Ventura County's billion-dollar agricultural industry is taking a hit from storm-fed walls of rampaging mud and water that are uprooting trees, drowning entire crops and washing away irrigation systems, Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail said Monday.

The preliminary damage estimate was $24 million.

Though he does not expect to complete a full assessment until sometime today, McPhail said celery, the county's No. 4 crop with 2003 sales of $113.3 million, appeared to incur the heaviest damage. Broccoli also was battered.

McPhail said he will ask the Board of Supervisors today or Wednesday for a disaster declaration, the first step in seeking federal and state governments to provide emergency grants, low-interest loans and other disaster relief.

Supervisors would lump agriculture losses with damage to roads, bridges, flood control facilities, private property, schools and other government facilities in any request for state and federal relief. Ventura County is virtually certain of getting help as it did after similar storms in 1978, '89, '92 and '98, McPhail added.

Washed-out and mud-clogged roads were preventing many growers from getting to their fields on Monday, particularly in the Santa Paula, Fillmore-Piru and Ojai Valley areas, several growers said.

On the Oxnard Plain, a prime growing region for strawberries and vegetable crops, fields were either flooded or choked with oozing mud, making it almost impossible for workers to launch cleanup operations and check for damage.

'Significant damage out there'

"We're confident that there is significant damage out there," said McPhail, who could not go far from his Santa Paula office much of the day because area roads were closed. "We know that the Oxnard Plain is pretty flooded ... just from some of the things we've heard, some phone calls we've made.

"There've been a lot of citrus and avocado orchards flooded and actually trees lost along the Ventura and Santa Clara rivers."

Randy Axell, who grows avocados and lemons on 40 acres near Santa Paula, said he had to remove 50 to 60 productive young lemon trees amid Monday morning's thunderstorm to give a backhoe operator room to repair a breached barranca that traverses his land.

"That thunder cell downpour was phenomenal, unbelieveable," Axell said. "As soon as that thing hit, there was a wall of water and debris that came down the Adams Barranca and that spilled to the Haines Barranca on my ranch.

"Everything started coming over and my barranca breached and blew a hole in the side and went into my lemon orchard. ... I can handle 2 to 3 inches, but I couldn't handle what came this morning."

Too soggy to survey losses

Like many growers, J. "Link" Leavens of Leavens Ranches, a producer of avocados and citrus, said he had not discovered much damage yet, but could not get to some of his fields. He was concerned about orchards near Santa Paula and Piru, saying avocado trees might suffocate if standing water could not be drained quickly from groves.

Fungus found on berries

Though their fields were nearly awash, strawberry growers had workers hurrying to strip plants of early-season fruit that showed signs of dotritis, a waterborne fungus that can kill strawberry plants if it isn't eliminated quickly. Once the weather clears, the fields will be sprayed to stop the fungus' spread.

"The strawberries really took it in the chin. We've got the crews out stripping all the berries off the plants. The red fruit, even the green fruit are waterlogged," said Edgar Terry, a Saticoy-area vegetable grower with 143 acres of strawberries. "Also, we've got dotritis starting to show up from all the rain. I'm sure everybody else has got it, too."

Two of the Limoneira Co.'s lemon orchards near Santa Paula were flooded and strewn with debris when the Todd Barranca jumped its banks in several places, said Gus Gunderson, farm manager.

Whether more remotely located fields were damaged was unknown Monday.

Grower Leavens said the county's agricultural industry has weathered similar serial storms before and undoubtedly will again. "We all pump water and we all live in this dry community, there's going to be damage, but the glass is half full because this is recharging aquifers," he said. "Still, if a person's house is flooding out, that's hard medicine. We can't really worry about trees because people are a lot more important. This is real dicey stuff right now."

On the Net:

California Emergency And Disaster Declaration Process

http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/Disaster/DisasterPlan/chp14.htm