Hydrographer Retires After 30-Year Career

Bill Minger, who has provided Ventura County planners and residents with accurate rainfall measurements and recordings for decades, has retired after more than 30 years with the county’s Flood Control Department.

Minger, 74, a county hydrographer, has been responsible for monitoring the county’s 90 rainfall gauges and compiling data used to design storm drains and runoff channels for new developments.

“He was Mr. Rainfall,” said Dolores Taylor, his supervisor from 1978 to 1992. “He always had all the stats.”

One of the most exciting moments of his career came in 1969 when he was part of a two-man crew sent out during one of the worst storms in Ventura County history to see how high the water had risen under the bridges on the Santa Clara River and its tributaries.

In the black night and driving rain that reduced visibility to almost zero, with water and rocks across the highway, Minger and co-worker Jim Capito set out. They arrived at the south end of the Saticoy bridge on their way up the Santa Clara Valley. They started to cross, but decided at the last minute to check the bridge first.

“As soon as we got out, we heard this tremendous roaring sound,” Minger recalled. “Jim said that could be the high-pressure gas line across the river and that could mean the bridge is out.”

A huge section of the bridge had in fact been swept away.

“We could have driven right off the end of it,” Minger said. “Chills still run up and down my back when I think about it.”

Minger attended both elementary and high school in the Ojai Valley before enrolling for three years of college at what was then Santa Barbara State College. After a stint in the Army, during which he married his wife of 48 years, Mary Ann, he returned to complete his college education at UC Berkeley.

With a degree in zoology and a minor in physical sciences, Minger spent six years as a high school math and science teacher before deciding on a career change. He began work with the county in 1961, but took time off in the early 1960s to take a shot at “making big money as a salesman for a roofing company.” He returned to the county by the mid-1960s.

“It turned out to be very interesting work,” he said. “I enjoyed it, but especially the people I worked with. They are really a top-flight bunch of people.”

Minger said he retired because he wanted to relax a little, spend some time building model railroads and travel with his wife to visit their daughters and grandchildren in Washington and San Diego. They have two sons as well.

“When I was the section head . . . he could do anything I gave him,” Taylor said. “I’ll miss him.”