Rains Replenish Lakes, Renew Hopes : Drought: An endangered fish and businesses left high and dry are given a reprieve at area reservoirs.

Until recently, things weren’t looking so good for Ken Peery. The drought had turned Littlerock Reservoir into little more than a mud puddle, leaving his rental boat business high and dry.

He was down to $300 in savings. Prospects for the coming season looked bleak.

And then the rains came.

Peery was breathing a little easier this past week as he sat in his store that now overlooks a body of water. Fishing enthusiasts flocked to the trout-stocked reservoir during the Easter weekend, his boats were in constant use and Peery said he did about $2,000 worth of business.

“I actually made $79 last week, after paying all the bills,” he said. “Right now, it looks like I’m going to have a season.”

The recent rains have caused the water levels of local lakes and reservoirs to rise, salvaging summer seasons for many people whose livelihood or quality of life had been jeopardized by the drought.

The lower lake at Castaic, a favorite swimming spot for hundreds of thousands of families, was in danger of remaining closed for the summer. But the runoff from the recent storms filled the lake and officials opened the beaches in time for spring break.

Apparently, the word got out. During the Easter weekend, more than 8,500 people flocked to the recreation facility to use its beaches, fish or ride boats or jet skis. That’s “more than double what we normally have that weekend,” said Brian Roney, assistant superintendent for the Castaic Lake Recreation Area.

Lake Hughes, which until recently was a lake in name only, is now about half full.

A small yellow houseboat that sat looking forlorn on the dry shore symbolized for many residents the ebb of the lake’s fortunes. The boat, dubbed Petronella by its owners, Jerry and Rheba Malone, has not floated on the lake for two years. But this summer, with a little luck, the parties on the boat may resume.

Equipped with a barbecue and decked out with tiki torches, the boat had long been a fixture on the lake, and many of the Malones’ neighbors enjoyed the couple’s hospitality aboard it. At Christmas, they would decorate the boat with twinkling colored lights and sail along the lake shore, singing carols for their neighbors.

There is still not quite enough water in the half-filled lake to launch Petronella.

“We’re going to have to get more rain to get it to float,” Rheba Malone said. “But it’s coming back.”

Although old-timers say the lake has periodically gone dry throughout its history, this was a first for the Malones, who have lived at Lake Hughes for almost 17 years. But they did not panic when the water disappeared.

“The lake’s been here forever, and it comes and goes,” Rheba Malone said. “This is probably just a minor setback.”

And now with at least a semblance of a lake back, some old friends have returned as well.

“As soon as we got water, the ducks came back,” she said.

The ducks at Lake Hughes are not the only animals to benefit from the recent rains.

The unarmored threespine stickleback, a fish on the endangered species list whose last remaining habitats in the Santa Clarita Valley were threatened by the drought, received at least a temporary reprieve.

“Up until these rains, we were literally looking at a situation where we would have to rush up there and rescue them,” said Jonathan Baskin, a professor of biological sciences at Cal Poly Pomona who is leading an effort to preserve the endangered fish. “And now we feel a lot better.”

The drought threatened to evaporate the last remaining habitats of the stickleback, namely ponds in Soledad Canyon, San Francisquito Canyon and the Santa Clara River, where a 75,000-gallon oil spill in February did not help matters. But the rains, besides providing much-needed water, also flushed out the ponds. The ponds were starting to resemble marshes, a habitat different from the clean, flowing streams that the stickleback prefers, Baskin said.

The stickleback is still endangered, Baskin said, and he still hopes to relocate some of the fish to the Santa Ana River in San Bernardino County. But the immediate crisis has been averted.

Although the rains have replenished some bodies of water in the area, others have yet to recover.

The larger upper lake at Castaic is still below normal. Roney said the state Department of Water Resources normally permits water to flow into the lake so that it is full by April 1, in preparation for the summer boating season. Then the water, which is treated and used for drinking, is allowed to slowly drain until it is at its lowest point in November.

The upper lake, which would normally be full by now, is currently 85 feet below capacity, Roney said. As a result, the county Department of Parks and Recreation, which operates the recreation area, has limited the number of motorboats allowed on the lake from 500 to 350 and cut back the number of jet skis allowed from 75 to 50. The numbers are reduced for safety reasons because the water surface area is reduced in times of drought.

“Until the water level on the upper lake rises dramatically, we’re going to keep the restrictions in place,” Roney said.

To the east of Lake Hughes lies its larger neighbor, Lake Elizabeth, which at this point still looks like three small lakes. It will need more rain before it returns to normal.

“You can drive across two different places in that lake,” said Gene Wilfong, maintenance supervisor at a trailer park located between Lake Elizabeth and Lake Hughes. But that has not deterred anglers, who still fish the lake for trout.

Meanwhile, back at Littlerock Reservoir, things are on the upswing.

It was a little more than a month ago that Peery looked glumly out at what he described as “a very large mudhole” and was forced to look for odd jobs to keep his head above water.

“I even got as far down as digging ditches, just to bring in an income to get the bills paid,” said the 47-year-old former aerospace worker, who spent his life savings trying to maintain his waterfront concession.

Now the water level has risen from “nothing to 90 feet” deep, Peery said, and he has five boats lined up on the shore just down the hill from the bungalow that houses his country store. Littlerock Creek Irrigation District officials estimate that the reservoir now contains 1,500 to 1,600 acre-feet of water.

The water level has already reached a spillway on the side of the dam, and state officials, who are concerned that the dam structure is not earthquake-safe, will probably open relief valves to lower the water level.

Reconstruction of the dam by its co-owners, the Palmdale Water District and the Littlerock Irrigation District, should be completed within the next couple of years. Peery figures his worries will be over when that happens because the dam will maintain a high water level.

“It looks like we’re going to see it repaired,” he said. “And my business will shine again.”