Waterlogged : North County Avocado Grower Wishes That Irrigation District Would Dry Up

Adrought is knocking at the door, threatening to usher in months of mandatory water rationing around these parts for residents and farmers alike. But don’t tell Marian Foster about it.

Foster contends that there is more water in the ground around her comfortable home in the rustic hills east of Vista than she knows what to do with.

So much water, she complains, that her 5-acre avocado grove has started to die on her. So much water, Foster complains, that she worries about her house sliding down the hillside. So much water that . . . well, you get the picture.

Some strange quirk of Mother Nature? Not a chance, Foster says. As she tells it, the overabundance of H2O in her earth is a byproduct of a not-so-supernatural act by the Vista Irrigation District.

Leaking Like a Sieve

A concrete flume owned by the district cuts a serpentine path along the ridge just above Foster’s home. Foster contends that the flume, which carries thousands of gallons of water each day from an Escondido filtration plant to the Pechstein Reservoir in Vista, is leaking like a sieve.

The 41-year-old mother of three is more than happy to tell visitors just what sort of damage all the water has done.

She is quick to explain how it percolates into the ground below the old concrete flume, then meanders down through the earth to the grove, picking off random, defenseless trees seemingly on a whim.

She will gladly recall how the water attacked and killed off a prized

palm in her front yard, how it caused dozens of avocado trees on her spread to die because of root rot.

She will even relate the scores of telephone calls she has placed in the past few years to complain to officials at the irrigation district, which serves residential, commercial and agricultural customers in Vista and nearby neighborhoods. Those pleas have prompted district employees to patch some of the leaks, but the problem has yet to be rectified, Foster maintains.

“This is modern times, not horse-and-buggy days,” Foster said, noting that the flume has been operating since 1925. “They can put men on the moon, but they have to put water in a cement ditch. It’s a travesty.”

Officials at the Vista Irrigation District acknowledge that the 13-mile-long flume, built when the Model-T still prowled the byways, does spring a leak or two on occasion, but question whether Foster’s allegations are all they are cracked up to be.

Under Close Watch

Sylvia Boyle, a district spokeswoman, said it is possible that Foster “may have overstated the problem” a bit, noting that employees keep close tabs on the flume, which is a major transmission conduit for the irrigation district.

“There have been leaks from time to time along the flume,” Boyle said. “It’s like any other facility. You always have to repair things. That is a major conduit for us, so we’re interested in keeping it in good shape.”

Richard Garcia, the district’s risk manager, said there are leaks in the flume “all the time,” caused by minor earth movements, but that such cracks generally allow just a few gallons a minute to escape into the ground.

“It’s something we have to live with,” Garcia said, saying that district employees inspect the flume daily. “When we see a leak, we repair it. We never let it develop into anything major.”

Of course, the district’s response time can vary according to the size of the leak, Garcia said. If a crack is serious, employees fix it immediately. If it is something that can wait until scheduled routine maintenance, then employees tackle it then, he said.

“We wouldn’t want to shut down the system in the middle of a summer Santa Ana condition, when our water demands are at their peak, just to fix a minor leak,” Garcia noted.

At the prodding of Foster, district workers were out investigating a leak “just the other day” and discovered a section of ground fanning out from the flume that had been saturated by water, Garcia said.

He said repairs, which involve interrupting the flow of water so a worker can crawl into the cavernous flume and patch up the break, will probably be made in the next few days.

Watched Them Die

For Foster, such efforts are simply not enough. She suggests the 63-year-old flume has simply outlived its usefulness and should be replaced by a pipeline buried beneath the earth.

“The man who sold us this property told us the flume leaks,” Foster recalled. “He had lost 10 trees. He said to keep an eye on those trees that remained. So we watched them. We watched them die.”

In recent years, Foster said, the farmer she leases her grove to has made little off the avocado crop. This year, the man took the pick to a packer, but they were rejected because of the small size and poor quality, she said.

As Foster sees it, the irrigation district is violating an agreement it reached in 1925 with the original owner of her property. The document allowed the district to build its flume as long as it did not interfere with farming. But the flume is interfering, Foster said.

On occasion, the flume has done more than just leak, she contends. One day, water began gushing from the flume “like a waterfall,” Foster said. It took the irrigation district more than 48 hours to fix the problem, despite repeated complaints, she said.

Moreover, the district has been slow to maintain the area running along the flume, allowing weeds to grow head high at times, she complained. When Foster offered to take care of the weeds with poison, district officials balked, saying the water in the flume might get contaminated.

Eager to make headway, Foster filed a claim against the district in 1987, seeking compensation for a Sago palm tree she says was ruined by water seeping from the flume, but the formal demand was rejected by district directors. She has considered suing for the loss of all the trees in the grove but figures it would simply not be worth the effort or expense.

In the meantime, Foster is keeping up her vigil on the flume, hopeful that one day the district will see fit to install a more modern conveyance for the water that quenches the thirst of thousands of North County residents.

“I doubt they’ll put in a pipe anytime soon,” Foster lamented. “There just doesn’t seem to be any outlet for us.”