Del Dios Residents Again Battling to Keep Out Sewers

For more than three decades, residents of the quiet village of Del Dios on the shores of Lake Hodges have responded to the battle cry: “The sewers are coming!”

Once again, the dreaded urban menace is threatening the lakeside community, this time emanating from Escondido to the northeast. And, once again, the Del Dios Town Council is holding a council of war.

The unincorporated village is virtually unchanged from the time San Diego placed a building moratorium on its hillsides in 1955, preventing anyone from building a new residence or expanding an old one until a sewer system was built to prevent pollution of Lake Hodges, a city reservoir, from septic tank seepage.

Cry of Foul Rang Out

Last week, as the Escondido City Council was poised to pass a routine ordinance creating a new sewer district at a developer’s request, a lone voice from the audience cried foul.

The protester, Phyllis Hassinger, is not a Del Dios resident, but she knew all too well how much the rustic community values its privacy and rural ambiance.

She wondered whether the leaders of the community had noticed the 6-by-7-inch public notice about the pending sewer district formation published once in the local Escondido daily paper, and, if they had, whether they had realized they were part of the proposed Southwest Escondido Sewer Utility District.

“I knew the people in Del Dios would be spitting mad,” Hassinger admitted, “and I thought that it was mean of the city not to give them fair notice.”

So she contacted Paul Marks, an attorney and a Del Dios resident who led the protest against locating a large U.S. Olympic training center on Lake Hodges. Marks, with only a few hours’ notice, dashed off a heated protest letter to Escondido council members, protesting the lack of adequate notice to the community and lack of a timely environmental impact report on the project.

The council ordered Public Works Director Dennis Wilson to readvertise the proposal, this time with a map or boundary explanation that would let the affected homeowners know just where the sewer district would be.

Wilson said that normal procedures were followed in the sewer-district notice, but he conceded that the notice could have been more precise.

Legwork for Development

The purpose of creating a district is to prepare for development in the 2,700-acre Felicita area, Wilson said, by designing a $3.9-million system of pump stations and force mains to carry sewage from future subdivisions and existing residences over the hill to Escondido’s treatment plant.

Marks, irate at Escondido’s attempt to provide sewerage for Del Dios without what he considers proper notice, isn’t too worried that the municipality will get away with it.

“Given the lack of notice--either to the Del Dios Town Council or the San Dieguito Planning Board--and given the lack of an environmental analysis of what obviously is a growth-inducing project, getting a writ would be a slam dunk,” Marks said. And, with a slow-growth majority coming onto the Escondido council in a week or so, he said, it looks like Del Dios has dodged the bullet, and the sewers, once again.

Even so, Pat Limpus, president of the Del Dios Town Council, is not letting the issue drop. She fears having the village included in a sewer district available to any householder or developer who opts to hook into the system and develop land that has been subject to a development freeze for 33 years.

“We will be well-represented when this matter comes up again,” Limpus said. “The word has gone out.”

If it hadn’t been for Phyllis Hassinger, Del Dios might have been mousetrapped into urbanization, unable to halt development in its scenic community.

‘Saved From the Sewers’

“Thank God for that woman,” Limpus said. “She saved us from the sewers.”

Limpus isn’t worried that Del Dios’ townsfolk will betray the town by hooking up to the sewer and turning the sparsely populated slopes into a beehive of condominiums and tourist resorts. But the town’s biggest landowner is not a Del Dios resident. It is San Diego.

The San Diego Water Utilities Department owns about 80% of the property in Del Dios--lakeside frontage and view lots--acknowledged Bill Knowles of the city’s property department. Most of it was acquired before imposition of the moratorium to prevent development around the lake that might pollute the reservoir. The lake frontage was acquired when the city decided to raise the water level.

What the city acquired dirt cheap is now a priceless commodity requiring only sewer availability to be marketable, Sue Scott, a real estate saleswoman who works out of her Del Dios home, explained.

“The only way to judge the value of the city’s property is by comparing it to property across the lake. There, the hillside lots, with lake views, but not as close to the lake as we are, go for at least $75,000. I imagine the lake frontage would go for much more,” Scott said of the San Diego-owned property.

Scott, despite her occupation, is dead set against sewers in Del Dios because she thinks they would ruin her home town forever.

“I know it’s the old ‘not in my back yard’ syndrome, but I can’t help but hope that it can remain just as it is, for a few more years at least,” Scott said. “I don’t know of anybody in town who doesn’t feel the same.”

Limpus said that, after previous sewer threats, Del Dios volunteers have petitioned San Diego to side with the residents to prevent urbanization of the scenic lake and hillsides. The results, she said, “were almost form letters saying that the city would dispose of its land, as a single unit, at some time in the future.”

But, the Del Dios leader stressed, “they can’t do a thing if we stop the sewers.”