Council OKs Study on Repairing Reservoir

The Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted Tuesday to ask city water experts to look at the feasibility of rehabilitating the Chatsworth Reservoir for use as a storage area for storm water runoff.

Councilman Hal Bernson said he was inspired to propose the study as he watched runoff from this month’s storms being dumped into Santa Monica Bay even though the city has a tough water conservation plan to deal with a tenacious drought.

“We need to find a way to capture some of this water for future use,” Bernson told his colleagues. Chatsworth Reservoir, owned by the city Department of Water and Power, is in Bernson’s north San Fernando Valley district.

But a top DWP official said later that rehabilitating the reservoir is probably unworkable.

“It might be nice to do if there was unlimited money,” said James Wickser, chief of the water division. “But in these economic times, I don’t think it makes sense.”

The 580-acre reservoir has not been used as a water storage area since 1969. In 1972, after the Sylmar earthquake the year before, it was determined that the earth-filled dams at the circa-1919 reservoir could not survive a temblor and that no water should be stored there until the dams were strengthened.

Wickser said it would cost tens of millions of dollars to reinforce the dams. Neither Wickser nor any other DWP officials addressed the council before its vote on the issue.