arUNDOING in Sleepy Hollow

A worker down along Carbon [Canyon] Creek works on removing the dreaded arundo donax.  All photos by Ron Nadeau.

The Carbon Canyon Fire Safe Council, contracting with the Santa Ana Watershed Authority, has embarked on another project to remove arundo donax, the highly-flammable and very invasive Asian bamboo that has been very aggressively growing along Carbon [Canyon] Creek in recent years.

Although large sections of arundo were burned to the ground in the Novemebr 2008 Freeway Complex Fire and then treated by SAWA when the opportunity to deal with the roots of the plant, sections that were spared from the fire, mainly on the San Bernardino County portion of the canyon, continued to thrive.

The work site to remove arundo along Carbon [Canyon] Creek is at the west end of Sleepy Hollow, south of Carbon Canyon Road.

So, this latest attack on arundo is centered on the western end of Sleepy Hollow just where the creek goes from the north side of Carbon Canyon Road to the east.  Permission was granted by some property owners to get to the arundo and coordination was made with the City of Chino Hills for a roll-off bin to haul away the removed material.

Thanks to Ron Nadeau, long-time Sleepy Hollow resident and Fire Safe Council stalwart, for organizing this project; to the city for its efforts; to SAWA for coordinating the work; and to the local property owners for their assistance.

A roll-off bin is loaded with removed arundo from the creek.

Mitigating the presence of arundo wherever possible along Carbon [Canyon] Creek helps not only with reducing a major fire risk, but also allows the water flow in the creek to move more smoothly and prevent damage along the route of the watercourse.

California Conservation Corps Crews Continue Carbon Canyon Creek Cleanup

Over the last couple of weeks, work crews from the California Conservation Corps, under contract with the Santa Ana Watershed Authority, which oversees a grant-funded arundo donax treatment program, have been busily working to clear dead arundo and much other material (plant and otherwise) from Carbon [Canyon] Creek.

As the photo below shows, there has been a significant amount of debris taken out of the creek and hauled away by the Corps (unfortunately this does not include trash dumped at what are now two spots along the old La Vida Mineral Springs resort property, although someone did recently remove the garbage at the deep turnout on the other side of the highway.)

These bags of plant and other material removed by California Conservation Corps crews from Carbon [Canyon] Creek represent a small fraction of what has been done by these workers over the last couple of weeks.  This is at the west end of the old La Vida Mineral Springs property on the Brea side of Carbon Canyon.

This project with the creek will be ongoing and, hopefully, funded, as efforts to eradicate the highly invasive, flammable and difficult to kill arundo continue over years.  There has already been a noticeable difference in the appearance and water flow in the creek.

Everyone involved in this project, including the CCC, SAWA, Hills for Everyone, the Carbon Canyon Fire Safe Council, the City of Brea and anyone inadvertently left off this list, deserves credit for participating in what is probably the sole bright spot to come from the November 2008 wildfires that ravaged the Orange County portion of Carbon Canyon.

Arundoing and Other Doings

In the last couple of weeks or so, work has been ongoing between Olinda Village and the old La Vida Mineral Springs property on the Brea side of Carbon Canyon in the removal of dead biomass from the arundo donax that had long been accumulating in Carbon [Canyon] Creek, but has been subject to an intensive eradication program given unintended assistance by the devastation of the November 2008 Freeway Complex fires.

Crews from a Lake Forest habitat restoration company called Nature's Image (see here) have been busily engaged in the tough task of cutting and hauling away of plant material, as the accompanying photographs, taken last week, show.  These efforts will continue, presumably, for some time, even as new stands of arundo have arisen and will have to be treated.

Meantime, on Chino Hills State Park property alongside Carbon Canyon Road east of the new Discovery Center, work details from the Inland Empire division of the California Conservation Corps (see here for more on the local center of this organization, which has served California since 1976) are doing cleanup work with unwanted plant material.

And, in recent weeks, CalTrans has been on the Orange County portion of Carbon Canyon Road, removing dead trees from as far as near the Chino Hills border to the rehabilitated El Rodeo Stables, where the remnants of very tall, but also very dead trees, burned in the 2008 fires, were probably a risk to those driving on the highway.  CalTrans crews have also been very busy over the last week or so putting down ribbons of asphalt to seal cracks that have long been worsening on SR-142.

Finally, workers have also been quite busy along the highway working on power lines and poles, so the amount of maintenance activity recently has been quite impressive.