The Corps’ Bad Precedent

Things may be tough at the federal budget office, but the proposal by the Army Corps of Engineers to charge the Orange County Water District an estimated $150,000 a year for Prado Dam water that now flows out to sea should be dropped with no further debate.

Orange County’s Congressional delegation and water district officials have made the Corps review its proposal, the first attempt to enforce a new Corps policy of charging for services it traditionally has provided free. The policy could affect every place where the Corps dredges harbors or builds flood-control projects. This is a bad precedent with national implications.

The Orange County Water District has for several years been working on a plan to formalize its longstanding agreement with the Corps to reclaim for household use more than 1 billion gallons of spring runoff that feeds the flood control reservoir behind Prado Dam, which the Corps operates. Under the agreement, the county would use water from the dam to help replenish the district’s vast underground reservoir, which supplies water to 40 local districts through an extensive network of wells.

To do that, the Corps must fill the reservoir behind the dam to a level higher than normal and then slowly release the water so the district can divert it into “recharging ponds” that filter the water into the underground reservoirs of sand and gravel. The spring runoff has previously rushed down the Santa Ana River Channel to the sea.

In seeking to formalize the agreement, the district agreed to pay for maintenance, operation and improvements, including creating a new habitat for an endangered bird species whose nests would be flooded by the rising water. That could cost the district up to $15 million.

Late in the negotiations, the Corps announced that it would charge fees to public agencies based on a share of the market value of the benefits that result from the Corps’ work. The fees would add $150,000 a year to the capital investment that the district would make in the project.

But, as Rep. C. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) pointed out, recapturing water from Prado Dam benefits all of the citizens of California by reducing Orange County’s need to import water. But the clinching argument is that if the district did not pay the $150,000, the water would disappear into the Pacific.

We also agree with Cox that any Corps plan to recover costs should apply only to private businesses that benefit from federal spending on specific Corps projects.