Corona to Pay Price for O.C. Flood Control

Reginald and Lana Anderson pulled up stakes in Oregon seven years ago, searching for a place where they could retire and raise some livestock. They settled outside of Corona, on a dusty patch of land wedged between the dairy farms along the Riverside Freeway.

“We made plans for this place,” Lana Anderson said in a recent interview. “This was where we were going to settle for the rest of our lives.”

But now those plans are on hold, and all because the Andersons’ property straddles the so-called 566-foot elevation line. That invisible stripe marks the projected high-water line for Prado Dam, which is being raised as part of a massive flood-control project intended to protect Orange County from what has been called the worst flood threat in the West.

After decades of debate, that project will break ground this summer, and though it will be months before surveys of the Prado Dam area are complete--and years before land acquisition is wrapped up--the Andersons fear they may soon be looking for another home.

Their concerns are commonly echoed in the valley behind Prado Dam, where more than 300 property owners in Riverside and San Bernardino counties may lose all or part of their land to pave the way of progress. Many of them express frustration, complaining that they are being kept in the dark about a project that will safeguard Orange County’s future but rob them of theirs.

“When we bought this house, there were weeds growing up as high as the roof,” said Myrna Guest, who lives on dusty Hellman Avenue, across the street from rows of dairy farms and herds of cattle. “We got out there and pulled them up by hand. It seems ridiculous that now we’re going to have to give up our property for someone in Orange County.”

Although it’s hard to picture during these times of dire drought and strict water conservation, experts agree that without the $1.4-billion Santa Ana River flood-control project, it’s only a matter of time before Orange County is awash in water.

Worse-case predictions suggest that a flood such as the one that inundated the county in January of 1862--when a 20-mile sheet of water stretched from the Fullerton hills to the ocean--could cost 3,000 lives and cause $18 billion in property damage.

In those days, there wasn’t much but farmland in Orange County; today, 110,000 acres of the nation’s most productive urban and suburban land would lie three feet under water.

“A recurrence of this magnitude of flood prior to the completion of the Santa Ana River Mainstem Project would rank as one of America’s largest natural catastrophes, commanding countrywide headlines,” George Osborne, executive director of the Santa Ana River Flood Protection Agency, told members of Congress during testimony earlier this year.

Even the residents who expect to be ousted by the project don’t dispute its importance.

“Sure, they need to do something if the flood risk is that bad,” Myrna Guest said. “No one wants to see Orange County flooded.”

What irritates the Andersons, the Guests and many of their neighbors is the feeling that their concerns are being ignored and their lives uprooted by officials who have never bothered to so much as call despite more than a decade of planning the project.

Corona’s dairy land represents a rare sliver of agricultural life perched on the edge of urban sprawl, and it’s a combination that many of the residents painstakingly sought out. Pigs and horses are penned up in many of the back yards along Hellman Avenue, and the housing developments a few miles down the road don’t have the room--much less, the zoning--for livestock.

Tired of the uncertainty, some of the residents say they’d willingly give up their animals and leave. But even they feel victimized by the project, saying that its glacial progress during the past several years has prevented them from getting out and on with their lives.

“It’s a cloud that hangs over this land,” said Frank Costa, who lives in a well-kept ranch house sitting comfortably above the high-water mark. Costa’s house is presumably safe, but the back half of his property, where about 200 head of dairy cattle graze, dips below the fateful 566-foot line.

“They’re not going to take the house, but I had a deal to sell this place, two deals actually, and they fell through as soon as they realized that this was the flood-control area,” Costa said. “Now what am I supposed to do? I just sit here and wait while they take their time.”

Orange County officials are sympathetic, and say they hope to ease the uneasiness surrounding the project with a series of public meetings later this year. Letters are going out this month notifying residents whose properties may be affected, and ground surveys to determine the exact contours of the land will begin in June.

“We’ve had some concern that we not alarm people out there unnecessarily,” said Elayne Rail, project manager for the Prado Dam portion of the flood-control project. “We want to let them know what’s going on, but we want to do it in such a way that it doesn’t just create more concern.”

As a result, however, residents have had to glean what information they have from newspaper accounts and rumors.

“No one’s told us anything. There hasn’t been any communication whatsoever,” said an official with the Guadalupe Home for Boys, a center that houses 66 children in Colton. “We may be affected because our property lies pretty low out here, but we just don’t know.”

For workers in the area, news has been even sketchier. Of a dozen or so laborers who gathered for an early lunch at Chandler Street taco stand last week, only three had heard of the project. “So they buy the farms and move them,” one said angrily. “We’re the ones who will lose our jobs.”

Determining exactly which properties will be affected is the chief task of the project coordinators in the coming few months. In as many places as possible, officials say, they will try to protect homes and other facilities by building huge dikes.

That lessens the social impact of moving families involuntarily, and it also holds down land-acquisition costs.

Dikes, some of them thousands of feet long and more than 50 feet tall, will ring an aluminum plant, a women’s prison, a sewage treatment plant and a portion of California 71. Some homes, depending on the topography of the land around them, may be buffered by dikes as well.

Hundreds of others are likely to end up unprotected. Their owners will receive compensation for their land as well as money to help them with the process of relocating. But it still means giving up a way of life that some families have known for years, even generations.

“It’s hard to leave a place when you’ve been there all your life,” said Frank Teunissen, 27, who has helped his father run the family dairy business since he was old enough to work. “Some of the older boys in this area want to stay put, and they don’t want anything to do with the dam.”

And yet, Teunissen adds, moving may not be so bad. The dairy business has grown crowded near Corona. Feed has to be shipped in, making it expensive.

Dairy land in Northern California looks better all the time, and if the government’s willing to move his cattle and set his family up somewhere else, Teunissen says he’s willing to do his part for flood control.

“We’ve got 30 years of breeding here,” he said, squinting across a field of 800 braying and shuffling cows. “But we wouldn’t mind getting out. I just wish they’d tell us what they’re doing and then hurry up and do it.”

Santa Ana River Flood Control Project Many will benefit, but a few will suffer After years of debate, the $1.4-billion public works project begins this summer. Without it, more than 3 million people are at risk from a devastating flood. But to complete it, several hundred residents of Riverside and San Bernardino counties will have to be relocated. Prado Dam Completed in 1941, revised estimates of the dam’s capacity now indicate that it could not contain a major flood. The dam will be raised 28.4 feet, and about 2,000 acres will be added to accommodate the reservoir behind it. That will probably mean displacing several hundred property owners. Riverside and San Bernardino counties are above the dam, while below it lie some of the most densely populated urban and suburban real estate in the country. Lower Santa Ana River Improvements to 23 miles of channel from Weir Canyon to the Pacific Ocean. Seven Oaks Dam A 550-foot high, 3,000 foot-long dam will be built in the upper Santa Ana River Canyon, inside San Bernardino National Forest Santa Ana River drainage basin This area covers, 2,450 square miles and is the largest basin in Southern California. Santa Ana/Seal Beach: 100-year flood/200-year flood: In the event of a major, 200-year flood such as the one that hit Orange County in 1862, both of these shaded areas would be covered under an average of three feet of water. Thousands of people would be left homeless, 3,000 would probably die and property damage could top $18 billion. Federal government: 66.1% Orange County: 31.4% Riverside County: 1.9% San Bernardino County: .6% Total project: $1.4 billion Sources: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Orange County flood control district supervisors for the project.