He Sees It as a Dam Conspiracy : Ramona District Is His Nemesis

Hank Schmidt has been called a kook, a weirdo, a crazy man.

“They called me a curmudgeon, too, and I had to look it up. I thought it was something that lived under a rock,” said the 63-year-old maverick.

Schmidt doesn’t mind the verbal barbs all that much. What he minds more is that nobody takes him seriously.

Like Chicken Little, Schmidt sees the sky falling on his little rural community and his way of life, with nobody listening to him. Like the Little Red Hen, he’s decided to do something about it himself.

Seems Like a Big Debt

The black cloud Schmidt sees on the near horizon is the Ramona Dam, a $32-million project being financed by a no-interest loan from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and by local bonds.

Schmidt’s plan of attack is to tie up the funds reserved for construction work and to delay through lawsuits the completion of the dam.

For the residents of an unincorporated community like Ramona--about 25,000 of them scattered over 150 square miles--the project seems like a big chunk of debt to bite off, he said. But bite it off they did. And, despite delays, contractor problems and skirmishes with Schmidt, the dam is 90% complete. In fact, Jose Hurtado, general manager of the Ramona Municipal Water District, projects an early-July dedication ceremony for the earthen mammoth.

Self-Styled ‘Dam Buster’

When filled to the brim, Ramona Dam will hold 11,000 acre-feet of water, enough to supply Ramona’s population and have plenty left over. But Schmidt, a self-proclaimed “dam buster,” predicts that “not one drop of that water will ever reach downtown Ramona.”

He can’t prove it, but Schmidt sincerely believes that the dam and its water supply are meant not for area farmers and ranchers, not for the residents of Ramona, but for a future community of 15,000 homes to be built in Highland Valley, the wooded, mostly undeveloped highland between Ramona and the dam.

Schmidt, retired from a 21-year career as an Air Force fighter pilot, lives modestly in a tiny house that started as a trailer and still sports the taillights of the vehicle on its rear wall. He shares his Highland Valley home and his 5-acre spread of ancient live oaks with a variety of feathered friends--geese, turkeys, chickens, ducks and exotic fowl such as peacocks.

About two years ago, Schmidt claims, he heard a tale that ruffled his own feathers, a story about plans for a massive new community that would dwarf his small town and bring concrete and cul-de-sacs to the quiet Highland Valley.

“First time I heard it,” he said--from a “source high in government” whom he refuses to identify except as “Deep Throat”--”it sounded crazy, too crazy to be true.”

But, as he pieced together bits of gossip and rumor that circulated in the village, it became clear to Schmidt, if to no one else, that his valley was doomed to development if the Ramona Dam were built.

Then, Schmidt said, he heard the same tale again, this time from a real estate broker who had sold a large parcel in Highland Valley to developers.

Had Opposite Effect

The broker, Julius Laky, “named names to me, I think to try to scare me off, to convince me that one man couldn’t stand up to a big developer like Ray Watt,” Schmidt said.

Watt Industries has developed locally the estate communities of Fairbanks Ranch and Fairbanks Country Club near Rancho Santa Fe, as well as San Diego Country Estates in Ramona, and is one of the nation’s largest residential developers.

If Laky had meant to deter Schmidt, the conversation had just the opposite effect.

“I decided to fight to keep the valley rural. I want to live out the rest of my days right here,” Schmidt said.

Laky, a veteran property broker, recalls the conversation somewhat differently. He may have told Schmidt that development was bound to come to Highland Valley eventually, he says, but he certainly didn’t

tell him the dam was part of a conspiracy by the Ramona Municipal Water District to develop the area into a suburb larger than Rancho Bernardo, and he never, never mentioned Ray Watt’s name.

Watt Industries officials are perplexed at Schmidt’s single-minded conviction that the Santa Monica-based development firm is at the core of a plot to develop Highland Valley.

Jill Barrett, aide to Ray Watt, said the company has no present or future plans to build a 15,000-home estate community anywhere around Ramona. Joe Davis, who heads Watt developments in San Diego County, also denied knowledge of any Highland Valley plans by the firm.

Diatribes and Lawsuits

Schmidt began his dam-busting campaign by voicing his suspicions and concerns to water district directors, typing out diatribes against developers and development on an ancient typewriter and sending copies to newspapers and radio stations.

He filed lawsuits against the district charging violation of state water codes, and says he forced the RMWD Improvement Corp. (IMPCO), an agency overseeing the property acquisition for the dam and reservoir, into involuntary bankruptcy using the self-taught legal skills he picked up during his military duties in the Air Force. His goal was to block release of IMPCO funds for dam construction.

