City Delays Pulling the Plug on Lake Morena

The folks around Lake Morena in southeast San Diego County say they don’t usually mind the flocks of visitors who stream through their sleepy village in search of good camping and even better fishing. They mostly choose to just kick back and enjoy.

But, when the city of San Diego showed up trying to siphon millions of gallons of water from the lake early Monday, well, the folks in the village got more than a mite riled.

“We’ll fight them as long as we have to,” said Preston Beaver, a clerk in a bait and tackle shop about 3 miles from the lake. “If we can work something out, that would be fine. But we don’t want them to touch our lake.”

The city did more than “touch” it Monday, as water officials opened flumes leading from the lake about 8 a.m. and allowed more than 30 million gallons to drain down to nearby Lake Barrett. Only after a meeting of the mayor and county and city officials did San Diego water department employees return about 3:30 p.m. to close the drainage channels.

Owned by County

The county owns the lake, but the city, which owns limited water rights that allow it to transfer water from the lake to Lake Barrett during an emergency, informed the county on Friday of plans to drain up to 100 million gallons a day from Lake Morena for the next 80 days.

The lake now holds about 9.76 billion gallons, according to county Parks and Recreation Department figures.

The city decided to exercise its right to drain the lake after recent rainfall shortages forced San Diego to declare a crisis, said Gonzalo Lopez, an assistant director at the San Diego Water Department.

“In a time of crisis, you have to have alternatives,” Lopez said. “A lot of people feel the lakes are going down. What we have to understand is that this is the second dry year. We are reaching critical conditions.”

He said the move was strictly for conservation.

“More water evaporates from Lake Morena than from Lake Barrett,” Lopez said. “We want to conserve as much water as possible. That’s why we began transferring water.

‘We Don’t Have to Notify’

“And we don’t have to notify anyone. The city owns the water rights.”

Nevertheless, after a meeting among County Supervisor George Bailey, Mayor Maureen O’Connor and City Manager John Lockwood, the city suspended drainage of the lake for at least 60 days.

For the residents, the 3:30 p.m. closing of the floodway was nothing short of a triumph over the big-city bureaucracy.

The city “told us to go to hell and that they were opening the gates,” said Jerry McKee, who heads a small community group that opposes drainage of the lake. “Now, here we are seven hours later, and they are shutting it down again. That’s not too bad to me.”

It was a protest that never had to be, McKee said, if the city had only honored an agreement made in May to refrain from draining the lake. McKee said water department employees had come out to drain the lake then, but protests and petitions deterred them.

“They said in May they would sit down with us and discuss it,” McKee said. “They didn’t. They just came down here and started draining the lake. They only told the county commissioners on Friday.”

County officials supported McKee’s claims.

“Supervisor Bailey was taken completely by surprise,” said Diane Jacobs, a spokeswoman for the East County supervisor. “The county had been working closely with the city, negotiating an agreement on a water management plan and everything had been working very well. The call to drain the lake came as a complete surprise.

“The supervisor was not happy.”

Both Jacobs and Lake Morena residents said the county could lose $120,000 to $180,000--money generated by such things as fishing licenses and boat-ramp fees--over the next 11 months if the city resumes draining at its proposed rate.

‘We Would Lose Our Ramps’

“In 30 days, we would lose our boat-launching ramps,” said Joy Cannon.

Residents also said the drainage of the lake would devastate local businesses.

“We would go dead,” Beaver said. “This whole town would.”

“There are already real estate deals being lost,” added McKee. “I have seen three deals go bad because of this.”

In addition, they said, the ecology of the area would be disrupted, killing some of the bass and catfish that abound in the lake.

“There are also eagles that nest here during the winter,” McKee said. “They feed off of fish in the lake. They would be gone, too.”

Lopez said the city is aware of the importance of the lake to the area, but does not think the residents or the ecology will suffer irreparable harm.

“We don’t have any data that shows that anyone would be hurt by the transfer,” he said. “And recreation plays a secondary role to water conservation.”