Excavation of Basin’s Farm Will Spare Recreation Sites

Golf courses and a model airplane field in the Sepulveda Basin will not be harmed, but a sod farm will be temporarily dug up to compensate for floodwater storage lost in the expansion of the Donald C. Tillman sewage treatment plant.

Federal officials are requiring the city of Los Angeles to excavate a huge amount of earth from the basin because a dike to be built around the sewage plant will reduce space for storing water in the event of a 100-year flood--the worst flooding likely to occur in any 100-year period.

The sod farm was chosen for the $5-million excavation to spare such community facilities as the Encino and Balboa golf courses and the model airplane field near Woodley Avenue, said Clark Robins, assistant division engineer with the city Department of Public Works.

Robins said the decision to excavate the farmland was made by the city and the Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the basin and the flood-control dam there.

“Everyone seems to agree the least disruption would be to take it from the sod farm,” he said.

Everyone, perhaps, except Bud vom Cleff, who operates Valley Sod Farm on land he leases from the corps. The sod farm excavation will take place during the last six months of the Tillman construction, scheduled to begin in March and continue for 2 1/2 years.

“I think they could have chosen some type of an alternate way to go, rather than take the last little bit of farming that’s in the basin,” said vom Cleff, who farms sod, corn, pumpkin and squash on 200 acres.

About 150 acres, all east of Woodley Avenue, will be excavated. City officials said contractors will remove 2 feet of topsoil, gouge almost 500,000 cubic yards of earth and then put only the topsoil back, hauling most of the dirt away.

About 10% of the excavated earth will be used in construction of the dike, and the rest will be hauled to a vacant site.

Vom Cleff said he is concerned that the topsoil will be spoiled by the project. “It’s never going to be the same,” he said. “When you remove soil and have all that heavy equipment, it probably is not going to be farmable.”

Vom Cleff said he also is concerned for his 38 employees, who will have to find other jobs during that period. “They depend on this farming for their livelihood. What am I going to do with those people? I’m going to lose them.”

Robins said vom Cleff shouldn’t worry about the land being harmed. “We will make every attempt to replace the topsoil that’s there. Surely we won’t be able to do it molecule for molecule, but we’ll make every effort to replace it as close to the current conditions as is possible.”

As for the workers, Robins said: “That’s far less of a consideration than a golf course being out of commission for a year and a half and the trees having to be regrown. Once we replace that sod farm, he’s immediately back in business. The sod farmer is by far the least impacted by this.”

Excavation won’t begin until after vom Cleff’s 5-year lease is up in 1990, but he plans to negotiate a new lease when the land is available.

“I put everything I’ve got into it,” he said. “I do understand the concept . . . and I’m not being selfish about it. But how would you feel if someone took away the ground that you worked? I wanted to spend the next 10 or 15 years out there at least.”

City officials were hoping to avoid excavating the basin, contending that the dike would raise the water level less than an inch in case of a major storm.

“We’d like to spend the money in another manner,” Robins said.

‘Have to Be Careful’

But corps policy is that whenever construction within a flood control basin reduces its capacity to control floodwater, excavation must compensate for the loss of storage space.

“It’s not that the neighborhood is going to be washed out . . . the dam is very good. But we have to be careful,” said Wanda Kiebala, Sepulveda Basin project manager for the corps.

The dike is to accompany a major addition to the Tillman plant in the northeast corner of Sepulveda Basin. The expansion, to cost between $63 million and $75 million, will double Tillman’s capacity to 80 million gallons a day.

The $5 million for the sod farm excavation will come from the city’s sewer construction and maintenance fund.