Schmidt contends that directors of the water district are attempting to raid the agency’s meager treasury to pay overdue dam bills that threaten to halt the project.

Bates on His Side

He also has launched a legal assault against the district board in a class action charging directors with violating state laws by borrowing more money than allowed and by agreeing to pay higher interest for the funds than voters approved.

Schmidt has enlisted Rep. Jim Bates, D-San Diego, to his cause. Bates was already on record opposing Pamo Dam, another major water project proposed near Ramona, and obliged Schmidt by writing to U.S. Department of Interior officials and to appropriate House committees, requesting that federal funds be frozen until the matter could be investigated.

Schmidt is an effusive advocate of Bates, praising the congressman for his aggressive opposition to alleged government graft. He is trying to team him up with his activist idol, Ralph Nader, on a national ticket: Nader for president, Bates for vice president.

For a while, Schmidt also had Sierra Club activists on his side, opposing the destruction of wildlife habitat at the reservoir site. But after the valley was denuded and the earthen dam began to take shape, environmentalists abandoned the effort.

Jim McWhorter, a Ramona resident for longer than he cares to remember, acknowledges that he was opposed to the Ramona Dam when the proposal first came up in the early 1970s. The veteran Realtor said Highland Valley is no longer the agricultural mecca it was, nor does he see much in the valley’s future except urbanization.

McWhorter agrees with Schmidt that there are better places to build a dam for Ramona than on the western slope of Mt. Woodson on an unnamed stream that produces only about a thousand acre-feet of water a year.

‘Sincere, Not Vicious’

He is generally supportive of Schmidt’s feisty activism.

“He’s sincere, and not vicious. What he is is a gadfly, and I think every town needs one.”

But a conspiracy by town officials to milk Ramona taxpayers in order to develop Highland Valley? That’s where McWhorter draws the line.

Meanwhile, Schmidt’s lawsuits, while unsuccessful, have been serving their purpose of delay, he said. Litigation, in abundance, “is the dam’s Achilles’ heel,” Schmidt is convinced.

He has charged that the water district violated state law by applying for and receiving a $6.7-million loan when the law says that no governmental agency can increase its indebtedness by more than its annual revenues. The RMWD’s annual revenues are only about $5 million.

Proceeding on Schedule

The district’s Hurtado, in a sworn statement in one of Schmidt’s lawsuits, stated that if the dam’s general contractor is delayed by the litigation and required to halt construction and “demobilize,” the stand-down and start-up costs could add another $1 million to $2 million to the project. However, he said in an interview recently that despite the muddied legal waters, the dam is proceeding on schedule and will soon be completed.

RMWD officials have taken another recent action that has Schmidt’s hackles rising. It is considering buying back its indebtedness on a federal offer to accept 30% cash repayment to settle the debt.

Hurtado explained that the federal agencies are “looking to pad their treasuries” by offering the discount payoff price, but Schmidt is concerned that if the district can come up with the money, there will be no federal strings on use of the future water supply, now committed to agricultural uses and as an emergency drinking water supply in case of severe shortages.

More Than a Water Agency

The RMWD is more than just a water agency, Schmidt noted. It supplies not only water, but most of the municipal services Ramonans require. Three votes on the five-member board can produce almost any service a major developer might require.

If Ramona needs an emergency water supply or additional agricultural water, why not add a few feet to the top of San Vicente Reservoir to the south of town or to Sutherland Reservoir to the north? he asks. A few-foot increase in height would add additional thousands of acres of water. Or, if the community really feels a new dam is needed, why not buy into the proposed Pamo Dam being planned to the west of town, a dam with more than 10 times the storage capacity of Ramona Dam?

If the truth be known, Hank Schmidt does not hate the Ramona Dam. In fact, he thinks it is a rather handsome structure. He has no negative feelings about developer Ray Watt, only about any attempts Watt might make to urbanize his pristine Highland Valley. Truth to tell, Schmidt thinks Watt’s San Diego Country Estates on the other side of town is a handsome development--but not for his valley.

Schmidt admits he has few followers among Ramonans, and he hopes he is wrong, that he will never have the opportunity to tell his disbelieving fellow residents “I told you so” when the bulldozers roar to life in Highland Valley.

But, with or without the support of his neighbors, Schmidt plans to continue his fight to preserve his rural valley and his way of life.