Missing Lake: Blame as Elusive as Leaking Water

Donelda Craig can remember when Lake Val Sereno was there, clear and cool, a perfect place for her children to take a summer’s swim. That was a more than a decade ago. Now the children are gone and so is the lake.

“It happened overnight,” recalled Sue Norton about the night during the winter of 1980 when the dam broke. “It was raining that night. We didn’t hear a thing and then when we woke up in the morning and looked out . . . we realized it was just one big sea of mud.”

Now, six years later, the lake bed is dense with weeds and brush and a forest of scrubby trees that have sprung from the muck. And just as dense and tangled is the complex lawsuit brought by the homeowners seeking to put the lake back in Lake Val Sereno.

Since the dam broke, some of the residents call the place Swamp Val Sereno, but they don’t smile when they say it. Thomas Bros. Maps have deleted the amoeba-shaped blue blob that formerly designated the lake on Page 25 of the San Diego County edition.

Bob Thayer, a resident who has seen Lake Val Sereno at its best and at its worst, described both to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors recently. The once-beautiful lake has become a fire hazard in summer, an eyesore and a haven for junkies and criminals the year around, he said.

Rick Borg was a real estate salesman and going to law school nights when he first discovered Lake Val Sereno in the early ‘70s.

“I was raised on the water in Balboa,” he explained, “and I wanted the same kind of life for my girls, but I knew I couldn’t afford the ocean. Then I found this place. It was the answer to my dreams--a place on a lake with a dock and boats in the back yard.” Borg is a practicing attorney now, but his dreams of living on the water have dried up.

The rotting docks and abandoned boats that lie along the edge of the former lake attest to the death of many such dreams. Unlike Borg, many of the homeowners won’t talk about the lake, or the lack of it, because of the lawsuit pending against a succession of Val Sereno landowners and developers. The suit is an attempt to force restoration of the lake or to obtain millions of dollars in damages so that the remaining residents can put the lake back in its proper place.

Lake Val Sereno started life as a farm pond on Escondido Creek, where cattle on the old Croft ranch came to drink or to cool off on hot summer days. Then J. Paul (Buck) Bailey came along in the mid-1960s and decided that the beautiful valley was too good for cattle and just right for an exclusive enclave of homes built around a lake, with a golf course and tennis courts for those who wanted more exercise than just baiting a hook.

So Bailey bought the Croft place, enlarged the earthen dam across Escondido Creek to create a lake of about 40 acres, and started building homes around its perimeter.

To the grumbles of his neighbors in Olivenhain to the west and in Rancho Santa Fe to the southeast, Bailey created the San Dieguito area’s first “planned urban development, or PUD in county planning jargon.”

Longtime residents of the exclusive little suburb recall with pleasure those halcyon days of the early 1970s when the lake was stocked with fish and the park-like lakefront sported docks for sailboats and rowboats. Motorboats weren’t allowed because they were too noisy.

Across the lake, on the “Olivenhain side,” as old-timers called it, campers and picnickers often poached on Val Sereno’s shore. It was a popular place for frog-catching, Borg recalled, “and it was OK with us until they started building bonfires and partying. Then we called the cops.”

Buck Bailey and his wife, Martha, had planned to live out their lives at the lake, giving parties aboard their customized houseboat--a floating model of some of the lakefront homes--which roamed the lake he had created. But hard luck struck Bailey’s little venture long before nature pulled the plug on the lake.

According to his 1971 agreement with the county, Bailey was required to maintain the lake and surrounding open space in return for permission to build a cluster of 105 lakefront condominiums at a density much higher than the rural zoning allowed.

During the ‘70s, the lakeside community of Lake Val Sereno grew. And with growth came growing pains. The sewage system, which some residents termed “nothing more than a glorified septic tank,” failed. County officials demanded that Bailey replace it with a more reliable system or a hookup to a sewer district.

The sewage problem and a yearlong building moratorium imposed by the county caught Bailey holding a $10-million construction loan. Before county officials lifted the building ban, residents recall, Bailey was no longer the jovial landlord of Lake Val Sereno, walking the lakeshore swinging his cane and greeting his neighbors.

“The interest on the loan ate him alive,” Borg explained. In 1976, Home Federal Savings & Loan foreclosed on the property and assumed ownership of 38 unsold condo units--some of them uncompleted--and 27 vacant lots, including Lot 143, which includes the lake and the surrounding open space area.

The Baileys left Lake Val Sereno after the collapse of their dream. Some say they went back to the Long Beach area, but others claim they moved to the Midwest. No one is sure where the couple is now. Bailey’s son and partner, Bob, better known as a former third basemen and “bonus baby” for the Pittsburgh Pirates, also has dropped from sight. Attorneys have been unable to find the Baileys to serve them with a copy of the lawsuit.

