Lake Park Opens--Water Comes Later : Recreation: Officials dedicate Encino facility, even though lake bed will stay dry for another two years. Bike trails and other amenities are ready to be used.

With grins, handshakes and backslaps all around, city and federal officials Thursday dedicated a new fishing and boating lake in Encino.

That the lake had no water in it bothered them not at all.

Indeed, the 26-acre Lake Balboa will not be filled--making it usable for fishing and paddle boating--for another two years.

But that didn’t stop officials from gathering near the dry lake bed to open the 160-acre Lake Balboa Park surrounding it as the latest addition to the 2,100-acre Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, the San Fernando Valley’s largest and most popular park.

Although the lake is empty, and leafless newly planted trees surround the spaces where picnic benches have yet to be installed, officials said they opened the park so the public can enjoy the biking and jogging trails, small playground and other amenities already in place.

“We thought we ought to open it up for people to use. We’ve got places where people can picnic, fly kites and throw Frisbees around,” said Jim Hadaway, general manager of the city’s Recreation and Parks Department.

Hadaway and officials including Rep. Anthony Beilenson (D-Los Angeles) and Councilwoman Joy Picus talked up the new facility before a sign reading: “Lake Balboa. Water Due in 1992.”

Hadaway said the lake will be filled with reclaimed waste water as soon as pipelines and a $2-million pumping station are constructed at the Tillman waste-water recycling plant. The plant, about one-third of a mile from the lake, recycles waste water from local homes and businesses.

Lake Balboa will not be filled with fresh water for swimming because of the drought, said Frank Catania, director of planning for the parks department.

The park area, which is owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers together with the rest of the Sepulveda flood control basin, is being turned over to the city for operation and maintenance. It was financed with $10 million in federal funds, an amount the city will match to pay for the pumping station and other improvements.

Although officials agreed the park is somewhat barren-looking now, they said it will become more attractive as dozens of sycamore, ginkgo and crepe myrtle trees mature and several hundred picnic tables are installed.

Picus, who praised the lakeside park during her public remarks, later said “it is under-utilized,” saying she would also like to see the proposed Arts Park L.A. built within Lake Balboa Park.

“I think there’s not enough to do in it,” she said of the park, an area that has been protected as open space by intense public opposition to proposed recreational facilities. “People really cherish this open space, and they don’t want anything to detract from that.”

The proposed Arts Park--a $70-million complex of theaters, workshops and exhibit spaces spread over 60 acres near Victory and Balboa boulevards--has been bogged down in litigation which was recently settled between environmentalists and the Army corps.

Proponents are in the process of drawing up an environmental impact report, a draft of which is due this fall, said Catania.

But the spindly trees and empty lake hardly fazed one of the park’s first visitors, Edith Rubinstein of Encino, who showed up just minutes after the government types departed.

“They did it beautifully,” she exclaimed, gazing out over the green expanses. “In another two years, the trees will be taller and it’ll be nice.”