Santa Ana River Flood-Control Plan Advances

In a significant victory for Orange County, a key congressional subcommittee this week voted in closed session to spend $20 million to begin construction of a long-delayed flood-control system for the Santa Ana River, officials said Thursday. The action breaks a year-old moratorium on financing new federal water projects by the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on energy and water development, said congressional aides who described Wednesday’s vote.

The decision, which will not be announced officially until the full committee meets next week, represents “a giant first step” in Orange County’s effort to build the $1.4-billion flood-control project, said James F. McConnell, the county’s Washington lobbyist.

However, McConnell cautioned that both houses of Congress must approve the funding before it becomes available. Some members of the Senate Appropriations Committee have voiced concern about beginning new water projects that will ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars, although the initial annual cost is relatively moderate.

Despite the cautionary note, officials who lobbied for the project said they were delighted with the vote by the subcommittee, which was considered a major hurdle.

“The Santa Ana River is without any question the most important unprotected floodway in the country in terms of potential loss of life” and property damage, said Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), an Appropriations Committee member whose district and home county of San Bernardino include the site of a new dam that would be built for the project.

Lewis credited the lobbying of subcommittee members by business leaders in Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties, and the use of site tours for key representatives when they were in California on other business.

Although none of the members of the Orange County congressional delegation serves on the Appropriations Committee, they aided in the lobbying effort, members said.

The Appropriations Committee, which has a prime role in deciding how the government spends its money, almost always adopts its subcommittee’s recommendations, congressional officials said. It could not be learned how many other new water projects the subcommittee approved at its Wednesday meeting.

Lewis had asked the subcommittee to set aside $32 million for the Santa Ana River project in the 1990 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. However, the panel pared back the figure to the $20 million that had been requested by the Bush Administration.

The Administration had asked for more than $85 million to begin 11 new water projects, including the Santa Ana River venture, all to be built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Members of Congress had asked the subcommittee to approve an additional 30 new projects, according to Hunter L. Spillan, the subcommittee’s senior staff member.

The corps had designated the Santa Ana project as a top priority, calling the river the greatest flood threat west of the Mississippi.

In the kind of flood disaster projected to occur every 200 years, the corps has estimated that a rising Santa Ana River could kill as many as 3,000 people and cause up to $11 billion in property damage as it runs its course from the San Bernardino Mountains to the ocean at Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. The river slices through about 30 miles of Orange County’s most densely populated areas.

The federal government is expected to pay for all but about $365 million of the river project’s total cost. The $365 million will be split by Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Orange County, which is to receive the greatest benefit, will foot the major portion of the bill.

The project involves widening and rebuilding concrete and earthen channels along the length of the river, improving the Prado Dam in Riverside County and constructing the new Seven Oaks Dam in San Bernardino County.

FLOOD-CONTROL PROJECT The Santa Ana River flood-control project at a glance:

Total cost: $1.4 billion. $365 million paid by Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Construction: If approved, a contract could be issued in April, 1990, for construction of the new Seven Oaks Dam (in San Bernardino County); as well as design and development work for the river channel in Orange and San Bernardino counties. The project also calls for raising the height of Prado Dam (in Riverside County).

Santa Ana River: Runs 100 miles, 30 miles in Orange County. Called the greatest flood threat west of the Mississippi.