Proposal for Dam Irks Gopher Canyon Folks

Patti Morris has a nightmare. But it comes in the daytime, in waking hours.

Like many of her neighbors along a bucolic stretch of North County backcountry known as Gopher Canyon, Morris fears that a 170-foot-tall earthen dam proposed for a narrow gorge near her rambling ranch house could one day burst.

Morris can see it. An angry wall of water 45 feet high would rush down the canyon, swallowing the homes and horse farms that dot the rustic landscape. In a few short moments, the rural neighborhood, its inhabitants and their dreams, would be swept away.

“We all are just terrified of this thing,” Morris said. “What are human lives worth? Is it worth all of us living in an emotionally wrought-up state, going to bed at night worried about living in the inundation area of a dam?”

But officials in Oceanside, the city seeking to build the dam above the homes of Morris and other Gopher Canyon residents, are wrestling with fears of their own.

The third-largest municipality in San Diego County, Oceanside has just enough water storage capacity to keep the garden hoses and kitchen taps of its more than 100,000 residents flowing for only 55 hours if a catastrophe were to cut the area off from the imported water that is its lifeblood.

Needed for Water Reserve

City leaders say the Gopher Canyon dam is vitally needed to give Oceanside the sort of reserve that every other city in the region enjoys.

“Oceanside is dependent on imported water,” said Jim Turner, the city’s water utility director. “If that source were to be interrupted, we’d be in a precarious situation.”

Turner and other Oceanside officials have been working for more than a decade to get the dam built. And each step of the way, Morris and a feisty band of residents in the Gopher Canyon area have been dogging the $20-million project.

Now, each side is gearing up for still another joust over the issue as the city prepares to unveil a new environmental impact report later this summer that they hope will prove, once and for all, that the dam is safe.

If past battles are any indication, the fight should be vitriolic.

City officials first began pursuing the idea of a dam in Gopher Canyon, an unincorporated area eight miles east of Oceanside’s city limits, back in 1976. With only 150 acre-feet of storage capacity in 10 mammoth tanks scattered throughout the city, officials were eager to expand the water system to give Oceanside a surplus that could be used in emergencies and dry spells.

During the early 1970s, the city focused most of its attention on a plan to store water in an underground basin running beneath the San Luis Rey River. The proposal was dropped when mounting fuel prices made the cost of pumping water out of the aquifer prohibitive, Turner said.

Faced with few workable alternatives, officials turned to the far more traditional approach of building a dam.

Canyon Idea for Dam

Gopher Canyon was quickly targeted because of its position at an elevation high above Oceanside and adjacent to four massive pipes that bring imported water to San Diego County. Drawing from the aqueduct, the half-mile reservoir created by the earthen dam would be little more than a jumbo-sized holding pond for nearly 5,000 acre-feet of imported water--enough to give the city more than 30 days of reserve water.

Though the city began buying land in Gopher Canyon in the late 1970s, residents in the shadow of the project didn’t start hearing rumors about the dam until 1981.

They were outraged.

“The city tried to get it going before we knew anything about it,” Morris says today. “They should have brought everyone in right up front. You don’t sneak around deviously and try to build without anyone knowing.”

When the City Council voted to go forward with the project, Morris and residents sued the city in March, 1982. They charged that the environmental impact report for the project was defective because soil tests and other analyses were conducted for a dam less than half the size of the one planned for Gopher Canyon.

Moreover, the residents maintained, the report’s conclusions about damage that a break in the dam would inflict were based on descriptions of the canyon in the 1960s. Since then, numerous homes have been built, horse ranches established and a posh country club developed.

The suit also alleged that the city failed to properly notify Gopher Canyon residents that the EIR was being prepared.

Soon after the suit was filed, city officials agreed to hire another firm to conduct a new EIR. Even Turner acknowledges today that the original environmental review was insufficient, saying the city did “a minimal job” on the report.

Despite the city’s willingness to undertake a new review, Morris and the residents pressed the lawsuit. In particular, they were troubled because the city continued to purchase land in the canyon. Today, Oceanside controls 90% of the necessary acreage.

Judge Delivered Scolding

In October, 1985, Vista Superior Court Judge William Kennedy sided with the Gopher Canyon residents and awarded about $32,000 in legal fees while scolding Oceanside officials for misleading opponents and for not completing the second environmental review in a timely fashion.

Turner, however, said city officials were puzzled by the judge’s ruling. The second EIR was progressing slowly, he said, simply because the city was trying to do the job right. He said the new environmental report is now nearly complete and will include a far more detailed analysis of the project than the original document.

As part of the EIR, an intricate study of alternatives to the Gopher Canyon dam was undertaken, he said. Those alternatives included exotic ideas such as ocean desalination, as well as more sedate proposals, such as joining in a partnership to draw water from Lake Henshaw or the proposed Santa Margarita dam project in Fallbrook.

“None of them came out as cost effective or operationally efficient as Gopher Canyon,” Turner said.

Turner insists that the Gopher Canyon dam would be structurally safe, meeting all state and federal standards for dam safety. Morris points to numerous problems with earthen dams that have failed throughout the world, but Turner counters that such structures almost invariably were poorly planned and constructed.

“Dams have had problems in the past, but if they’re designed and built properly, they function fine,” Turner said. “Patti Morris brings up these dams where they’ve basically just pushed up dirt to form a pond. She picks out all the ones that have not been properly built.”

He noted that the earthen dam being planned by Oceanside would be virtually as massive as the mountains that make up the canyon, with a base 800 feet thick. Potential problems cited by opponents, such as structural weaknesses being caused by erosion or gopher holes, would be handled with a maintenance and trapping program, Turner said.

Playing Down the Danger

While they play down the danger to Morris and other residents, Oceanside officials steadfastly argue that the dam is needed to ensure that the city has sufficient water during a time of emergency.

“If anything happened to the canals that bring the water here, we’d be out of water in about two days,” Councilman Walter Gilbert said. “That means not only drinking water, that means water for fire protection and other vital needs. For a city of 100,000 people, that’s pretty rough.”

Turner said the city has had close calls in the past. In the early 1980s, a flash flood filled a major state aqueduct, cutting it off for several days. Oceanside was able to keep the faucets running only by borrowing from a neighboring water district.

But in a truly catastrophic situation, such as a big earthquake that could sever the state’s aqueducts for several weeks, other local water agencies would be hard pressed to give up any of their reserves to Oceanside, he said.

Quite simply, Oceanside would be in a fix, Turner said.

Opponents like Morris, however, are none too sure that Oceanside is in such a precarious predicament. Moreover, they contend the city should look to other alternatives for water storage, even if it means spending more money.

“When you consider the extra expense against the danger, it’s worth it,” Morris said.

Despite repeated assurances from Oceanside officials that the dam would be safe, the Gopher Canyon residents simply don’t buy it. As Morris sees the situation, residents can place little trust in a city that has proved deceptive in its dealings with them in the past.

“They did a farce of an EIR and then they were ready to start work, essentially saying to hell with our lives,” Morris said. “They’re very devious. We’ve learned not to trust them if they tell us black is black and white is white.”

She insisted that Oceanside leaders are eager to see the dam built because it would help augment growth in the city, providing the extra water that will be needed as houses spring up on the massive, 2,000-acre Rancho del Oro housing and industrial park as well as other projects.

If anything, the city should stick within its own boundaries to find a solution to its water worries, Morris said. “Why don’t they take care of their water problems within their own city limits?” she asked. “To lay this down on us is just plain wrong.”