Unfit for Use : New Lake at Hansen Dam to Be Filled In

A small lake recently dug out behind the walls of Hansen Dam in Lake View Terrace is a community hazard, unfit for swimming and fishing, and will be filled in with sand this month, federal officials said Wednesday.

The decision by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns the land, comes at a time when area residents are demanding that a recreational lake be restored at Hansen Dam as part of the area’s revitalization.

Residents had hoped that the 10- to 15-acre body of water, dug out by a private contractor dredging silt from the dam, could be used for recreational purposes this summer.

“The people are going to get a lake; we’re planning for it,” said Lowell Flannery, chief of operations and maintenance at corps projects in the Los Angeles area. “But not this one this summer.”

Excavation Allowed

A year ago, corps officials allowed contractor Bill Blomgren to excavate an area in the dam with the hope that it could be used this summer for swimming and fishing. Blomgren said he would grade a road and parking lot for free.

Blomgren is the sole contractor permitted by the corps to dig out silt for sale to construction firms. He pays the federal government 15 to 20 cents in royalties for each ton of silt removed.

The water that has collected this past year, however, is now blooming with algae and is unhealthful for swimming because it contains runoff from horse stables upstream, corps officials said.

The lake’s warm water temperature makes it undesirable for stocking with game fish, except for catfish, which are predators that would swim upstream into the Big Tujunga Wash, eating and possibly threatening the existence of native fish species, corps officials said.

Also, the lake is too close to the huge bulldozers and earthmoving equipment excavating sand and gravel, making the area dangerous for recreation.

With the recent hot weather and impending summer months, the unsupervised lake is an “attractive nuisance” and could lead to injury or drowning, said Wanda Kiebala, chief of the recreation division for the corps.

The decade-long deterioration of the Hansen Dam Recreation Area--whose once-vibrant lake was choked dry in the early 1980s by a buildup of silt--has been a source of community anger for years. It has come to symbolize what some people see as governmental insensitivity to the needs of the largely low-income, minority area that the park once served. When the lake was reduced to a stagnant pond, the surrounding park area slowly turned into an encampment of homeless people.

In May, 1988, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) obtained congressional approval to use Blomgren’s royalty payments to pay for park revitalization and lake restoration. Funds will total about $600,000 by the end of this year, corps officials said.

Tuesday night, the corps sponsored a community meeting to hear residents’ recommendations on how the park should be redeveloped. The meeting was the first step toward creation of a corps-written master plan that will map out all future development of the 1,450-acre area.

The overwhelming response was an angry call to restore the lake and horse trails through the park, destroyed by silt inundation and the subsequent excavation.

“Everyone feels the same way,” said Harlene Kelley, a 33-year Lake View Terrace resident. “We want what was once ours back again.”

Many were critical of the corps bureaucracy, which will need more than a year to complete the master plan.

“Cynicism prevails,” said RobRoy McGregor of Lake View Terrace. “We all hope this lake is going to come to pass in our lifetimes, but dealing with the corps is like climbing the insurmountable.”