekbeds with the aim of enhancing flood control ahead of the winter storms.
You can easily see why using this method is more expensive than herbicide spraying, looking over all the considerable equipment for mulching vegetation cuttings from crews working along the creekbed with biologists and environmentalists monitoring work.
Credit: NORBERTO SANTANA JR.
It’s an intensive process requiring a crew of about a dozen people to spread out throughout the creek, cutting down vegetation, feeding it into wood chippers and getting other native cuttings ready for replanting elsewhere.
OC Public Works officials on the ground admitted to me that previously, all this vegetation was essentially just thinned out by herbicide spraying for years.
The ultimate irony is that OC Public Works officials on scene also confirmed to me my suspicion that the biggest impediment to flow is actually several miles downstream – the concrete bridge that takes Pacific Coast Highway over the San Juan Creek where it forces the creek to flow into Doheny State Beach through a very tight opening of about eight feet high.
Nobody seems to have a solution for that one.