Steve Perkins, an Olivenhain native, summed up the community’s feelings about Buck Bailey: “He was trying to do a fine thing, and he did build a fine development there. But he did it more with his heart than his head. You know, it made emotional sense, not economic sense. One thing for sure, he loved that place.”

However, Perkins and other Olivenhain residents feel that Lake Val Sereno opened the door to urbanization of their rural neighborhood.

After the Baileys departed, their houseboat remained moored at a lakefront dock. “It was the cutest thing,” Mary Philippe recalled. “It was furnished beautifully.” It had a hooded stove, a quaint little bathroom and green carpeting throughout, she said.

One stormy night the houseboat broke its moorings and drifted across the lake to the Olivenhain side where it beached on a mud flat. In the succeeding weeks, vandals “on their motorbikes simply tore the boat apart,” and took away everything of value, Philippe recalled.

Home Federal and its agencies managed the Val Sereno property for a couple of years after the Baileys left, then sold off the major share of their reclaimed lots and units to Villelli Construction Co. in 1978.

Val Sereno residents argue that the Villellis, Frank Jr. and Sr., like the owners before them, assumed ownership of the lake and the job of maintaining it. The Villellis were the owners of record of Lot 143--the lake--when the dam broke, Val Sereno residents claim in their lawsuit.

Despite all the financial trials and errors besetting the community, Val Sereno residents still had their lake and their urban-rural life-style until the January night in 1980 when the earthen dam Bailey had built gave way and Lake Val Sereno drained away.

Rick Borg remembers that night well. He went down to the dam the night of the big rain and tried to clear away the rocks and debris blocking the spillway. But the boulders were too huge for one man to handle and all he received for his muddy efforts was frustration.

A wall of water built up behind the earthen structure, breaching it and washing it away.

Who placed those boulders in the spillway of the dam, shutting off the safety valve that had allowed the dam to weather earlier floods? Residents say that someone dumped the fill to block the overflow channel and thus raise the level of the lake, which had dropped to only about a foot deep at its upper end during the summer of 1979.

But homeowners say they know who blocked the spillway, but they won’t say for the record who it was, now that the condo owners and other Val Sereno residents have filed suit to try to get their lake back.

After the dam failed, some homeowners in Lake Val Sereno wanted to band together and pitch in with funds to rebuild the structure immediately so they could have their lake again. After all, they reasoned, lakefront properties were suddenly worth tens of thousands of dollars less, so expenditure of a few thousand dollars by each owner would be a good investment.

The effort failed because “everyone seemed to go off in different directions,” after disaster struck, recalled Mary Philippe. Her husband, M.D. Philippe, was one of those who thought a “do-it-yourself” project was the cheapest and speediest way to put the lake back in Lake Val Sereno.

But his way was not the only way. Half a dozen other homeowners rallied around Philippe’s cause but many others favored going to court to force someone, anyone, to rebuild the dam and restore the lake. Still others sided with Villelli interests who proposed to rebuild the lake in return for permission to reclaim land on the eastern shore for construction of additional housing.

On behalf of Lake Val Sereno residents, San Diego attorneys Bryan Gerstel and Andrew Lloyd have filed a lawsuit naming everyone from the beloved Buck Bailey and his partners to the Villellis and their associates, plus the county of San Diego, as defendants.

The suit contends that some or all of the defendants are responsible for restoring the lake to its past glory. The county is included as a defendant, Gerstel explained, because county officials allegedly failed to enforce the conditions it imposed on the development when Bailey first obtained county permits to build at urban densities.

Defense attorneys for the Home Federal companies that foreclosed on Bailey’s loan and for the Villelli companies that later purchased the Lake Val Sereno properties replied to the suit that their clients were not liable for the lake or any damage to it. They seek to convince the court that the residents of the community were aware of the dam problems and failed to act to correct the weaknesses. They have petitioned the court, unsuccessfully, to remove their clients from the lawsuit.

The Villellis could not be reached for comment. Numerous calls to their Fallbrook construction company were not returned.

Attorneys Lloyd and Gerstel admit that the legal battle will be long and bitter but predict that it will end in victory for the Val Sereno homeowners.

A county engineer who has been around during the 20 years that saw the rise and fall of Lake Val Sereno can only shake his head at the convoluted legal snarl over a simple earthen dam.

With perfect hindsight and a good deal of common sense, the engineer, who asked that he not be identified, said:

“They should have gone back in there on the first dry spell after the dam went and put her right back in. No bothering with permits or finger-pointing, just a bulldozer and driver. It’s too late now, of course, but it would have worked then. I doubt they’ll ever get their lake back now. Not for a million dollars.”