SAN CLEMENTE : City to Maintain Part of New Channel

The City Council last week voted 4 to 1 to assume temporary responsibility for certain portions of a 7,000-foot-long storm channel that will be built along Shorecliffs Golf Course.

Although the channel is on private property and ultimately will be the responsibility of the golf course once a planned hotel is built there, the council agreed to accept some maintenance responsibilities as well as financial liability for the channel in the event it is the cause of any catastrophic damage.

The council’s action comes as a relief to residents who live near the future channel, which is currently an unchanneled flood plain with eroding banks. The residents, fearful of potential flooding, had been applying pressure on the council to act.

“This situation has been going on for too long in its present state,” Mayor Joseph Anderson said. “If we have a bad storm, we may lose a few houses and maybe some lives.”

Previous plans by Centex Homes, which had agreed to build the channel to control runoff from its Forster Ranch property through the golf course to the ocean, were rejected by state and federal agencies in 1990, said Mark Rohrlick of Centex Development Co.

Centex will pay for the $3-million channel, on which it hopes to begin construction in May if it receives approval from state and federal agencies, including the Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Fish and Game, Rohrlick said.

Councilman Thomas Lorch, who voted against the plan, objected to the city’s becoming involved because he believes that financial responsibility for maintaining the drainage channel belongs to the golf course. “I’m not going to put the city in the business of maintaining a private drainage facility,” Lorch said.