Valley Center Pipe Dream--or Nightmare? : It Depends Who You Ask As Sewer Issue Goes to the Voters

Valley Center is a town that has been frozen in place since 1980, when a building moratorium was placed on the North County community until a potentially dangerous health hazard could be corrected.

Firefighters, for example, must use a portable toilet behind the station because the septic system is dangerously overloaded. Because of the sewage problem, the Fire Department is considering evicting the deputy sheriffs, who share the building.

The situation at the fire station is repeated again and again in a slew of reported septic tank failures throughout the moratorium area.

But some Valley Center residents say such reports are only a scare tactic to persuade voters to approve construction of a sewer system.

Rural Life at Stake

On Tuesday, those voters will decide whether to approve a sewer system that will cure the health hazard, but may kill any chance of Valley Center remaining the rural hamlet it is today.

Two competing propositions--one requiring voter approval of any major expenditure by the Valley Center Municipal Water District, the other approving the proposed $13-million sewer system--have the usually quiet community in a fever pitch of campaigning that is sure to leave a residue of bitter feelings among neighbors long after the votes are counted.

More than 18,000 people in the 100-square-mile water district will be eligible to vote Tuesday.

The problem is simple, sewer proponents say: Septic tanks (the only form of sewage disposal now available in Valley Center) and high ground water levels in low-lying areas of the valley combine to create what county health officials call a “time bomb” for the potential outbreak of disease.

Moratorium Called Ploy

But sewer opponents charge that the building moratorium, which covers the commercial area of Valley Center and surrounding acreage, was a ploy to gain federal and state grants to build the sewer, and that the sewer system itself is designed to aid landowners and developers in turning the bucolic community into another suburban slum.

“Stopping this 4,800-acre sewer project is vital to preserving a country way of life in Valley Center,” said anti-sewer spokesman Paul Rowe. “If the sewer is built, tract housing (up to 7.3 houses per acre), low-income housing, apartments and even two-story condominiums will proliferate along Valley Center Road.”

Sewer advocates counter that growth is coming to Valley Center and that the only rational path is to build a sewer system so the town center can be developed sensibly. Without the sewer, they say, development will proceed helter-skelter in areas of the valley not affected by the moratorium.

The advocates say that without the sewer, Valley Center residents would have little choice but to annex to neighboring Escondido to solve their health and sanitation woes.

Other Communities Cited

Julian, Pine Valley, Rancho Santa Fe and Alpine have sewers but have managed to remain rural, they say, and they argue that sensible planning and zoning, not sewers, are the way to manage growth.

Sewer foes gathered nearly 1,700 signatures on initiative petitions to place Proposition B on the ballot and force the special election next Tuesday. Proposition B would require approval by voters in the water district for most major projects costing more than $1 million, including the proposed sewer project.

District directors, faced with the prospect of losing federal and state grants because of delays caused by the initiative measure, countered by placing Proposition A--a vote on the sewer project--on the ballot to blunt the initiative measure.

If both measures pass, the water district would be able to proceed immediately with the sewer project. The requirement for voter approval contained in Proposition B would be met with the passage of Proposition A.

Suit Already Filed

Anti-sewer activist Craig Johnson already has filed a lawsuit against the district, and against federal, state and county agencies, in an attempt to halt what he believes is the end of the rural community he hopes to preserve.

Pro-sewer spokesmen say the water district’s legal counsel has found that the initiative petition “is flawed and will be attacked in court.”

Virtually everyone in Valley Center has an opinion on the sewer issue, apparently to the point of being evenly split on the issue.

What the majority of voters in unaffected areas such as Jesmond Dene, Hidden Meadows, Lawrence Welk Village and Paradise Mountain have to say about the sewer is anyone’s guess, said Van Quackenbush, co-publisher of the weekly Valley Center Roadrunner.

In a front-page editorial Thursday, Quackenbush expressed the hope that the outlying community residents would abide by the rules of fair play.

“Most of our readers will conclude, we believe, that fairness lies in not opposing the moratorium solution, but in letting those confronted with the problem solve it for themselves,” he wrote in the pro-sewer editorial. “Are we naive to believe that? We don’t think so.”