President Signs Bill for Santa Ana River Flood Control Work

President Reagan signed a massive water projects bill into law Monday that includes authorization for a $1.087-billion plan to control flooding on the Santa Ana River. The Santa Ana River project, designed to cope with what officials call the worst flood threat west of the Mississippi River, is the largest single piece of the $16.3-billion bill, the first major water-projects legislation to become law in 16 years.

Reagan signed the bill without comment at 1:30 p.m. Monday, just one day before an automatic pocket veto would have killed it for the year. While his approval was expected, it “gives everybody a more comfortable feeling now that it’s done,” said Jim McConnell, Orange County’s lobbyist in Washington.

The Santa Ana River project includes building a new dam, to be called “Seven Oaks,” four miles upstream from Mentone in San Bernardino County at a cost of $304 million; raising Prado Dam in Riverside County by 30 feet to expand its capacity from 195,000 to 363,000 acre-feet at a cost of $332 million, and widening and deepening channels along the lower Santa Ana River and Santiago Creek at a cost of $451 million.

The Army Corps of Engineers has estimated that a 200-year flood could kill 3,000 people and cause $11 billion in damage, most of that in Orange County. A 200-year flood is one so bad that it would be expected to occur only once every 200 years.

‘Critical Flood Problem’

Lt. Col. Norman I. Jackson, deputy commander of the corps’ Los Angeles district, said at a press conference in Los Angeles last week that the project will handle “the very critical flood problem in urban areas” of Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Jackson said that the local cost of the project--about 25% of the total--will be paid by the three counties and that he hopes the counties will agree by next November on how much each will pay and which part of the project to undertake first. The general design plan could be completed by August of 1988, he said, with construction starting in 1989 and lasting 15 to 18 years.

Other Orange County projects in the bill signed Monday include dredging and maintaining a navigation channel 250 feet wide and 15 feet deep at Newport Bay Harbor, on the north side of the Coast Highway bridge, at a cost of $3.5 million, and expediting a study of Sunset Harbor in the Bolsa Chica area, where there have been proposals for a navigable ocean channel into a development of homes, restaurants, hotels and marina planned by Signal Bolsa Co.

Other Authorizations

The bill also authorizes, if the Army agrees, deepening the entry channel to Los Angeles Harbor to 70 feet and the channel into Long Beach Harbor to 76 feet, and creating an 800-acre landfill at the outer edge of the harbor to increase cargo capacity, at a total cost of $620 million.

The bill culminates years of planning and proposals dating to 1970, a year after months of rains sent the Santa Ana River spilling out of its channel at several locations, killing 11 people and causing more than $12 million in property damage in the county.

Although Prado Dam held up in those rains, a Corps of Engineers study late in 1969 recomputed the power of previous floods and led to the conclusion in 1970 that Prado Dam was inadequate.

All three counties will benefit from increased protection from flooding along the 90-mile river, but Orange County will gain the most because it has the most development near the river. As a result, it will also pay the biggest share of the local matching costs.

Quarreling among the three counties over costs was one feature of years of wrangling over what is known as the “all-river” plan, so named because it deals with the entire length of the waterway.

Riverside and San Bernardino County officials argued that Orange County should pay nearly all the costs because a Corps of Engineers report said the county will get 95% of the benefit. But Orange County officials said development in the other two counties had caused increased runoff into the river and greater flood hazards to Orange County.

The bill calls for $822 million in federal funds, which still must be appropriated by Congress. Local and state funds will come to $268 million, most of that being local.

Scott Morgan, an aide to Orange County Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, said the county has about $58 million “in the bank now” for the project. The money was collected “in anticipation of the approval,” he said.

“We are in pretty good shape to come up with the local portion as Congress starts appropriating,” Morgan said.

Scheduled to Meet

He said officials from the three counties and the Los Angeles regional office of the Corps of Engineers are scheduled to meet in late November to discuss local preferences for what portion of the project to start first.

Orange County officials said their choice would be to raise Prado Dam 30 feet, to 136 feet, because that would provide the most protection for the county.

However, Riverside and San Bernardino County officials in the past have pushed for building the new dam at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains first because that would provide the most protection for those counties.

Jackson said Friday that the counties had shown “extreme interest in all the discussions of which project starts first” but that the Army had “not come to those conclusions yet.”

The new dam would catch the snow-melt in the Upper Santa Ana River Canyon, which is the biggest single source of the river’s water.

A previous plan to build a dam at Mentone was scrapped because of local opposition that included concerns that it would be susceptible to earthquakes.

Times staff writer Bob Schwartz contributed to this report.